Education Reform - or "The Kudzu That Is Eating Congress"

Kudzu, noun: a plant with a weak stem that derives support from climbing over trees or shrubs and grows so rapidly that it kills them by heavy shading.

Two years ago StudentsFirst didn't exist. I chose to start my conversation with that event because, in my mind, it is the watershed moment that marks the roll out of the newest phase in a long running plan for the hostile corporate takeover and privatization of public schools. In those two short years, the framers of the "reform movement," like the kudzu infestations, have accomplished much.

For example, reformers have effectively enraged the public sensibilities to the point of a near riot about the need for reform. In the process reformers have shaded and blocked out the voice of opposition from most all venues of public forum. Reformers have been most effective in vilifying their imaginary but enormously huge fantasy cabal of "bad teachers" as being the sole cause for every problem in education (really?). And no sooner did the reformers have their mob chanting "Bad Teachers, Bad Teachers" loud enough and were satisfied that phase one of the takeover was complete (teachers were now accepted in the court of public opinion as being "the problem,") it was time to begin phase two.

In phase two, the "reformers" were quick at the ready to offer their best (and only) solution. Their argument went something like this: "To insure every precious, innocent, defenseless child in America won't be 'left behind,' to wallow under the horrific and daemonic influence of the huge cabal of "bad teachers," we need the power to combat their overseer evil unions and remove the accounting practice of 'Last In - First Out' (LIFO) and, while we are at it, let's also eliminate teachers protections from arbitrary or capricious dismissal by eliminating the due process protections afforded by tenure (really?).

Naturally, a lot of folks looked at these proposals and thought they were a little bit wonky. How would removing LIFO and tenure help any child read better or understand mathematics more proficiently? From the reform camp, the counter to that question was this; “in removing all the legally negotiated and mutually accepted protections of LIFO and tenure, we can fire as much as the bottom 15% of teachers we want to every year and replace them with "great" teachers.” Oh, I see it now (kind of…).

OK. But how do we know who are good teachers and who are bad teachers? Always at the ready, reformers were quick to point out that “because the high stakes standardized test scores measure student learning, the high stakes standardized test scores must also measure teacher effectiveness.” “But,” folks countered, “research repeatedly demonstrates how high stakes standardized test scores vary wildly, are fraught with statistical anomalies and are widely understood to be unreliable metrics of teacher effectiveness.” "OK," said the reformers, "then we will look at individual student growth over time to discern teacher effectiveness." And so was born the reformers’ reliance on the model known as Value Added Measures, or VAM.

It must be pointed out at this point that the algorithm for VAM was developed by a geneticist to predict the percent outcome of a desired trait based on the influence of multiple factors such as environment or genetics. In other words, to reformers, learning is like the desired trait; kind of like plant height, and kids are like Soy Beans.

Hence, the crusade was on. Reformers trumpeted the value of VAM as being sound and, as many proclaimed, “Better than nothing” and the idea was soon attached to the reformers agenda as a rock-solid tool of wisdom. But, it must be said that nobody, especially politicians who LOVE VAM, can explain any of the factors that make up the equation or what it measures. Try it yourself by looking at the equation found in Michael Winerp's article in the New York Times. Personally I wonder which factor accounts for the influence of the ever growing student’s free will point decision of “I don’t give a rat’s ass about you or your flippin’ test.” I personally didn’t see any compensation for that in the equation.

But today’s modern reform movement is proving itself not to be about understanding what works and what doesn't work when educating kids. Modern education reform is not about looking at and championing all the influences that merge to create a successful learning experience for every child in every classroom every day. Modern education reform is about propagating an agenda whose end result is to grow over and dominate the educational landscape; to create an environment shaded from light and creativity where every teacher is at risk of being fired from every school every day; to become the dominant authority thereby choking out the very fertile and positive effective domain needed by teachers to imagine the best and create a safe and encouraging crucible so needed by kids to discover the very real joy of learning. Modern education reform is about legislating this agenda into law.

Don't believe me? Take a moment to follow the link and look at the latest piece of Federal Legislation to emerge from our Washington politicians. Read the following synopsis of the bill very carefully to see how much of the reformers agenda is reflected in the proposed legislation:

This Is My Last Straw - Is It Yours Too?

By Dave Russell

As a teacher, I have sat and watched our children increasingly suffer needlessly as the life of the of the school day has been systematically suffocated to the pallor of a deathly grey. The gauntlet of NCLB has morphed into the scourge of the corporate take-over model which spawned a full on attack warrior in the form of Michelle Rhee and her "resistance is futile" lobby group, StudentsFirst. My blood boils every time she rolls out a new Madison Avenue savvy propaganda smear or full court press media blitz designed to further the Oligarch's planned agenda for education takeover, uh...I mean "reform."

As my anger and frustration has grown, nothing has enraged me to the boiling point more than the recent publicity buzz flying around the paper authored by Economists Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia. In this 92 page report, these economic experts claim to have tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years concluding that the kids with improving test scores had lower teen-pregnancy rates and higher college-enrollment rates than their peers. They also had higher earnings, lived in better neighborhoods, and even saved more for retirement. In a front page article about the paper, The New York Times concludes “test scores help you get more education, and that more education has an earnings effect" (how's that again...test sores do what now?).

It's not too surprising that nobody was quicker to pick up on this paper and trumpet the message from this cherry bit of propaganda than Michelle Rhee and the merry Jesters at StudentsFirst! The ballyhoo from StudentsFirst is as predictable as clockwork! Some kluged report jukes the data to develop erroneous conclusions that dance right into the laps of the Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists and BAM! it happens; you place the stick in their hand, they will bang the drum.

This report is hogwash and StudentsFirst should be ashamed for publicizing it. The authors admit that their conclusions are extrapolated from stale data that was gathered in bulk (not for individuals as the summary leaves readers to believe), run through an analysis tool that is so fraught with statistical noise (individual and often conflicting point-source influence on outcome) that their only conclusion --there is far too much noise to disaggregate (take apart) the most reasonable conclusion-- is that teacher quality HAS to be the driving force for the very gains that they couldn't actually track because it was stale and gathered, after all, in bulk. WTF?

But honesty and integrity are not the norm, nor are they qualities valued by this Reformers' Cabal. Instead, truth is denied, facts are skewed, research (real research - not this 5 and dime tinker-toy variety) is overlooked, and professionals at all levels across the nation are ignored and besmirched.

The agenda of StudentsFirst is to use well crafted rhetoric, propaganda and deceptive practices to create false hysteria, create mythic villains in teachers and unions, project horrific consequences should the fabricated travesty be allowed to continue unchecked, and then (wait for it!) charge in like the Knights in Shining Armor they believe themselves to be, carrying their Shield of Righteous Purpose, picture perfect, jiffy-tailored solution that not only sounds good and gives that ever so needed cozy-snugly feel of good satisfaction, but is hawked and carnival barked as the only effective, critical, and urgent fix, and to not support it dooms he world as we know it to inevitable implosion. By God! reading their agenda you would think StudentsFirst is single-handedly saving every child in every classroom every day from a hideous ordeal in the slash & burn world of the indifferent, self-important, selfish, ineffective teacher!

All StudentsFirst is interested in is changing the game so the new power brokers can continue to coerce states and districts into adopting unproven agendas such that expensive teachers can be arbitrarily, capriciously, and summarily tossed onto the curb like so much rubbish only to be replaced by unproven, untrained, two-year commit-me-not ivy-league Slam-Bam-Thank You Ma'amers.

And all this hinges on some snake oil smoke & mirrors algorithm called Value Added Analysis, which in and of itself hinges on students passing a test nobody has ever seen, nobody has ever ensured is aligned to the hundreds of varied curricula and texts, and not fact checked for accuracy or cognitive appropriateness. It is taken on faith by StudentsFirst and the rest of the Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists that the ENTIRE machine that sets the standards, writes the curriculum, formulates the textbooks, writes the tests, scores the tests is SO seamlessly perfect that all children, regardless of socioeconomic status, family (dis)function, language abilities, learning difficulties, or desire to participate, will excel if it weren't for the incredible prevalence of those damned ineffective teachers.

The most aggravating aspect of the agenda water-boarding perpetrated by the whole Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists is that the American public is either too drunk on their cool-aid, too stupid to understand the realities, or too apathetic to do anything but allow their children to be willingly led to the intellectual slaughter.

Too harsh you say? Ask any child in Florida or anywhere else in America how excited they are to come to school. Ask them how relevant the curriculum is to their lives. Ask them when the last time it was that they engaged in test prep - and for how long. Ask them why they even take the test. Ask them if they feel like the institution is encouraging them to live, learn, and grow according to their (student centric) needs as 21st century learners. You want harsh? Listen to these kids rail on the Bull Shit that is the result of decade of reforms designed by a Cabal of reformists who think that the best way to solve our problems is to use a white-hot blowtorch approach to intensifying the same thinking that created the problems in the first place.

To all the members of the Rhee/Duncan/Gates Cabal of reformists and to Race to the Top as well, you can kiss my ass and the collective asses of kids all across America!

I Get Emails

Pink Floyd: Money

Berkeley USD has an unofficial hiring freeze for Instructional Assistants right now but they are also short staffed and even kids with IEPs aren't getting support. It's because of budget reasons, but under IDEA districts aren't allowed to cite budget reasons as an excuse to deny services. Just FYI.

Here we have another incident where a district cannot meet its obligations due to lack of funds. And who pays the price? As usual, the most vulnerable pay it.  Even in Berkeley.  And they have to lie about it, too.  Disgusting.

Money makes the world go round, and those without money, well, as Alan Grayson so eloquently put it a few months ago, they should just "die, and die quickly."

Who Is Accountable? All Of Us!

Angela Engel says:

Federal policy makers, the Colorado Department of Education and our legislature are not going to lead our schools into the Promised Land. School accountability takes all of us. It's called civic engagement and it looks like volunteering in our schools, joining the PTA, attending school board meetings, asking questions, and educating ourselves.

You should read the whole thing.

Let's Call It Radical

Submitted to Newsweek but not published
04/03/2010

To the editor

Newsweek describes Pres. Obama's education plan as "centrist" ("More big effing deals," April 5, p. 33). Hardly. It is a radical plan, involving far more testing than we have ever seen in the history of American education.

According to the "Blueprint for Reform," released by the Department of Education in March, the new standards will be enforced with new tests which include "interim" tests in addition to those given at the end of year. No Child Left Behind only required reading and math tests. The Blueprint recommends testing in other subjects as well. The Blueprint also insists we measure growth, which could mean testing in the fall and in the spring, doubling the number of tests.

The most radical aspect of this plan is that there is no research showing that this vast expenditure of time and money will increase learning.

— Stephen Krashen

h/t SO

Another Honest Assessment Of The Dunc And NCLB 2.0

Test-and-punish system is ineffective

Monty Neill, Interim executive director, National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) - Boston

Despite fresh evidence of No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) failure, USA TODAY and Education Secretary Arne Duncan want to keep its test-and-punish paradigm. Duncan at least acknowledges that the law is not working, but both responses call to mind Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" ("Changes to 'No Child' ease up on middle-class schools," Our view; "We're flexible but tough," Opposing view; Education standards debate, Tuesday).

Last week's National Assessment of Educational Progress report should have been the final nail in the coffin for this approach. It showed student achievement has stagnated. U.S. students made faster academic progress in the decade before NCLB became law. Achievement gaps are not narrowing significantly between white, African-American and Latino students.

USA TODAY recommends we stay the course. And Duncan, though recognizing NCLB isn't working, wants more emphasis on standardized exams. Then he wants to rate teachers based on their students' scores. This will turn more classrooms into test-prep centers.

It's promising that Duncan wants to abandon the illusion that all children will become "proficient" by 2014. Targeting federal attention on low-performing schools and replacing one-size-fits-all mandates are also good ideas. Unfortunately, the plan relies on NCLB's discredited notion that raising the testing "bar" and yelling "jump higher" will magically yield better performance.

To improve education, Congress should replace NCLB with a program to help struggling schools develop the capacity to meet children's needs. The Forum on Educational Accountability, which includes leading civil rights, education, religious, disability, parent and civic groups, has drafted such a plan. Sadly, by leaving so much of NCLB intact, Duncan would consign our children to more of the same damaging insanity.

Diane Ravitch: Don't "Waste The Next Eight Years"

A new agenda for school reform

By Diane Ravitch
Friday, April 2, 2010

I used to be a strong supporter of school accountability and choice. But in recent years, it became clear to me that these strategies were not working. The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program enacted in 2002 did not produce large gains in reading and math. The gains in math were larger before the law was implemented, and the most recent national tests showed that eighth-grade students have made no improvement in reading since 1998. By mandating a utopian goal of 100 percent proficiency, the law encouraged states to lower their standards and make false claims of progress. Worse, the law stigmatized schools that could not meet its unrealistic expectation.

Choice, too, has been disappointing. We now know that choice is no panacea. The districts with the most choice for the longest period -- Cleveland and Milwaukee -- have seen no improvement in their public schools nor in their choice schools. Charter schools have been compared to regular public schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, and have never outperformed them. Nationally, only 3 percent of public school students are enrolled in charters, and no one is giving much thought to improving the system that enrolls the other 97 percent.

It is time to change course.

To begin with, let's agree that a good education encompasses far more than just basic skills. A good education involves learning history, geography, civics, the arts, science, literature and foreign language. Schools should be expected to teach these subjects even if students are not tested on them.

Everyone agrees that good education requires good teachers. To get good teachers, states should insist -- and the federal government should demand -- that all new teachers have a major in the subject they expect to teach or preferably a strong educational background in two subjects, such as mathematics and music or history and literature. Every state should expect teachers to pass a rigorous examination in the subjects they will teach, as well as a general examination to demonstrate their literacy and numeracy.

We need principals who are master teachers, not inexperienced teachers who took a course called "How to Be a Leader." The principal is expected to evaluate teachers, to decide who deserves tenure and to help those who are struggling and trying to improve. If the principal is not a master teacher, he or she will not be able to perform the most crucial functions of the job.

We need superintendents who are experienced educators because their decisions about personnel, curriculum and instruction affect the entire school system. If they lack experience, they will not be qualified to select the best principals or the best curricula for their districts.

We need assessments that gauge students' understanding and require them to demonstrate what they know, not tests that allow students to rely solely on guessing and picking one among four canned answers.

We should stop using the term "failing schools" to describe schools where test scores are low. Usually, a school has low test scores because it enrolls a disproportionately large number of low-performing students. Among its students may be many who do not speak or read English, who live in poverty, who miss school frequently because they must baby-sit while their parents look for work, or who have disabilities that interfere with their learning. These are not excuses for their low scores but facts about their lives.

Instead of closing such schools and firing their staffs, every state should have inspection teams that spend time in every low-performing school and diagnose its problems. Some may be mitigated with extra teachers, extra bilingual staff, an after-school program or other resources. The inspection team may find that the school was turned into a dumping ground by district officials to make other schools look better. It may find a heroic staff that is doing well under adverse circumstances and needs help. Whatever the cause of low performance, the inspection team should create a plan to improve the school.

Only in rare circumstances should a school be closed. In many poor communities, schools are the most stable institution. Closing them destroys the fabric of the community.

We must break free of the NCLB mind-set that makes accountability synonymous with punishment. As we seek to rebuild our education system, we must improve the schools where performance is poor, not punish them.

If we are serious about school reform, we will look for long-term solutions, not quick fixes.

We wasted eight years with the "measure and punish" strategy of NCLB. Let's not waste the next eight years.

links at the original

The Other Achievement Gap

From Kevin Riley at Leader Talk:

...

Here's a gap that's deep and growing deeper by the day:

It starts in schools that struggle to keep pace. For whatever reason. Maybe it is the leadership, maybe it's the teachers, maybe it's the kids or the parents or the books or the pedagogy or the water or the facilities or the lack of light. In the end, it doesn't matter. Because schools that don't keep pace with AYP have to circle the wagons and teach harder. More reading. More math. Then more reading still. More math still.

And while reading and math crowd out the rest of the curriculum-- as schools eliminate science and social studies and the arts and physical education to make way for more focussed/rigorous/aligned instruction in basic skills (aka "test prep")-- something big goes missing:

Creative thinking, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, application, play, self-discovery. Joy. Learning.

...the skills our kids need to compete for jobs. For economic growth. For America. For global survival.

...

Diane Ravitch Speaks Again

Good Questions For Duncan And Obama

From GFBrandenburg:

If you could look Duncan & Obama in the eyes and ask direct questions, what would you ask?

Marion Brady on EDDRA2 asked, ” If you could look Duncan & Obama in the eyes and ask direct questions, what would you ask?”

Personally, I would try to work up the nerve to ask something like this:

* What in hell do you think you are doing?

* You both went to the ultra-progressive Lab school in Chicago. No weeks and weeks of standardized testing for you. No stultifying, restrictive test-prep curriculum for you, no cutting out art, music, history, science, PE, and so on. Lots of freedom for teachers to teach what they thought was important, regardless of what standardized test mfgrs and textbook publishers thought. Lots of sports, extracurricular activities, and so on. With the sports, the school day probably was quite long. And Mr. President, your kids go to Sidwell Friends, where the situation is similar, and tuition is around $30K per year. What actually gets to the classroom for educating kids in DC public schools is – in my estimation (people differ) – about 1/2 to 1/3 of that. Why on earth do you think that underprivileged kids in the ghettoes, reservations, and so on need anything less than what you, or your kids, got?

* Can you name ANY nation that is systematically pulling down and destroying its public schools and turning them over to private corporations, demonizing its teachers, advocating that the most needy kids get taught by the least-experienced teachers, and testing and retesting its students with idiotic multiple-choice tests the way we are doing in the US and the way that you continue to advocate?

* Did you know that we DON’T have a shortage of US-born, US-trained graduates in STEM fields? What we have, instead, is a shortage or real-life, decent-paying career opportunities for them.

* Did you know that essentially none of the dire predictions of “A Nation at Risk” have come true? (Recall, it was written when you two were in your teens.)

* With a straight face, can you give us any research basis for any of the “reforms” (more like “Deforms”) you and Paige and Spellings and Bush2 are or have been advocating?

* Why are you acting like such Republicans? (Alternative form: Doesn’t it bother you that free-market republicans (and their ilk) who are opposed to public education are so pleased with your platform in education?)

* I voted for you, Obama. But given that you are acting like Bush3 in education, I am beginning to wish I had voted for Nader or someone similar, as a protest vote. Or were part of a well-organized Left.

* Have you no shame? Linda Darling-Hammond or Diane Ravitch should be running the dep’t of ed, not you, Arne. In all of your years in Chicago, despite all your PR, you have NOT changed things.

* It’s the economy, stupid. As long as we have the deep, and deepening gaps we have in the US between the super rich and the poor, we are going to have really serious problems educating the poor.

That’s for starters, and that’s my rant for this week.

A Blueprint For More Nonsense

Blueprint for Reform

On the first page, in the second sentence paragraph of the Blueprint For Reform, there is a bit of erroneousness. The claim that America was once the most educated nation in the world is true. But we still are. Those other countries we like to compare ourselves to don't report ALL scores like we do. We report everything; they report only scores of those headed for college. That puts us lower on any list, but it is also meaningless.

Statistics can be used to prove or disprove anything, especially when statistics are presented in a vacuum, as Arne did here. In fact there is not one reference for any statement made citing "research." I think education research is pretty much useless. Until we understand the brain, completely, we will not make any progress on "how kids learn" or "how one should teach." What students need can be figured out by a marginally smart person charged with educating a group of kids. It's an art. It ain't science.

How many Americans go overseas to study? Surely not as many as come here from overseas to study. This phenomenon, known as getting an education, seems to attract lots of foreigners to America because of our superior universities. How does Arne explain that? He doesn't. He doesn't even mention it. None of the reformers do because it would pillory their stance that American education is in decline.

Look, America is in decline. The whole lot of us, and it's not due to bad teachers. It's all politics and money.

If you have a kid in public school, and you think his or her teacher is worthy, write a quick letter to the superintendent (and give copies to the principal and teacher!) saying how great the teacher is. Teachers never get positive feedback, and they need it now more than ever.

Arne Duncan Talks (Though He Is Hard To Understand)

Here is Arne Duncan, your Secretary of Education, trying to sound intelligent and informed as he and Obama roll out the new ESEA/NCLB/WTF. He says we need to spend money to become tops in the world (we are) and close the bottom 5% of schools.

Teacher Accountability: What Should It Mean?

From Valerie Strauss:

...

"Teacher accountability" is one of the central themes of President Obama’s new vision for the post-No Child Left Behind era, and that two-word term, unfortunately, has come to mean something it shouldn’t.

Today in the world of education the phrase has come to mean how well a teacher’s students perform on standardized tests. If the students do well, the teacher is considered excellent. If the students haven’t done well, the teacher is not excellent.

Here are just a few of the problems with this scheme:

If we had a test, standardized or not, that really was a complete measure of a teacher’s performance -- or a student’s, for that matter -- it would be hard to argue against its use.

But let’s be clear: We don’t. Our standardized tests are rudimentary assessments, still. They are nowhere near sophisticated enough -- if indeed any single test can be -- to be used as a real measure of performance.

...

NCLB 2.0 Worse Than 1.0

Congratulations again America! We have elected a FOO (Friend Of the Oligarchs) president who has placed another FOO in charge of education. Jim Horn lays out the ramifications of their new plans to reform our schools:

Because the annual testing will continue unabated under the Oligarchs' plan that Obama will present, this new system will pit the poor against the poorer and the poorer against the poorest, because the only thing that will keep your school off the shutdown, er, turnaround list is some other school in your vicinity that is doing worse still. No targets, no impossible goals. AYP be gone, they don't need you anymore. Under NCLB 2.0, there will be a never-ending list of the "bottom five percent" of schools every year, and there is nothing any school can do except to hope there is some schmucky school further down the road that is even poorer.

Morton Kondrake Is A Moron

Mo touts the debunked Sputnik nonsense as well as the school-as-business model. He does not mention Diane Ravitch and her recent conversion from NCLB supporter to NCLB abolitionist. Kondrake is just another tool for big business and the oligarchs.

It has been nearly 30 years since the landmark “A Nation at Risk” report launched the education reform movement and still, as Obama noted last month, American eighth-graders rank ninth in the world on international math tests and 11th in science.

A work force report by the Business Roundtable warned that the U.S. is the only major industrialized country with a younger generation that has a lower level of high school achievement than the older generation and is second to last in college completion.

And, as Obama pointed out Monday speaking to the America’s Promise Alliance, a third of U.S. children fail to graduate from high school — including half of all minority children — condemning most of them to a life of poverty and huge cost to society.

It's the teachers, right? Wrong. Every study ever conducted to see what has had the biggest impact on a child's education points to SES (socio-economic status). Period. There is not one bit of evidence to support the craziness that is RTTT, value-added measures of teacher effectiveness, longer school days/years, more homework or any of the other crap being touted.

We need to do the right thing for our kids. We should teach them how to think, not what to think. This requires students who are ready. Let's make sure they have food, health care, a decent place to live, a job for their parent(s) and teachers who are free to do what they do best--teach.

It's About The Kids, Or Something

Just read:

Why not fire all the teachers?

Finally, a school system has decided to fire all of the educators at an ailing school.

Why didn’t we think about this sooner?

Firing some of them hasn’t really proven effective in turning around schools, has it? So why not get rid of all of them and start over?

That’s why the school committee in Central Falls, Rhode Island’s smallest and poorest city, voted to fire every educator at Central Falls High School at the end of the school year. They did this because about half of the school’s students graduate, and only 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.

At the committee meeting Tuesday night, 93 names were called for firing --74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals, according to the Providence Journal. Not one of them was good enough to stay.

Some of the teachers at the only high school in the city cried, but the committee held firm.

It’s no wonder that Education Secretary Arne Duncan applauded the move, saying the committee members were “showing courage and doing the right thing for kids.”

Courage, indeed.

Now, all they have to do is find 93 excellent professionals to take their places. Recruiting the best educators should be easy, especially when you can offer them life in a very poor town and a job with no security.

And, of course, the powers that be will have to ignore all the other influences on high school students because their poor performance was all about the adults at the high school.

Their elementary and middle school education -- or lack thereof? Not a problem.

Their sometimes difficult home lives? Naw. That doesn’t affect how a kid does at school.

No Child Left Behind, a federal education law that has driven schools to drastically narrow curriculum and use rudimentary standardized tests to measure how well kids are doing? Nope. Not an issue, nor is the fact that Duncan is largely continuing the NCLB practices that have been shown to be a failure.

Firing all the educators may sound bold to some, but it sounds sad and desperate -- not to mention ineffective -- to me.

There is no evidence that wholesale changes at schools makes a difference at schools, though it has been tried repeatedly in districts around the country -- even in Duncan’s Chicago public schools, which he ran for years before becoming education secretary.

As my colleague Nick Anderson noted in a Post story Duncan tried a lot of things during his more than seven years as Chicago chief: shutting down schools, hiring experts in turning around schools, and firing a lot of people. There results? To put it nicely, there was no Chicago miracle. Some schools improved, others didn’t.

That’s because grand gestures don’t work in improving schools. It would be nice if they did, but time and time again, we’ve learned they don’t. Making schools work is a hard, hard job. There is no one thing that you can blame; there is no single remedy that works for every school and school district.

Instead of trying to figure out where real changes could be made at Central Falls High, the powers that be there went ahead and did the desperate thing.

Let Duncan call them courageous. It sounds foolish to me. And the people who will most suffer? As usual, the kids.

-0-

h/t PPN

CEP Recommendations

From the Center on Education Policy study, February 2010 (link):

...
Principle 5—Out-of-school influences: Consider broader social factors that affect students’ achievement and readiness for school.

Disadvantaged children as a group start school with an achievement gap. As they progress through the grades, their achievement continues to be shaped by social factors outside formal schooling, such as poverty, health and nutrition, parental education and involvement, access to high-quality child care and preschool, and availability of community resources for learning. Although ample research has corroborated the link between achievement and these other factors, federal policies hold elementary and secondary schools accountable for raising achievement and narrowing gaps with little attention to social factors.

As discussed in recommendation 10, federal efforts to promote educational equity and improve learning for all students must pay more attention to early childhood education, particularly for disadvantaged children, as well as to after-school, summer , and family educational programs. In addition, the federal role in education should be considered in the context of national efforts to address health care, economic and job security , and other social problems. If fashioned correctly and carried out well, a reformed health care system, for example, could improve student achievement by making children healthier and more ready to learn. Programs to reduce poverty and create good jobs could also help narrow achievement gaps because family income is one of the strongest predictors of students’ test scores.
...

h/t John Thompson

NCLB Pushback At The New York Times

Letters to the editor at the NYT:

To the Editor:

“Making ‘No Child’ Better” (editorial, Feb. 5) misses the point that the No Child Left Behind law is founded on faulty assumptions of top-down mandates, zero tolerance, narrow forms of assessment, and privatization. These are all popular nowadays, but have been shown to be ineffective in other sectors (health, corrections, welfare and so on) and have a dismal track record so far in education.

“Tightening up” the law will only prolong the agony.

President Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as education secretary instead of the education scholar Linda Darling-Hammond has set authentic reform in education back by at least a decade. Educators aren’t the villains; we might actually know something about education and how to reform it. Consult us.

Gary L. Anderson
New York, Feb. 5, 2010

The writer is a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University.

•

To the Editor:

Die-hard backers of the No Child Left Behind law refuse to recognize that it has failed and needs a comprehensive overhaul. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, student performance was improving faster before the law than after it passed. Achievement gaps have not narrowed significantly.

No Child’s assumptions and strategies are deeply flawed. Updating the law’s name and making cosmetic changes are insufficient.

Real reform starts with determining why a school is not meeting standards, instead of test-driven, one-size-fits-all policies. Improvement must focus on building capacity to help students learn, not the fantasy that sanctions will transform educational quality.

Instead, Secretary Arne Duncan is pushing unproven nostrums like charter school expansion, which failed in Chicago, and linking teacher evaluations to test scores. These are no more likely to succeed than No Child Left Behind.

Congress needs to start over, drafting an education law that truly improves school quality and closes achievement gaps.

Monty Neill
Boston, Feb. 5, 2010

The writer is deputy director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, and chairman of the Forum on Educational Accountability.

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To the Editor:

I was intrigued by your phrase “placing a qualified teacher in every classroom,” seemingly mandated by No Child Left Behind. Does anybody really believe that there is an untapped magic pool of “qualified teachers” out there waiting to be placed in the classrooms of the disadvantaged?

The way to guarantee qualified teachers is to train and nurture those who have already chosen teaching as a career. Until boards of education, school administrators, parents, politicians and the general public recognize that teachers are indeed professionals, and treat them as such, they cannot expect professional results.

Teachers respond positively and enthusiastically to praise, constructive suggestions and genuine attempts to improve their performance, as do professionals in other fields.

I taught for more than 20 years in the New York City school system, all of them in schools in disadvantaged areas. I watched earnest, hard-working, mostly new teachers succumb and ultimately fail in a system that featured little or no support, thoughtless supervisors, subpar physical plants and a general feeling that they were disdained by the central board and the public in general.

I submit that for No Child Left Behind ever to succeed, we must first incorporate a module entitled “No Teacher Left Behind.”

Richard J. Leimsider
Staten Island, Feb. 5, 2010

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To the Editor:

“Making ‘No Child’ Better” reflects a disturbing tendency in your editorial stance toward educators. Without language to the contrary, words like “fraud” and “evasion” create the impression that education is rife with incompetence and conspiracies to hide it.

Certainly incompetence and cover-ups can be found in education, as in any profession, but so can a great many instances in which educators are doing remarkably well in addressing daunting challenges with inadequate resources. The public interest would be better served by more recognition of those educators, and by some acknowledgment that their resistance to “reform” may be based on well-founded judgments that some reform initiatives are actually counterproductive.

True educational reform will not come from measures intended to force recalcitrant educators to do the right thing, but from coupling reasonable accountability with the support that competent, dedicated educators need to provide a good education for all.

Paul Ammon
Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 5, 2010

The writer is professor and director of the Developmental Teacher Education Program, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.

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To the Editor:

“Experts Say a Rewrite of Nation’s Main Education Law Will Be Hard This Year” (news article, Jan. 29) notes that No Child Left Behind was unpopular “partly because it requires schools to administer far more standardized tests.”

All educators understand the necessity of assessment, but it is our obligation to do the minimum amount of testing necessary, and no more. Every minute spent testing that is not necessary bleeds time from learning, and every dollar spent on testing that is not necessary is stolen from investments that really need to be made in schools.

Any new education law should result in less testing, not more.

Stephen Krashen
Los Angeles, Jan. 29, 2010

The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education.

h/t Krashen

NCLB/Duncan Get Smacked Down Updated

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel explains Race to the Top and how it doesn't really change education (NCLB haunts us):

What AR was really talking about:

h/t AR

High-Stakes Testing: Korean Killer

The question you should ask: Is testing to death a good idea?

Korean children excel at testing, but at a price
Lessons for U.S.: Fewer high-stakes exams, more respect for teachers
Sheena Choi

As it has done numerous times in the past, America is once again looking to education for solutions to national social and economic problems. While education is in need of reform, it is worthwhile to pause and reconsider the educational reforms we are engaging in, especially high-stakes tests.

Since the 1980s, the U.S. has been fascinated with the economic miracle of the Newly Industrialized Countries of East Asia. Along with economic growth, these countries score high on international standardized tests. Recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study scores find U.S. students “still lag behind” those in East Asian countries. The TIMSS average score is 500, with Koreans scoring the highest at 597, followed by Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. American students scored 508, lower than the Russian Federation at 512.

I can appreciate Americans wanting to do better, but do they know the price these Asian countries are paying for higher test scores?

Recently, I spent a year as a Fulbright Researcher in Korea and had an opportunity to observe intimately the South Korean education system that has produced the highest TIMSS scores in the world.

Students from the moment they start elementary school begin the race toward high test scores. Students take many supplementary classes after their formal school, returning home past 10 p.m. Once students enter high school, the entire family’s attention is focused on preparing children for college entrance exams.

Students sacrifice childhood and family life. Mothers become managers of their children’s studies; fathers, material providers for that pursuit. Poor families spend as much as one-third of the family income on supplemental studies; richer families spend eight times more than poorer ones on supplemental studies. Elite universities become bastions for upper-middle-class students.

The exam preparations leave scars on students and families. Stress and lack of sleep cause students to be physically and emotionally ill. South Korea reputedly has the highest youth suicide rate among newly industrialized countries.

Students protest their role as exam-taking machines and want to know why they have to work longer hours than adults. Adults lament that schooling is relegated to test preparation instead of preparation for citizenship. The public worries that the shadow educational system of supplementary schools is taking over the formal education system.

South Korea is experiencing an exodus of middle class families who are fed up with the highly stressful educational system. Middle class families are emigrating to the U.S. and other countries and, in some cases, even endure family separation to avoid the system built on “examination hell” for their children’s education.

Korea also experiences the lowest birth rate in the world. Education’s high private costs and the examination stress are primary reasons that young couples are having fewer children.

Americans need to learn from Koreans. We need creative educational reforms, not just more high-stakes testing. We can also learn from the positive side of East Asian countries, which endow educators with respect and provide them the equitable salaries of dignified professionals. Respect and financial reward attract high-caliber students to the teaching profession.

We can learn from Koreans about the unhealthy results of an educational system built on high-stakes tests, as well as the positive consequences of respecting and rewarding teachers. We should be investing in teachers, not in high-stakes tests. The price of high-stakes tests is too high.

Sheena Choi is a professor of education at Indiana University Purdue University-Fort Wayne. She wrote this for The Journal Gazette.

h/t Jim Horn