Education Matters

Florida's disabled students are about to be in trouble

2012-02-13T20:54:00.002-07:00

10 reasons, standardized tests are kiling education

2012-02-13T18:58:00.000-07:00

From the Cooperative Catalyst

by John Spencer

Often, the proponents of the drill-and-kill testing environment hold up the banner of “high standards” as a rationale for excessive testing. I disagree with this premise entirely. Here are ten reasons most tests lead to lower standards:

Extrinsic Motivation: Kids will work hard to learn, because they are naturally curious. When we replace this with an extrinsic motivation, it moves to economic norms, where they learn to do the least possible work for the highest results. A kid learns that it’s okay to do a half-ass job if a D is still passing. Similarly, high achievers are often allowed to skate by complacently with good scores. That kind of mentality isn’t present if a student is excited about learning.

Cramming: If I ask a student to learn something today and expect that student to remember tomorrow, a month from now and at the end of the year, the student will probably remember it. However, ask the same student to learn the information for the test on Thursday and it becomes easy to cram and forget.

Time Is Wasted: I visited a campus on Friday, figuring I might see some time-wasters. Maybe a crossword puzzle for good behavior or PAT time. Instead, as I walked through the halls, I saw entire grade levels of students silently taking a test on information that could have been assessed in an ongoing way throughout the week. I’ve written about this before. My students spend seven weeks (almost a quarter) of the year taking tests. The test is longer than the Bar Exam or the MCATs. It’s insane.

Low-Level Thinking: Most tests are multiple choice. These tests, by design, do not assess what a student knows. Instead, they test what a student fails to recognize if he or she isn’t guessing correctly. True assessment requires deeper critical thinking and avoids sloppy guesswork.

Slow Feedback: Students should be able to have instant feedback regarding how well they did. However, in an effort to avoid cheating, most students are not allowed to self-grade and reflect upon their learning. It can be a week or two before they get a test back. The best kind of assessment is the type that allows a student to think about his or her learning in order to adjust as a result.

Excuse for Avoiding Formative Assessment: I am shocked when a teacher says, “They did poorly on the pretest and now I’m shocked that they bombed the test.” Really? How does that happen that a teacher can’t figure out if a student is mastering a standard?

The Bell Curve and Other Deflators: I remember being a student and hoping that the whole class bombed the test, because low scores along around meant the teacher would curve it and I would receive a B instead of a C.

The Wrong Feedback: Tests typically focus on an overall grade rather than the mastery of a standard. Thus, there are two things vying for a student’s attention: the grade and the learning. Often a student doesn’t get to retake a test or find a different method to demonstrate mastery. Meanwhile, the qualitative, customized feedback is often missing from this type of assessment. And yet, it is this customized feedback that leads to higher standards of learning.

Risk Aversion: Learning involves taking risks. You can’t have high standards without a certain level of risk-taking. Most tests are designed to not only discourage failure but encourage a certain fear of failure.

Complacent Teaching: If we say that a multiple-choice test is our only method of testing, we send the message that different learning styles and preferences make no difference. It becomes totally acceptable to move away from the notion of no child being left behind and instead pushing all students into the same myopic view of success. In the process, teachers have the permission to ignore the “lower level” students and focus on those who are “on the bubble.” We’re watering down our professional standard in the name of higher standards.

http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/10-reasons-the-tests-are-lowering-our-standards/

The bullies in the Florida senate led by JD Alexander strike again

2012-02-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

From the Tampa Bay Times

by Kim Walmath

The University of South Florida is reeling today after the Senate's budget recommendations over the weekend revealed a disproportionate cut to the school compared to other universities.

Of the $400 million recommended to be cut from the entire state university system, $79 million of that -- or 20 percent -- would come from USF.

Another $25 million would be held in "contingency," pending USF's cooperation in immediately severing its branch campus in Lakeland. That move, pushed hard by Senate budget chairman JD Alexander, would require giving the new "Florida Polytechnic University" all USF Polytechnic's money, property, foundation dollars and more with USF retaining all USF Poly's faculty and staff. Absorbing all those people is expected to cost another $16 million to the university, said USF Provost Ralph Wilcox.

And then there's USF's pharmacy school. Currently housed at the main Tampa campus, the school was intended to eventually move to USF Poly. As such, its funding comes out of USF Poly's $28 million budget. Last year that was $6 million, which USF spent on new faculty and staff. Under the Senate budget, USF would keep the school and those people but not receive any more funding, Wilcox said.

"It is just an inexplicable inequity," Wilcox said.

USF's Board of Trustees is holding an emergency meeting this afternoon to try to make sense all the implications.

Meanwhile, USF Poly's faculty are up in arms about the budget conforming bill to split off USF Poly right away.

http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/usf-gets-disproportionate-cut-senate-budget-recommendations-0

Obama doubles down on a bad education policy, NCLB

2012-02-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

From the Rethinking Schools Bolg

by Stan Karp

The Obama Administration’s approval last week of 10 state applications for waivers from NCLB was another missed opportunity to learn from a decade of policy failure. Instead of changing the disastrous direction of federal education policy, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s waiver process allows states to reproduce some of the worst aspects of NCLB’s “test and punish” approach while continuing to ignore real issues, like reducing concentrated poverty or providing equitable funding and high quality pre-K for all schools.

Most media coverage framed the legally dubious waiver process as giving states “flexibility.” But the waivers gave states—and more importantly schools, students, educators, and parents—no flexibility at all in the area they need it most: relief from the plague of standardized testing. When NCLB was passed in 2002, 19 states gave annual tests in reading and math. Today, under federal mandate, all 50 do and the waivers will mean more testing. As with the Administration’s Race to The Top, states applying for waivers had to commit to implementing another generation of standardized tests based on the “common core” standards that states were also forced to adopt. New Jersey, one of the states getting a waiver, is promising to replace NCLB’s absurd adequate yearly progress (AYP) system with “annual measurable objectives.” It’s a shell game only testing companies will win.

There will be more tests in more subjects, and the tests will be used not only to abuse students, but to rate and impose sanctions on teachers and the schools of education they came from. This is another set of wrong answers to the wrong questions.

The waivers will also turn up the pressure on schools serving the highest need populations. States must identify the 5 percent of schools with the lowest test scores and turn them into charters or “turnarounds” or close them down. Another 10 percent with low graduation rates or wide achievement gaps must be targeted for similar intervention. This is not a school improvement strategy, it’s a blank check to experiment on poor kids and create chaos in our most vulnerable communities.

The absurdity of closing schools and imposing “disruptive reform” on the poorest communities was underscored the same day the waivers were announced when a study was released showing that “the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.” The continued punishing of schools for the inequality that exists all around them is not reform; it’s a cynical political exercise.

It’s also a continuation of the bipartisan corporate ed reform strategy that has reinforced the state-by-state attack on teacher unions and public sector workers across the country. Here’s what my own Governor, Chris “1 percent” Christie—who has made war against public education and teacher unions the centerpiece of his administration—had to say when New Jersey was named one of the 10 waiver states: “The Obama Administration’s approval of our education reform agenda contained in this application confirms that our bold, common sense, and bipartisan reforms are right for New Jersey and shared by the President and Secretary Duncan’s educational vision for the country.”

NCLB is such a bad law it’s not hard to see why 30 more states are considering filing waiver applications this month. But teachers and parents would do better if their states took a pass on the hollow promise of NCLB waivers and lobbied for a different piece of paper: a pink slip for Arne Duncan.

http://rethinkingschoolsblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/nclb-waivers-give-bad-policy-new-lease-on-life/

More and more districts rejecting Teach for America

2012-02-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Art of Teaching Science did an excellent piece on it. To read it click this blog's title or cut and paste bellow into your browser.

Jacksonville recently contracted to bring a hundred a year here for the next three years. This while we have local teachers and college of ed grads who can't find positions.

http://www.artofteachingscience.org/2012/02/12/teach-for-america-rejected-in-georgias-cobb-school-system/

Teachers treated like second class citizens in Duval

2012-02-13T04:57:00.002-07:00

Teachers treated like second class citizens in Duval

Principals hate teachers; an outrageous statement right? To be honest I can’t really imagine any principals actually saying that. But I know for a sad fact that that's how more and more teachers feel after at staff meetings or conferences or one on one interactions with their bosses. Many principals feel its okay to talk to teachers in a fashion that teachers wouldn't dream of talking to their students, though if they did and rightfully so they would get in trouble.

Principal have also taken to monitoring their teacher’s social networking sites, telling teachers that they can’t have students on their pages and taking umbrage to some staff’s status updates. I personally have better things to do than look at my student’s pages, and I would hope people entrusted to run schools would as well but that is not always the case.

It's common practice for teachers to start the year strict with their students; that way, they have room to lighten up as the year progresses. It is also not uncommon for a principal, reappointed to an unfamiliar school, to lay ground rules and expectations - but, like teachers shouldn’t, principals shouldn’t come off like bullies, either. There should be no room for that in our schools and it shouldn’t matter if the offender is 13 or 43.
I am not saying bosses can’t be bosses. I am saying the teachers that are most successful are the ones that get the kids to buy into what they are teaching; the ones that get the kids to want to work for them. The teachers that bully and browbeat their kids are usually the ones that are least successful, and so to will be those principals and administrators that act in the same fashion. In education, the message is important, but how you convey the message determines if people are going to hear it or not.

Sadly, this is where we find ourselves in 2012. Principals are told to shake things up, as teachers and principals have both become the scapegoats for the district. On one hand, teachers have gone from valued colleagues to someone who can be browbeaten, intimidated, marginalized and, worse of all, disrespected, while being put in positions where success is hard to achieve.

Then, on the other hand, principals (dozens are reassigned every year), are also put in almost unattainable positions as they are told they can’t discipline, and to move as many kids along as possible. They are told to do so, whether the students are prepared for the next level or not, and since the less than forty percent of students who arrive at the neighborhood high school can read at grade level it would seem to indicate that many are not.
So much about doing both jobs successfully is about fostering positive relationships, and when both groups are put under such impossible pressure and in opposite positions, it’s really a tribute to the fine professionals we have that things aren’t worse.

The chasm between the administration and teachers is widening everyday, and that can't be healthy for the Duval County school system and this latest evaluation tool the cast system is another example of this. Teachers all over the district are walking on eggshells because of it. The Superintendent doesn’t realize the true bosses, both his, principals and the teacher’s, are ultimately the children of the district and we should be doing whatever we can to make sure they are successful, and putting both principals and teachers in impossible positions is doing the opposite of that.

Andrew Carnegie once stated, “you can take my buildings and resources, leave my workers, my greatest asset, and I'll be back on top”. The school district, in contrast, treats many of its teachers and principals as if they are disposable, while at the same time playing them against each other. The sense of camaraderie and teamwork between the two groups is quickly dissipating and the esprit de corps that had both groups believing they were in this together has been replaced by ‘it’s the teacher’s fault’ and ‘if this principal doesn’t crack the whip, we’ll find another one that will’, by the county’s administration and school board.

If we want to have a truly successful school system, it's going to require a partnership between teachers and their administrators. I think teachers are the district’s number one resource and should be treated with dignity and respect. I believe the better teachers are, the better they will be for their students, as well, and I also believe if they are supported - put in positions where success is attainable, and not overwhelmed with task after task – not told to pass so many students along whether they deserve it or not and are backed up when dealing with kids whose main goal is not to learn but to disrupt, then the district will prosper and principals need to be allowed to do those things even if initially it costs their school a few percentage points.

I also think schools need leaders - people that teachers can come to when they need help and someone students can look up. A principal is like a quarterback of a football team, or like the rudder of a ship. Quarterbacks probably get too much credit and too much blame when a team flounders, but they are still the ones who keep the ball moving. A ship may still be able to float without a rudder, but at the same time its sense of direction will be seriously impaired. Many teachers I know avoid their principals and groan when forced to interact because rarely does anything positive come from it.

I wrote above that principals hates teachers, but let me make emphatically clear that nobody I know of says that in so many words, that’s just how teachers all throughout the district feel. That and they are second-class citizens, yoked, easily replaced cogs.

We need to repair the deteriorating relationship between teachers and administrators because of the impossible expectations put upon them and the impossible positions they are put in. The district is fostering contentious relationships that, unless changes are made, the school system will inevitably collapse upon itself and more kids will fall through the cracks or graduate ill prepared for life because of it. Everybody loses.

Duval County Promotes Administrators, ability doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite.

2012-02-13T04:56:00.003-07:00

In Florida there is a joke about the weather. You don’t like it wait a few minutes and it will change. There is a similar joke in Duval County. If you don’t like your principal, just wait they will promote them out eventually.

What are the requirements for promotion? Well it’s not necessarily improving students or motivating teachers, who you know to often seems to be a prerequisite as well. Look at Iranetta R. Wright at Jackson high school. Four years ago she arrived to a school that was admittedly struggling and promptly took it to the bottom. It was ranked the 404th best high school in Florida.

How did she do this? Well some say it was her autocratic leadership style. A former teacher said, she would talk to the staff in a fashion that if we would talk to the kids that way we would get fired. Her motivation techniques consisted of threats and intimidation. Much of the veteran staff she inherited has moved onto other positions in the district or has left the teaching field all together replaced by “easily moldable” rookies who often don’t know that they shouldn’t be talked down to and forced to work sixty hours a week.

Look at Al Brennan principal of Forrest high school. He has had success at his school, though much of it came at the cost of veteran teachers morale and jobs, over half of the staff has been fired, retired or transferred out since he arrived. One teacher called it a bloodbath. Now he has moved the school from an F to a C, though if you look behind the numbers you get a clearer picture for how this happened.

From 09-10 Forrest’s enrollment dropped by several hundred as the administration weeded out struggling (either with discipline or academics) kids. This happened again last year as several hundred more students left. The school’s enrollment went from nearly 1700 in 09-10 to 1225 this year. Perhaps Mrs. Wright should have followed this philosophy instead of getting rid of teachers.

Both of those schools are struggling schools but what about one of the schools that is supposed to be the best in the nation, Paxon high school? In 2010 Newsweek ranked them 8th, in 2011 170, sources at the school aren’t even sure if they will be an A school next year. The problem might be massive teacher turnover. Since the beginning of this school year 12 teachers have left, 1 transferred to a district position, 1 was fired and ten decided to leave what was formerly one of the most prestigious high schools in the nation. The problem however might be leadership.

Royce Turner formerly of Ribault high school, which had two Fs, and one D under his leadership, is now in charge at Paxon. What he did to merit the move is undetermined by the data, though Ribault has improved dramatically since he left earning a C grade this year and they did it without getting rid of students.

Then perhaps the biggest example of being promoted where performance doesn’t matter might be the districts director of Turn-Around Schools Tony Bellamy. After leading First Coast in the wrong direction. Mr. Bellamy was promoted to a district position where eventually he found himself in charge of the intervene schools. The school board had such faith in the job he had done that last year they voted to give the intervene schools and two million dollars away to the education management organization, Education Directions rather than let him continue to be in charge.

These are examples of leaders who are in very important positions who have mixed results at best, some might suggest the evidence seems to indicate they have risen far above their abilities. Though where does leadership stop? It stops at the top and perhaps of all the leaders we have here in the county the superintendent is struggling the most.

Stay tuned to see what happens next with these administrators, reassighnemnets or promotions.

The death of teaching as a career

2012-02-13T04:54:00.001-07:00

When I was in elementary school my third grade teacher was in her mid thirties and that was as young as I got. Back then most of my teachers were considerably older. They all had years if not decades of experience. You won’t find that now. It’s possible today for kids today to go all through school and not have a teacher who hasn’t been on the job for more than five years. Teaching isn’t a profession like it was just a generation ago, it’s a just a job and a job with a fairly high turnover rate at that and that is part of the problem.

Teaching is also a job that has tenure, which means if you do it fairly well it’s a job one can have for life. Teaching is a job that starts at a pretty decent wage and is also a job that has every holiday off. Despite all this, sadly this is a job that fewer and fewer people want to do, a job that fewer and fewer people stick with.

When John Thrasher and his ill-conceived senate bill six made the headlines a few months ago, one of his selling points was that a first year teacher could be as good as a tenth year teacher and where this is true it’s also highly unlikely. It takes years for teachers to hone their craft and I don’t know any teacher that thinks they were a better teacher when they started.

First year teachers even the ones with teaching degrees often don’t know what to expect and they don’t know what questions to ask. This is often compounded by the fact that most first year teachers are sent to the most struggling schools and are often inundated with extra paper work and tasks to do. The first few years of teaching is less about teaching and more about surviving. I have said it and it’s the same thing I heard my first year; “Just get though the first year kid, it will get better.”

In Jacksonville at the start of the 2009 school year 27 percent of teachers had less than four years experience. This matches up well with the fact that forty percent of teachers don’t last five years and this at a job that many say with a smirk gets summers off while they sit in front of their televisions and think to themselves I could do that.

Starting in year five and going through year 22 the amount of teachers in each subsequent year declines, 509 495 419 329 279 264 237 227 226 196 148 129 157 135 130 117 124 115. Over half of our teachers have less than nine years experience. Now nine years is a long time but as I stated above the teaching profession has changed.

Why do teachers leave? Well many feel overwhelmed, they are given more tasks than they can possibly accomplish or do well. If it was just teaching more would make it but sadly teaching today has less and less to do with teaching than many might think possible. Furthermore teachers are put in unattainable positions, every year the pressure on teachers seems to grow, while at the same time, parents, the community, the administration and the government seems to get a pass. Then others quickly grow weary of having to raise other people’s children. Teacher’s sighed up to teach and when they did so they knew some mentoring would go with the job. They didn’t know they would have to teach manners, basic rights from wrongs and how to be respectful as well. Others and I personally think this is the biggest reason that many have left the field is a lack of support.

The first year teacher shows up bright eyed and filled with optimism, ready to change the world, and this is an incredible feeling to have, though it is fleeting as many first year teachers have to go into survival mode. They try all sorts of methods to get the children to take care of their responsibilities, which are simple enough, come to class, listen and learn; First they come in as a strict disciplinarian, as this is the standard advice given to first year teachers. They are told to come in tough and then they can ease up as the year progresses. If this fails with some students, the first year teacher often reverts to being a social worker, trying to figure out why they act the way they do and tries to help solve their problems, then with some students they try to become their friend, figuring if they were friends, the students would treat them better, that's treat them with some with dignity and respect. They do this because it takes different strategies to get through to different students.

And for the most part with one of these strategies they are successful, as ninety percent of all students want to be there, they want to learn, or at worse are followers, which means if there ring leader isn't there they fall in line with the children who do want to learn. After a while it's just that ten percent of students that no matter what they try to do continue to cause them problems.

They talk to their mentors, as every first year teacher is assigned one, and their colleagues and department head as well. They ask what they can do to get these last few students in line. The first year teacher laments when the unruly students are absent, "it's dreamy, I can actually teach". They veterans look at the rookies with sympathetic eyes but they also have problems of their own. Just survive the first year; we tell them, it gets easier. But how do I get through to them they ask, we shrug our shoulders and suggest, try and get the parents involved maybe they can help somehow, but in our hearts we know they are fighting an unwinnable battle with some students.

So they call the parents trying to set up parent teacher conferences, to discuss the child's performance both academically and behaviorally, because often-poor performances in these areas go hand in hand. Some of the parents can't be bothered figuring it was the teacher’s problem once the child came to school, others report having the same difficulties at home where they to are at a loss. The two parties might get together and try a few interventions and some students might actually turn it around, but just as often many students don't.

Backed into a corner the first year teacher writes the student up, only to find them back in class before the period is over or at best the next day and angry that they were written up, the problem begins to worsen. You see most likely the child received no meaningful consequences for their behavior, and thus continues it. The teacher writes the child up again and again the child is back in class the next day, except this time the teacher is paid a visit by an administrator or called to the office. Why can't you control this child, they are asked, they explain all that they have done and how none of it has worked. The first year teacher is then told, that referrals are only to be written for the most extreme circumstances and then only after every alternative has been exhausted. Most likely they aren't given any new alternatives as they slump their shoulders and heads back to the classrooms. Because of this lack of support many won’t make it.

When school starts up I will meet twenty or so first time teachers. Of those twenty a few won’t last through the first semester. I say this with some assuredly because this has happened every year that I have been a teacher. They just don’t make it, preferring to get a job at the mall or waitressing instead of sticking with the job that many of them spent years preparing themselves for.

Forty percent of teaches won’t last five, over half won’t last ten and probably less than a quarter of all first year teachers make it a career

More and more of Florida's kids are living in poverty

2012-02-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting did a great piece on the plight of Florida's poorest kids. To read it, click on this Blog's title or cut and paste below into your browser.

http://fcir.org/2012/02/12/poverty-homelessness-rising-sharply-among-florida-students/

It is time we said no more charter schools

2012-02-12T12:06:00.000-07:00

From the Montgomery Advertiser

By Dr. Diane Ravitch

Former Washington, D.C., school chancellor Michelle Rhee has sent her followers to Alabama to promote charter schools, but Alabama should say "no, thanks." The District of Columbia is no model for school reform.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is the gold standard of education testing, shows that D.C. has the biggest achievement gap between black and white students in the nation, double the size of Alabama's. Alabama should not take lessons from one of the nation's lowest performing districts.

Charter schools haven't helped other states and they won't help Alabama. Here are the reasons why.

• Numerous national and state studies have shown that charters on average don't get better results than regular public schools. A small percentage get high scores, more get very low scores, most are about average in terms of test scores. Why kill off a community's public school to replace it with a privately managed school that is no better and possibly worse?

• Charter schools weaken the regular public schools. They take money away from neighborhood public schools and from the district budget. As charter schools open, regular public schools must cut teachers and close down programs to pay for them.

• Many of the "high-performing" charter schools succeed by skimming off the best students, even in poor districts. The more they draw away the best students, the worse it is for the regular public schools, who are left with the weakest students.

• Many charter schools succeed by excluding or limiting the number of students they accept who have disabilities or who are English language learners. They are also free to push out low-scoring students and send them back to the local public school. This improves their results, but it leaves the regular public schools with disproportionate numbers of the most challenging students.

• Many charter operators are for-profit, and the district winds up paying them tax revenue that should be invested in students. Many of the nonprofits pay exorbitant executive compensation that wouldn't be acceptable in a regular public school district.

Charters fragment communities. Instead of everyone working together to support the children and schools of their communities, charters and regular public schools fight over resources and space. This is not good for education or for children.

• Charters cannot help the large numbers of children who live in rural and semi-rural communities in Alabama. These communities barely manage to support their own local public school. Replacing a community institution with one that is managed by private operators with no local ties would do harm to the community.

Transferring control of public dollars to private hands is not reform. It is privatization. This strikes at the very heart of public education. It is a mirage. Alabama needs to do the right thing and support a sound public education system that benefits the children of the rising generation.

Dr. Diane Ravitch was an assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress. She has written 10 books about education.

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120212/OPINION0101/202120305?fb_ref=artsharebottom&fb_source=home_oneline

How to bridge the achievment gap

2012-02-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

I personally prefer legitimate summer school oppurtunities. -cpg

From the Washington Post's Answer Sheet

By Richard D. Kahlenberg

Today’s New York Times features on its front page new research from the Russell Sage and Spencer foundations that concludes that the achievement gap between rich and poor is growing, and is now significantly larger than the gap between white and black students. This research is consistent with scholarship that The Century Foundation published in its 2010 volume, Rewarding Strivers , finding that the socioeconomic obstacles to doing well on the math and verbal SAT are seven times as large as those associated with race.

The Times article highlights the very troubling class divide in education, but then ends with a strange quotation from Douglas J. Besharov of the Atlantic Council. With unwarranted fatalism, Besharov suggests that in addressing the educational division, particularly between the children of well-educated dual-income families and those of less-educated single parents, “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.” In fact, research published by The Century Foundation and other organizations going back more than a decade shows that there are an array of strategies that can be highly effective in addressing the socioeconomic gaps in education:

* Pre-K programs. As Century’s Greg Anrig has noted, there is a wide body of research suggesting that well-designed pre-K programs in places like Oklahoma have yielded significant achievement gains for students. Likewise, forthcoming Century Foundation research by Jeanne Reid of Teachers College, Columbia University, suggests that allowing children to attend socioeconomically integrated (as opposed to high poverty) pre-K settings can have an important positive effect on learning.

* Socioeconomic Housing Integration. Inclusionary zoning laws that allow low-income and working-class parents and their children to live in low-poverty neighborhoods and attend low-poverty schools can have very positive effects on student achievement, as researcher David Rusk has long noted. A natural experiment in Montgomery County, Maryland, showed that low-income students randomly assigned to public housing units and allowed to attend schools in low-poverty neighborhoods scored at 0.4 of a standard deviation higher than those randomly assigned to higher-poverty neighborhoods and schools. According to the researcher, Heather Schwartz of the RAND Corporation, the initial sizable achievement gap between low-income and middle-class students in low-poverty neighborhoods and schools was cut in half in math and by one-third in reading over time.

* Socioeconomic School Integration. School districts that reduce concentrations of poverty in schools through public school choice have been able to significantly reduce the achievement and attainment gaps. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, where a longstanding socioeconomic integration plan has allowed students to choose to attend mixed-income magnet schools, the graduation rate for African American, Latino, and low-income students is close to 90 percent, far exceeding the state average for these groups.

* College Affirmative Action for Low-Income Students. Research finds attending a selective college confers substantial benefits, and that many more low-income and working-class students could attend and succeed in selective colleges than currently do. Research by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose of Georgetown University for the Century volume, America’s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education , found that selective universities could increase their representation from the bottom socioeconomic half of the population from 10 percent to 38 percent, and overall graduation rates for all students would remain the same.

In addition to these ideas, Century Foundation research by Gordon MacInnes has highlighted promising programs to promote the performance of low-income students in New Jersey. Forthcoming research will suggest ways to revitalize organized labor, a development that could raise wages of workers and thereby have a positive impact on the educational outcomes of their children. We will also be exploring ways to strengthen community colleges as a vital institutions for social mobility.

The cupboard of practical ideas to reduce the shameful educational gaps between rich and poor is not bare; it is overflowing. The problems of poverty and segregation are complex and stubborn, but to suggest they are insoluble is little more than a convenient excuse.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-to-attack-the-growing-educational-gap-between-rich-and-poor/2012/02/10/gIQArDOg4Q_blog.html#pagebreak

When supposedly “The Best and the Brightest” Don’t Have the Answers”- President Obama’s Approach to School Reform

2012-02-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

When Barack Obama ascended to the Presidency, he was fired up with a desire to improve America’s schools, which he felt were falling behind those of other advanced countries. He decided to bring “the best minds in the country” in to help them with this task- CEO’s of successful businesses, heads of major foundations, young executives from management consulting firms- to figure out a strategy to transform America’s schools, especially those in low performing districts. He promised them full support of his Administration when they finally came up with effective strategies including the use of federal funding to persuade, and if necessary, compel local districts to implement them

Notably missing in this brain trust were representatives of America’s teachers and school administrators, but their absence was not accidental. Because the President and his chief education adviser, Arne Duncan, believed that a key problem in America’s schools was the low quality of the people working in them, they felt no need to include principals and teachers in the Administrations education planning, especially since those plans involved putting pressure on them to perform and then removing those who couldn’t meet the new standards.

From a management standpoint the reforms developed, which including promoting competition, universalizing teacher evaluation based on student test scores, introducing merit pay, made perfect sense. However, since none of the people developing the reforms had spent much time in a classroom, or were willing to spend a significant part of their lives performing the jobs they were reshaping, they had little idea what their reforms meant “on the ground,” and even less evidence that, when implemented, they would be effective

Now three years later, after all of these new policies have been put into effect, from New York to Chicago, to Philadelphia and Chicago, there is no evidence than America’s schools are performing better than when the President entered office, or that the test score gap between wealthy and poor districts is being reduced. But evidence and experience doesn’t seem to matter when you bring “the best minds in the country” together to develop a strategy. Come on, how can Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and the Ivy League gurus from Teach for America be wrong, and graduates of state teachers colleges and teacher education programs be right?

But reality has a way of intruding even on “the best and the brightest” when the fundamental assumptions that guide policy are wrong. This happened during the Vietnam War, when an indigenous nationalist revolution was treated as an arm of a global Communist conspiracy, and it is happening now when school failures due to poverty and inequality are being blamed on incompetent teachers and administrators.

So as in Vietnam, we will invest hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of dollars in a cause, which, at the end of the day, will turn into a Fool’s Errand, undermining the careers and demeaning the efforts of the nation’s teachers, dividing communities against themselves, while fattening the pockets of consulting form, test companies and on line learning firms.
And ten years down the road, when all the damage is done, policy makers will wake up and call America’s teachers back in to ask “What do you think we should do?” And they will say that teaching has to be a life time calling, and that when dealing with children, there are no miracles- opening minds, and changing lives, requires hard work, persistence, imagination, and a love for the young people you are working with. And those are things that cannot be “managed” by people who have never worked with children themselves.

Mark Naison
February 12, 1012

What exactly do teacher's unions control? You may be very surprised

2012-02-11T17:57:00.001-07:00

From Florida Today

by Fred Bartleson III

A recent letter writer intimated that only unions representing public employees, such as teachers’ unions, were to blame for excessive salaries, benefits, pensions and economic problems.

In truth, teachers’ salaries and health benefits are determined by a school board majority. Even though the union bargains for teachers, if contract talks go to impasse or special master, the school board has the final say.

Pensions, retirement, tenure and bargaining rights are determined by the Florida Legislature and the governor, not the union.

The teachers’ union’s main functions are limited to the role of watchdog for the contract and advocate for teachers in legal and insurance matters.

As far as the powerful teachers’ union lobby? The Florida Legislature’s list of registered lobbyists has not one local, state or national teachers’ union lobbyist recorded. Our school board has one. Our school district’s health insurance provider has 25 lobbyists.

The teachers' union has no power. For those who see unions that represent public employees as the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” heed the words of Glynda, the Good Witch of the North. When the Wicked Witch started making threats, Glynda threw back her head, laughed and replied, “Oh rubbish! Be gone! You have no power here!”

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20120103/OPINION/111230018/Teachers-unions-don-t-determine-pay-benefits

The education gap between the rich and the poor widens

2012-02-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

From the New York Times

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education’s leveling effects.

It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

“With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,” Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income — the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted — and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.

Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, “Whither Opportunity?” compiled by the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central theme this election season.

The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.

One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children’s schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today’s economy.

A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent.

“The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation,” said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from 1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.

James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child’s cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.

“Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role,” he said. “The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it’s a mistake.”

Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found.

Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute whose book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” was published Jan. 31, described income inequality as “more of a symptom than a cause.”

The growing gap between the better educated and the less educated, he argued, has formed a kind of cultural divide that has its roots in natural social forces, like the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people, as well as in the social policies of the 1960s, like welfare and other government programs, which he contended provided incentives for staying single.

“When the economy recovers, you’ll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture,” he said.

There are no easy answers, in part because the problem is so complex, said Douglas J. Besharov, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Blaming the problem on the richest of the rich ignores an equally important driver, he said: two-earner household wealth, which has lifted the upper middle class ever further from less educated Americans, who tend to be single parents.

The problem is a puzzle, he said. “No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The Florida Senate has no shame. JD Alexander leads the way

2012-02-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

From the Tampa Bay Times Editorial Board

The Florida Senate has no shame, no self-respect and no guts to stand up to one of its own. Sen. JD Alexander's obsession with transforming a University of South Florida branch campus into an independent university in Lakeland remains unchecked, and it tarnishes the Legislature and higher education. His latest brazen effort to immediately break off USF Polytechnic into a separate university is a ruthless demonstration of brute force without regard for the consequences.

It should be time for Alexander to declare victory. The Board of Governors, which oversees the state university system, responded to Alexander's demands last year by establishing a reasonable timetable with a series of conditions for USF Poly to meet before becoming the state's 12th public university. That wasn't good enough for the petulant Lake Wales Republican. He demanded mountains of records from all universities, and now he is undoubtedly the force behind legislation to allow USF Poly to become independent immediately.

It should be time for the Senate to stand up to its biggest bully and honor its own rules and procedures. Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, is Alexander's puppet, misrepresenting new language in a budget conforming bill that would grant USF Poly immediate independence. Never mind that this substantive change has never been discussed in another committee. Never mind that it is a change of public policy buried in a budget conforming bill. Never mind this is the same lack of respect for rules and common practice that has tied up the effort by Alexander and his supporters to privatize prisons.

It should be time for members of the Board of Governors, university presidents and others who believe in higher education to raise their voices. To grant USF Poly independence now and worry about the benchmarks later turns the Board of Governors' decision on its head. So does transferring responsibility for supervising the transformation from USF to the University of Florida. This is the ultimate in political interference, and USF is the victim. Those other silent university presidents, take note. The next time a powerful self-absorbed senator wants to steal an asset for his own purposes, it could be your program or your professional school.

University officials fear Alexander, because he virtually controls their budgets as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. But the Senate already wants to cut spending on higher education and recommends no increase in university tuition. There are no real champions for higher education in Tallahassee, and the universities are fending for themselves. There is little to lose by standing on principle and against Alexander's tactics.

USF did not want to give up its Lakeland campus. USF Poly's faculty did not want their campus to become an independent university. USF Poly's students did not want it. But Alexander insisted, and the Board of Governors conceded and approved a road map for independence. Still not satisfied, Alexander is abusing his public office and once again breaking Senate rules and procedures to force immediate independence of the Lakeland campus.

The Florida Senate has a choice. Senators can stand up to JD Alexander and stand for the Senate's rules and procedures. Or they can disband their committees, quit taking votes and throw away their rulebook because the only voice that counts is his.

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/senate-should-stand-up-to-bullying-on-usf-poly/1214760

Steve Wise wants to end local control of schools

2012-02-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

From Scathing Purple Musings

by Bob Sykes

In 1996, Florida began a grand experiment in education reform. Charter schools were placed in a statewide Petri dish.

Critics warned that the public/private hybrids would siphon off funding and spell the end of traditional public schools.

And now, some state lawmakers foolishly plan to hand charter schools the hose. The Senate Education Committee has endorsed a bill requiring local school districts to share with charter schools a portion of the $1.9 billion in construction and maintenance money collected through local taxes. Money that charter schools could use to defray leases or to buy buildings that — rather than reverting to the public — private operators get to keep if the school is not renewed or goes belly up.

Charter schools currently get tax money based on each student they have, but when it comes to the separate pot of construction and maintenance money, school districts get to decide whether and how much to give charter schools.

A bill introduced by Sen. Stephen Wise, a Jacksonville Republican, would do away with that local discretion. District school boards would be forced to proportionately share property tax revenue for construction and maintenance on a per-student basis with charter schools. About a $140 million windfall for charter schools.

Local discretion….hmmm.

Wise understands he’s tying the hands of local school boards. He showed even more contempt for them last year when he sponsored a bill to eliminate their salaries. Wise also knows that charter schools do not provide the same services that public schools do, yet he wants to force Florida’s local school boards to give more from the taxpayers who elected them to the charter schools operators who donate campaign cash to him.

http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/orlando-sentinel-slams-steve-wises-charter-school-bill/

Teacher happy hour update

2012-02-11T06:34:00.002-07:00

At happy hour I was with two kindergarten teachers, one at an A elementary school and one at a C school. A third grade teacher at an all together different elementary school. A high school English teacher and history teacher both at a turn around school and a middle school English teacher. What did they all have in common? They were miserable.

What was the reason? It wasn’t the kids. It was 1701 prudential drive and their policies. You see friends people didn’t become teachers to be treated with disrespect, they didn’t become teachers to teach to the test and they didn’t become teachers because they didn’t want autonomy, creativity, flexibility and innovation, you know those things that make a difference.

1701 prudential drive, the school board, the superintendent and his SS like administrators are making people miserable whose only dream in life was to make a difference. That’s not good for our kids.

Yes misery may love company but if you know a teacher ask them what they think, please, please don’t take my word for it. Maybe you might get a feel for what is going on and then maybe you might want to do something.

RM Sharr’s mom must have rocked.

2012-02-10T22:36:00.002-07:00

A big thanks to RM Sharr for giving us the voice of one of those that made it. In a letter to the Times Union he wrote.

“I am sick and tired of these armchair psychologists helping these people blame their problems, mostly failings, on things in our so-called system.

I’ve never heard one of them explain how so many of the same class make a huge success of their lives, coming from the very same environment as the failing ones.

It’s called choice.

The successful ones have chosen to stay in school, study, dress properly, work when possible and lift themselves out and up.

The failures hang around street corners, wearing their pants down to the knees, plotting who knows what.

If these individuals have chosen to do drugs, steal and rob, it’s because they have chosen to do so, and they must bear the consequences of their choice!”

Let me guess, he had parents (a parent, grand parent etc) who pushed him and made education relevant and important. If only there were more parents like them.

Sadly, read that again, sadly, society can’t go if only little Johnnies dad would have given him a pop when he acted up or if little Shemeka’s mom would have read to her more often then they would have had a chance. That and a buck twenty-five will get you a cup of coffee. Righteous indignation and stating the obvious gets us nowhere but more kids going nowhere.

Society needs to draw a line in the sand and say for at least six hours we're going to give kids a glimpse how the real world should look. Act up and expect a consequence and then develop a work ethic or get left behind.

Tragically many won't find that here in Duval County as the superintendent and school board are more interested in passing the masses along and they could care less as evident by their actions if they have discipline, the prerequisite knowledge and abilities and a work ethic.

Yes education has many enemies, Tallahassee who wants to privatize it and Obama who doesn’t understand it but worse of all is our leaders at the school board who are more interested in appearances that in doing what is right.

Orlando hates Steve Wise too

2012-02-10T21:54:00.001-07:00

As should everyone that cares about public education. -cpg

From the Orlando Sentinel's editorial board

In 1996, Florida began a grand experiment in education reform. Charter schools were placed in a statewide Petri dish.

Critics warned that the public/private hybrids would siphon off funding and spell the end of traditional public schools.

And now, some state lawmakers foolishly plan to hand charter schools the hose. The Senate Education Committee has endorsed a bill requiring local school districts to share with charter schools a portion of the $1.9 billion in construction and maintenance money collected through local taxes. Money that charter schools could use to defray leases or to buy buildings that — rather than reverting to the public — private operators get to keep if the school is not renewed or goes belly up.

Charter schools currently get tax money based on each student they have, but when it comes to the separate pot of construction and maintenance money, school districts get to decide whether and how much to give charter schools.

A bill introduced by Sen. Stephen Wise, a Jacksonville Republican, would do away with that local discretion. District school boards would be forced to proportionately share property tax revenue for construction and maintenance on a per-student basis with charter schools. About a $140 million windfall for charter schools.

Backers say the move simply balances the funding scales. Earlier this week, a Florida TaxWatch analysis revealed a funding disparity. Charters get only 70 cents for every dollar per student that traditional schools receive.

Wait. Rewind … Didn't charter school prophets pledge to do more with less? Wasn't less regulation supposed to deliver greater efficiency?

Last year, charters enjoyed a $55 million slice of the state's Public Education Capital Outlay fund, even as traditional public schools went without.

Now, Wise's bill would poke another stick in taxpayers' eyes. For-profit charter management companies could take the money and build schools and lease them to the charter schools. Should the school fold, taxpayers are out the money — and the building. Unacceptable.

We've supported charter schools in the past, but traditional public schools aren't in shape to absorb the blow they'd take from Wise's bill. In many districts, much of the property tax is already dedicated to servicing debt for construction to accommodate growth and class-size mandates. Districts could be left scrambling to pay their debt — which could sink their bond ratings.

It's such a nonsensical notion that even the House deleted the sharing provision from its version of the bill. The Senate ought to do the same

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/os-ed-charter-schools-funding-021112-20120210,0,7431759.story

No Child Left Behind, failure, or complete failure

2012-02-10T12:16:00.001-07:00

Mike Klonsky also has a blog, you can find a link to it on the main page. -cpg

From the Huffington Post

by Mike Klonsky

The stated purpose of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act was to make every student in the U.S. proficient in reading and math by the year 2014. The way to get there was by identifying and punishing "failing schools" -- those that were unable to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), based on their students' standardized test scores.

But after eight years of test-and-punish reform, even NCLB's supporters are shaking their heads in dismay. Far from bringing every child up to proficiency, U.S. schools appear to be headed for a 100 percent failure rate by 2014, and the so-called achievement gap between white children and children of color (especially African-American males) is growing wider.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who earlier lauded NCLB for its stated goals, told Congress last Wednesday that 82 percent of all schools could now be labeled as "failing" under NCLB rules. The Department of Education currently estimates the number of schools not meeting targets will skyrocket from 37 to 82 percent in 2011, since states have "raised standards" to meet the requirements of the law. Not exactly racing to the top, are we?

The grim news has forced Duncan to re-triangulate. He supported NCLB while serving as Chicago's school CEO. And while he has grown increasingly critical of the current version of NCLB, Duncan's "blueprint" for a reauthorized version contains basically more of the same -- only with "better tests," more "flexibility," and less talk of AYP.

Duncan still heaps praise on NCLB for "shining a light on achievement gaps among minority and low-income students," but now admits, "No Child Left Behind is broken" and needs to be fixed.

"This law has created a thousand ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed."
Finally, says Duncan,

"We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk."

But isn't that exactly what NCLB is all about -- "shining the light" on failing schools?

By the way, who are these people who've "been in the business of labeling schools as failures," anyway? They should definitely get out of that business. Duncan himself is one of the greatest perpetrators -- although in fairness, he does often substitute the term "dropout factories." In remarks last November, for example, he uses both terms interchangeably.

It's still not clear whether Duncan merely wants to get rid of the name and some of NCLB's window-dressing, or really "fix" it. His call for more flexibility rings hollow. Why? Because his current Race To The Top initiative doles out a thin but desperately needed stream of federal education dollars via competitive grants to states willing to adhere to his prescribed, mandated strategies. These include closing thousands of "failing schools," firing teachers in mass, and turning schools over to private management companies. In other words, it's still all about compliance, punishment, and top-down reform.

Duncan's "blueprint" aims its sights on schools and districts with the highest concentrations of poor kids, African-Americans and Latinos. It's those schools, where standardized test scores are, on average the lowest, that will still be targeted for closure and privatization. There is virtually nothing in NCLB that will help improve those schools or support their teachers.

NCLB's stated goal is to reach 100 percent proficiency by 2014. But at this rate, if we stay the course, we should reach 100 percent failure rate some time within the next three years. It will solve one of Duncan's problems. There won't any longer be a need to label "failing schools," since they will all be failing.

Congratulations are in order, I suppose.

NCLB: no chance for latinos and blacks

2012-02-10T12:11:00.001-07:00

From Ed Week Teacher

by Dan Ginsburg

No Chance for Latinos and Blacks. That's what came to mind for me when I first heard about NCLB, and that's what still comes to mind nearly ten years later.

I'm referring in particular to at-risk Latino and African American public school students like those I taught in Chicago. And though I had few students from other ethnic/racial groups, my thoughts here certainly apply to them too. But don't get me wrong. I've never believed anyone intended to enact a law that would hurt many of the very children it purportedly helps. Too often, however, there's a difference between intent and effect, and there was no doubt in my mind that NCLB would indeed leave many kids behind.

The reason for this was that NCLB's most significant implication for state and local policymakers, school leaders, and teachers--pressure to raise Math and Reading standardized test scores--was already in place in the Chicago Public Schools when I arrived there in 1993. And it was clear to me then, as it is even clearer to me now, that many kids are hurt more than they're helped by the prevailing responses to such pressure.

Much has been written about many of those responses including replacing rich curriculum with test prep; cutting back art, music, and foreign language; cutting back recess and physical education; cutting back social studies and science; violating test administration procedures (i.e., cheating); watering down high-stakes tests; and lowering minimum test score proficiency requirements. But here are a few less publicized responses:

•cutting back writing (forget about the three Rs--in many schools there are now only two)
•using extrinsic motivators--from rewards to threats--to try to get students to do their best on a test
•deciding whether or not to expel delinquent students based on their likelihood to achieve proficient test scores
•providing tutoring and other individualized services for on-the-bubble students who were just short of a proficient score the previous year, while neglecting the most deficient and most advanced students
•preventing students from taking advanced classes if the content wouldn't be on the test
•investing in technology but only using it for test prep
•enabling students' self-defeating behavior
•holding teachers accountable for results without providing them the support they need to achieve those results

How do I know such responses to test score pressure have been a disservice to children? Well, the negative effects on kids of many of those responses are certainly well documented. Yet even more compelling for me is what I've seen and what students have said to me. Students like dozens of 8th graders who've been denied their chance--really their right, as civil rights leader and educator Bob Moses would say--to take Algebra in 8th grade, and thus denied their chance to enter high school on an AP track in math. The rationale for this? Algebra wouldn't be on the test. Never mind that these students had already mastered what would be on the test. "Another year of review can't hurt them," I recall one administrator saying.

And students like Lakisha (not her real name) who entered my classroom more than three years below grade level in math--based on test scores and her initial performance in class. But seven months and lots of hard work later, Lakisha was performing almost at grade level--again, based on her performance in class and her score on that spring's standardized test.

Lakisha came to my room in tears the day those scores were released. Tears of joy, I assumed, until she said, "I'm going to be held back, Coach G," citing the fact that, despite her lofty leap, she was still ½ year behind where she should have been. "Who told you that?" I asked. "Everyone," she replied, and then told me about a meeting before the test where school administrators said students would be retained if their scores were below grade level.

Whether students who score below grade level should in fact be held back is a topic for another discussion. What mattered in this case was that no such retention policy existed, and Lakisha was not only promoted but was assured of being promoted all along. What, then, would have compelled school leaders to use a scare tactic that caused a student to feel deflated when she should have been floating on air? Once again, pressure to raise test scores.

Do I condone this and other responses to test score pressure? No, but having experienced this pressure as both a teacher and school leader, I can relate to feeling like you have to put scores ahead of students. At the same time, I've worked with many urban educators--at district and charter schools alike--who've responded to test score pressure in ways that haven't just kept at-risk youth from being left behind, but have helped them get ahead. Educators like Chicago's Lake View High School Math Chair Steve Starr, his predecessor Rich Kaplan, and others whose dedication and belief in students--and courage to shun test prep in favor of college prep--have contributed to hundreds of Lake View students completing AP Calculus the past several years.

Ah, but therein lies one of the most glaring signs of NCLB missing the mark: the fact that doing what's right for students is now seen as courageous rather than compulsory. Does this mean we should forget about school accountability? Not at all. But as long as the focus of such accountability is solely on outcomes--and not also on evidence-based, educationally sound processes for achieving those outcomes--we'll continue to have a system where educators are overstressed and students are underserved.

In other words, a system that provides no chance for millions of children--Latinos, Blacks, and others.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/coach_gs_teaching_tips/2011/11/nclb_no_chance_for_latinos_and_blacks_1.html

Dumb or harmful are the only types of education bills the Florida legislature considers

2012-02-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

From the Herald Tribune

by Zac Anderson

TALLAHASSEE

Warning students that their career choices may not lead to financial riches could become a regular part of school counseling — starting in the sixth grade and continuing through college enrollment — under a bill that advanced in the Florida Senate Thursday.

The legislation is an early glimpse into what could be a long debate on steering students away from fields such as psychology and anthropology and toward science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees.

Gov. Rick Scott has made boosting STEM degrees a top priority. Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, is leading the charge in the Legislature with the bill mandating employment rates and salary data for various career fields be distributed to middle school and high school students, their parents and university students registering for classes.

Gaetz called his bill a “mild first step” in higher education reform that focuses on incentives for science and technology programs while not penalizing liberal arts fields, a concern many educators had with some of Scott’s higher education proposals.

The state would create an “Economic Security Report” to track employment data under Gaetz’s plan. Students would receive the report in “career-themed” courses starting in the sixth grade.

Incoming university students would get additional information on the 25 percent of degrees with the “highest full-time job placement and highest average annualized earnings,” along with the bottom 10 percent of degrees.

Gaetz’s bill also provides a variety of financial incentives for STEM programs, including extra per-student funding for high school and middle school students enrolled in industry certification classes and $15 million in “performance funding” to the five state universities that most excel in technology programs.

Universities are encouraged to devote more financial aid to STEM students and they must create a report tracking the number of students by program and degree who receive such aid.

The legislation requires the state Board of Education to create a statewide plan for STEM education at the secondary level, and universities are required to create a lengthy annual report detailing everything from the number of students enrolled in STEM fields to the number of start-up companies and private venture capital linked to universities.

Members of the Senate Higher Education Committee praised the legislation Thursday.

Sen. Steve Oelrich, R-Cross Creek, said he does not view the bill as an attack on the liberal arts.

“I have no problem with people going into the fine arts and all the different arts,” Oelrich said. “This is just maybe a piece of paper that says when you go into this that very few people are going to make a gazillion dollars.”

Sen. Thad Altman, R-Vierra, supported the legislation but noted that boosting STEM graduates needs to be coupled with stronger efforts to recruit science and technology companies.

“We do need more inducements for STEM but let’s not fool ourselves,” Altman said, adding the degrees won’t do much good “if we don’t have jobs for them.”

Gaetz said his plan better links higher education “to the realities of the economy for young people” and noted that no university officials are opposing the bill.

Yet only two people stood in favor of the bill Thursday — lobbyists for the Florida Chamber of Commerce and University of West Florida — even though representatives from nearly every Florida university were in the audience.

Many university officials raised concerns when Scott first began talking about higher education reform last year because his proposals seemed to help some degree programs at the expense of others.

But Gaetz is set to become Senate president next year and university officials are treading lightly. No companion legislation on higher education reform has been introduced in the House, but Gaetz said he hopes to convince House leaders to take up the Senate bill.

Citing figures predicting 60 percent of new jobs in Florida will require science and technology education, Gaetz said “we need to tell the truth to families and to students and provide them with opportunities to get more relevant degrees relevant to the economy.”

“Now if they choose to get a degree in political science or psychology or poetry that’s fine, but we ought to tell them the truth about their chances of getting a job,” Gaetz said.

http://htpolitics.com/2012/02/09/students-would-get-career-warning-under-higher-ed-reform-bill/

Arne Duncan's threats, ignorance and hubris offend me

2012-02-10T05:01:00.002-07:00

Some states have said they won’t seek a waiver to NCLB. Among them are Texas and California who are beginning to understand the folly of depending on high stakes testing.

Arne Duncan, who was never a classroom teacher by the way, read that again, he has never been in a classroom, said states without a waiver will be held to the standards of NCLB because, “it’s the law of the land.”

Did he just threaten parts of the country who are tired of this draconian bill, who might just know whats better for their children than bureaucrats in Washington D.C. especially bureaucrats who have never been in a classroom?

Arne Duncan says the administration desperately wants congress to fix the law. Well how sir, how is this law that guts neighborhoods, closes schools, blames teachers for poverty and forces them to just teach to the test, fixable?

His threats, ignorance and hubris offend me.

The president turns education into a game with winners and losers

2012-02-10T05:00:00.002-07:00

President Obama turns education into a game

Race to the top had winners and losers, funny I thought education was about elevating everybody. Now he gives waivers to ten states for No Child Left Behind, um I’m sorry, does this mean it’s bad for just those states and fine for all the others?

To get the waiver States had to promise to improve how they prepare and evaluate their students. I shutter what the evaluation part might mean for Florida, which is already the land of the high stakes test.

In case you were wondering what the big problem with No Child Left Behind is, according to the law every child is supposed to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. To give you some scale, only about a third of Jacksonville’s high school students arrive proficient. Think how insane that is, both the one hundred percent figure and how poorly our kids here in Jacksonville are doing.

Another part of the waiver requires states to develop new teacher and principal evaluation tools with a big component being how their students do on standardized tests. Think for a second, who is going to want to teach at the inner city schools where gains will be small and hard fight? Especially if it means you can lose your job? President Obama has all but assured our best teachers will stay away from the schools where the kids need them the most.

The right looking to pounce on everything he does says this is an over reach of his authority. Well why didn’t he really over reach and just scrap the whole thing? NCLB hurts schools by closing them, kids by failing them and bussing them out of their neighborhoods and teachers by often blaming them for things they have no control of, poverty anyone?

Shouldn’t our education policies be about elevating children, improving schools and assisting teachers? You know the opposite of what No Child left Behind does.

I wish we could get a waiver for that.

The president doesn't understand that the damage to education has already been done

2012-02-10T04:59:00.002-07:00

NCLB just finished a decade of gutting our inner city schools and just as states like California and Texas are beginning to realize that high stakes testing does more harm than good, the president issues his NCLB waivers to ten states.

Obama like many people not living in poverty do, ignores the affects of poverty on education. In case you didn’t know it, poverty is the number one quantifiable measurement determining how a student does in school. Children who live in poverty don’t do as well, but instead of pointing to the obvious, Obama blames schools for their neighborhoods and the income level of their children’s parents. He says the children who go to the school in the suburb whose parents are affluent are doing well why aren’t the inner city schools after all everything is equal.

Well sir everything is not equal and gutting neighborhoods and closing schools and blaming teachers and shipping kids to charter schools is not going to make then equal.

We need to put additional resources into those schools and come up with programs that fit the children’s needs. Longer school days, longer school years and multiple curriculums that teach the arts the skills and the trades. Bussing kids across the city is the president’s answer and quite frankly we tried that and it didn’t work.

He has let down the nations children… again.