Arizona's Teacher Desert
This week in the New York Times, Fernando Santos and Motoko Rich took a look at the continuing teacher shortage in Arizona, where leaders continue to demonstrate that they understand neither education nor the free market forces that they claim to love.
Arizona's history with reformster nonsense goes way back. Bill McCallum was a professor at the University of Arizona back when he became one of the co-authors of the Common Core. Arizona has long camped out at the bottom of most education lists-- spending, test results, you name it, they've sucked at it. When reformy governor Jan Brewer backed Tea Party fave Doug Ducey all the way to the capital, that was not good news for education.
Ducey brought in reformsters Paul Pastorek, obliterator-in-chief of New Orleans schools, and Joel Klein, who never met a public school that he didn't want to shut down. Pastorek and Klein showed up to help promote the idea of a charter-choice non-public school system where children carrying tax dollars in their backpacks travel from school to school begging to be admitted. At that same event, Ducey (previous job: CEO of Cold Stone Creamery) declared a need for more positive view of Arizona:
"I believe that too many have fallen into a doom-and-gloom cycle where everything is wrong, where the cynic is winning, telling others that nothing is right," Ducey said. "I say it's time we shed an inferiority complex inside this state."
It's funny-- I would think that an acolyte of Competition and Free Market Forces would recognize that a good way to shed an inferiority complex would be to take steps to stop being inferior.
That has not always been the Arizona way. A year ago their legislature was seriously discussing a bill to shut educators up, barring them from "distributing electronic materials to influence the outcome of an election or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation." (It was shouted down in the 11th hour.) Arizona has also led the country in anti-Hispanic legislation,CURMUDGUCATION: Arizona's Teacher Desert:
The Big Bad Dragon
There are those books you heard about and you thought, "Yeah, I should read that," but you were busy and didn't get around to it and after the initial publicity blast, you don't hear about it much again and so you never get back to it.
Well, I'm here to remind you about Yong Zhao's important book, Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?The book came out last fall and was reviewed by Diane Ravitch in the New York Review of Bookslast November. Her review is excellent and insightful and will provide you with one more set of reasons that you need to grab and read this book.
Zhao was born and raised in the Sichuan Province of China, coming to the US as a visiting scholar in 1992. He's now a professor at the University of Oregon in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy and Leadership, as well as a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute of Victoria Institute in Australia. He has also created a college English learning system widely used in China
Well, I'm here to remind you about Yong Zhao's important book, Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon?The book came out last fall and was reviewed by Diane Ravitch in the New York Review of Bookslast November. Her review is excellent and insightful and will provide you with one more set of reasons that you need to grab and read this book.
Zhao was born and raised in the Sichuan Province of China, coming to the US as a visiting scholar in 1992. He's now a professor at the University of Oregon in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy and Leadership, as well as a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute of Victoria Institute in Australia. He has also created a college English learning system widely used in China
The Big Bad Dragon
The Transparent Testing Year
One of the dishonest things that schools do is to fold testing time into the rest of the year.
We get our "testing window" from the state and set the test prep elements of our year as we wish, and so testing appears to be going on while school is happening, suggesting that school and testing are related activities and also hiding from the public just how much time the state is using for the Big Standardized Test.
Imagine what would happen if we were honest about what is actually going on. Imagine this announcement from your state capital:
Next year, the school year will end on April 7. At that time, your local school district will issue report cards for the year. There will be a spring break, and then on April 14, students will report to school for the testing year. Schools will be given approximately two weeks to prepare for the test, and then test administration will begin. Students in non-testing grades will not need to report. At the conclusion of the testing year, students will be released for summer vacation. See you next fall!
There would be considerable advantages. For one, my high school ties itself in knots trying toaccommodate both testing and non-testing students, not to mention bouncing teachers back and
We get our "testing window" from the state and set the test prep elements of our year as we wish, and so testing appears to be going on while school is happening, suggesting that school and testing are related activities and also hiding from the public just how much time the state is using for the Big Standardized Test.
Imagine what would happen if we were honest about what is actually going on. Imagine this announcement from your state capital:
Next year, the school year will end on April 7. At that time, your local school district will issue report cards for the year. There will be a spring break, and then on April 14, students will report to school for the testing year. Schools will be given approximately two weeks to prepare for the test, and then test administration will begin. Students in non-testing grades will not need to report. At the conclusion of the testing year, students will be released for summer vacation. See you next fall!
There would be considerable advantages. For one, my high school ties itself in knots trying toaccommodate both testing and non-testing students, not to mention bouncing teachers back and