CURMUDGUCATION: Norms vs. Standards

CURMUDGUCATION: Norms vs. Standards:

Norms vs. Standards

I've found myself trying to explain the difference between norm and standards reference multiple times in the last few weeks, which means it's time to write about it. A lot of people get this distinction-- but a lot of people don't. I'm going to try to do this in plain(ish) English, so those of you who are testing experts, please forgive the lack of correct technical terminology.

A standards-referenced (or criterion-referenced) test is the easiest one to understand and, I am learning, what many, many people think we're talking about when we talk about tests in general and standardized tests in particular.

With standards reference, we can set a solid immovable line between different levels of achievement, and we can do it before the test is even given. This week I'm giving a spelling test consisting of twenty words. Before I even give the test, I can tell my class that if they get eighteen or more correct, they get an A, if they get sixteen correct, they did okay, and if the get thirteen or less correct, they fail.

A drivers license test is also standards-referenced. If I complete the minimum number of driving tasks correctly, I get a license. If I don't, I don't.


One feature of a standards-referenced test is that while we might tend to expect a bell-shaped curve of results (a few failures, a few top scores, and most in the middle), such a curve is not required or enforced. Every student in my class can get an A on the spelling test. Everyone can get a drivers license. With standards referenced testing, clustering is itself a piece of useful data; if all of my students score less than ten on my twenty word test, then something is wrong.

With a standards-referenced test, it should be possible for every test taker to get top marks.

A norm-referenced measure is harder to understand but, unfortunately, far more prevalent these days.

A standards-referenced test compares every student to the standard set by the test giver. A norm-CURMUDGUCATION: Norms vs. Standards:

The Trump U. Treatment – Save Maine Schools

The Trump U. Treatment – Save Maine Schools:

The Trump U. Treatment

First: this is not a defense of Donald Trump or his now infamous Trump University.  Trump University was probably a scam (did anyone really think it wasn’t going to be?), and we deserve to know about it.

But hang on a second.

If a fraud like this is concerning enough to make headline news, why isn’t the media reporting on education scams that are happeningeverywhere?

Let’s be real: when it comes to education policy, taxpayers across the country are getting the same treatment Trump University gave its clients, but without the headlines.

Here’s one example:

Trump University used a playbook that encouraged recruiters to play on emotions. (“Don’t ask people what they think about something you’ve said. Instead, always ask them how they feel about it. People buy emotionally and justify it logically.”).

And that, of course, is exactly what the esteemed FrameWorks Institute has more than likely been doing to you.

With sophisticated market research techniques, FrameWorks taps into people’s beliefs about education, then manipulates those feelings in order to get you to accept ideas like Common Core and competency-based education. (When it comes to selling fraudulent ideas, “frames always matter more than facts.”)

It also seems that Trump University taught its recruiters how to exploit aspirations. You know, sort of like the claims we heard about how Common Core would get our kids college and career ready, or how one-to-one iPad initiatives would bring us, at last, into the twenty-first century, or how certain reforms would bring us the jobs we’ve been looking for – like this petition signed by corporate The Trump U. Treatment – Save Maine Schools:

John White’s Lawsuit to Block James Finney’s Public Records Requests: Some Details | deutsch29

John White’s Lawsuit to Block James Finney’s Public Records Requests: Some Details | deutsch29:

John White’s Lawsuit to Block James Finney’s Public Records Requests: Some Details

On April 25, 2016, Louisiana state superintendent John White sued private citizen James Finney because Finney is making too many public records requests, and (according to White’s suit), White doesn’t have the records; it would take too much time and effort to create the records, and some information requested is exempt from public records law.

In this post, I do not dissect the entire lawsuit. Instead, I take the first section of the suit and reveal some of its soft underbelly.

The first request mentioned in the lawsuit concerns ACT scores. On September 08, 2015, Finney asked for information on ACT scores by district and school for the Class of 2015. On October 13, 2015, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) said it did not yet have the info. (For an interesting rabbit trail on that issue, see my post, John White’s Two Sets of 2015 ACT Scores.)

Finney also asked for total numbers of students for this ridiculous table, which supposedly reports how many “more” students scored 18+ on the ACT from 2011-12 to 2014-15 without including how many students took the ACT in 2011-2012 versus 2014-15.

Here’s how that works: Let’s say that 100 students in District X took the ACT in 2011-12, and 10 scored composites of 18+. Now let’s say that 200 students from District X took the ACT in 2014-15, and 15 scored a composite of 18+. In his spreadsheet, White hails this as an “increase” of 5 students scoring composites of 18+ from 2011-12 to 2014-15 for District X.

What readers of White’s spreadsheet do not get to know is that for District X, that “increase” of 5 is actually a decrease, from 10 percent (or 10 out of 100) scoring a composite of 18+ in 2011-12 to 7.5 percent (or 15 out of 200) scoring a composite of 18+ in 2014-15.

White’s LDOE has told Finney that it does not have information on the total numbers of students contributing to each district’s score. It has also told him that it does not John White’s Lawsuit to Block James Finney’s Public Records Requests: Some Details | deutsch29:

With A Brooklyn Accent: R.I.P. Muhammad Ali

With A Brooklyn Accent: R.I.P. Muhammad Ali:

R.I.P. Muhammad Ali

Just received an email from one of my students informing me that Muhammad Ali had passed at the age of 74. I feel empty inside. Muhammad Ali reinvented what it meant to be an athlete in American society, paid the price for his courage, and ultimately became a folk hero even to those who originally rejected his transformation. I cannot think of the 60's without his face and his words. Like many great athletes before and after him, he was charismatic as well as supremely talented. He entranced people with his lightning movements in the ring, his poetic predictions, his rare physical beauty. But at the height of his popularity, he identified with a black nationalist religious organization that turned the ideology of white supremacy on its head, changed his name, and ultimately, was willing to give up his entire career and the wealth associated with it for refusing induction in the military during an unpopular war. No athlete of his stature, black or white, had ever taken a step of this kind. He was excoriated for this by sportswriters and much of the public, but became a folk hero to many young people,white as well as black, who felt the same way about the War in Vietnam.

This step elevated him into a human rights figure whose stature transcended sports. When he returned to the ring in the late 60's, his fights became major political events as well as athletic contests. His first fight with Joe Frazier, which I saw at a theater on 96th street and Broadway with thousands of people outside trying to get in, was the most exciting single sports event I was ever part of. Everyone I knew was watching. It was as if all the events reshaping our lives-war, assassinations, racial upheavals- were with us in the ring.

Ali remained with us as a public figure for many years after, his career outlasting the War that helped define his public identity. As his speed and skills diminished, he continued to win big fights through guile and courage, taking as much punishment as his rival and nemesis Joe Frazier had endured. His courage, which ultimately took a toll on his speech and brain function, won him the admiration of even many who had deplored his political stance. He became an American and global icon, a survivor as well as maker of history, a symbol of endurance and vulnerability as well as an athlete of rare beauty and skill, and a public figure willing to sacrifice wealth and fame for his beliefs.

Now he has left us, Our country is a very different place than it was when he came upon the scene in the early 60's.

More than any sports figure of his time, he helped to change it.

With A Brooklyn Accent: R.I.P. Muhammad Ali:

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: The Obscenity of Teaching in These Times

Ms. Katie's Ramblings: The Obscenity of Teaching in These Times:

The Obscenity of Teaching in These Times

**I am beyond angry. Beware strong language ahead.** 

It feels like the world is crumbling around us. Our state remains without a budget-the longest period of time any state has ever gone without one-causing serious defunding of vital social services and added stress to every working person in Illinois. Our city seems to be devolving into chaos: lack of services coupled with spikes in violence. There are threats of our entire school system closing down. Whole neighborhoods seem one spark away from mass popular explosion.

And in the middle of this disgusting manufactured mess, people continue to try to go about their lives. But as a teacher, the cruelty of current education policy seems all the more obscene.

The neighborhood where I teach on the far south side of Chicago, is one of the neighborhoods most impacted by the mayhem. We have had a number of incidents of violence in the direct vicinity of the school including nearby shootings that forced our school to go into lockdown. There have been graffiti incidents on school property. As the longest school year winds down, behavior issues in the school worsen.

And in the middle of all this, we are forced to disrupt our students' lives even further with obscenely inappropriate testing.

Yesterday, the juxtaposition of the trauma both inside and outside the school came to a head. I spent the whole morning administering the mandatory district-wide assessment, an Ms. Katie's Ramblings: The Obscenity of Teaching in These Times:

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee | Diane Ravitch's blog

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee

The Network for Public Education Action Fund has drafted a proposal for consideration by the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee.

We call for the elimination of federal mandates for annual testing; for a declaration of support for public schools; for a ban on for-profit charters; for regulation of charters that receive federal funds to assure that they serve the same children as the public schools; for revision and strengthening of the FERPA privacy laws to protect our children’s data from commercial data mining; for full funding of special education; for support of early childhood education; and for other means of improving the federal role in education.

The proposal is in draft form. We will be making revisions. If you see something you think needs fixing, let us know.

Please read our draft proposal. And if you agree, add your name of our petition to the Democratic party. We plan to make the same appeal to the Republican party.

Both parties, we hope, will support the public schools, which educate nearly 90% of the nation’s children. Public schools are a bedrock of our society, in the past, now, and in the future.

Share this: 

Sign the NPE Action Proposal to the Democratic Party Platform Committee | Diane Ravitch's blog:

 

Big Education Ape: Please Support NPE’s Political Action Fund! | Diane Ravitch's blog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/05/please-support-npes-political-action.html

This School Community Is Finding New Ways To Bully Transgender Students | ThinkProgress

This School Community Is Finding New Ways To Bully Transgender Students | ThinkProgress:

This School Community Is Finding New Ways To Bully Transgender Students

CREDIT: TWITTER/@JIEWRONSKIRILEY

Proponents of a trans-inclusive policy silently protest against their opponents in January.

Dave and Hannah Edwards no longer have their daughter enrolled in Nova Classical Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, but their complaint against the school for not respecting her gender identity is still pending. Since they pulled out of the charter school after being denied accommodations and enduring harassment from other families, Nova has since adopted new transgender-inclusive policies — but the implementation plan is far from perfect.

On its face, Nova’s new Gender Inclusion Policy protects transgender students consistent with the comprehensive approach countless other districts have taken. Trans students should be called by the name and pronouns that match their gender identity, they should be allowed to dress according to their gender identity, and they should have access to all activities and facilities in accordance with the gender identity.

Related Post

It Takes A Village To Bully A Transgender Kindergartner

But submitted along with the policy were recommendations about how to implement it, which derail and undermine many of its stated protections. As ThinkProgress previously reported, Nova officials seemed particularly concerned about appeasing the parents who aligned themselves with hate groups like the Minnesota Family Council and the Minnesota Child Protection League to oppose trans-inclusive policies. The recommendations directly reflect this attempt to cater to these opponents.

For example, the recommendations agree that students should be allowed to access bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity, and they also call for some of the school's bathrooms to be made gender neutral with floor-to-ceiling stalls — a change the Heritage Foundation found strangely noteworthy. But locker rooms are a different story:

Due to the small space available in the current locker rooms, we could not accommodate what we consider the ideal of having floor to ceiling changing stalls; therefore, we are recommending keeping the current system of locker rooms as separated by biological sex, since there is not presently a means to provide additional privacy for all students.

In other words, transgender students should still be denied access to the locker room and forced to use gender neutral bathrooms or the health room to change.

Furthermore, the recommendations agree that students should be called by their preferred name and pronouns, but they also give leeway to students not to use those pronouns if doing so makes them "uncomfortable."

We chose to allow the plural they/them/their to address the concerns of those who may be uncomfortable, for whatever reason, with using to a pronoun different than the biological sex pronoun. Using the plural pronoun gives a gender neutral option for addressing classmates.

It's unclear why a student would be uncomfortable, or why that discomfort warrants such an accommodation. The recommendations note that mistakes may be made, but that if students repeatedly or intentionally use the wrong gendered pronoun when addressing a classmate, it could be considered bullying that violates the nondiscrimination policy. The recommendations indicate no such concern for students who insist on using the plural alternative instead of a student's preferred pronoun.

It should be noted that the First Amendment permits public schools to regulate student speech that is disruptive — which is why teachers may discipline students for bullying, harassment and This School Community Is Finding New Ways To Bully Transgender Students | ThinkProgress:

3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College

3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College:

3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College

A woman struggles with student loan debt | Source: iStock

You’ve heard the mantra: Graduate from high school, go to college, get a good job. But as many people have discovered too late, a four-year degree isn’t always a ticket to the middle class.

While job prospects have been improving for newly minted degree holders since the Great Recession, young college grads still face relatively high levels of unemployment and underemployment. For graduates between the ages of 21 and 24 who aren’t enrolled in further schooling, the unemployment rate in 2015 was 7.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The underemployment rate was 14.9%. Both numbers are significantly higher than they were in 2007, when unemployment among young grads was 5.5% and 9.6% were underemployed.

The class of 2015 also earned the dubious honor of being the most indebted ever, with an average per-grad student loan balance in excess of $35,000. And roughly 42% of college grads have jobs for which a four-year degree isn’t a requirement, according to a McKinsey and Company report.

Given those numbers, some people are questioning whether a four-year college degree is really a smart investment. Former labor secretary Robert Reich has said as a society we’re too focused on encouraging everyone to attend college, when what we really need to do is expand vocational and technical training to “open other gateways to the middle class.” Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has created a $100,000 fellowship for motivated young people looking for an alternative to college.

“We have a bubble in higher education, like we had a bubble in housing,” Thiel told 60 Minutes in 2012.

Anti-college voices aside, there’s still compelling evidence that people who go to college are better off financially than those who don’t. On average, college grads earn $1 million more over a lifetime than people who only graduated from high school, according to data from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, and college isn’t an automatic path to success.

“For some of my students, a four-year university is by far the best option for them,” Jillian Gordon, an agricultural education teacher in Ohio, wrote in an essay for PBS NewsHour. “But this isn’t the case for all students, and we need to stop pretending it is. A bachelor’s degree is not a piece of paper that says ‘You’re a success!’ just as the lack of one doesn’t say ‘You’re a failure!’”

While pursuing a four-year degree straight out of high school is the right choice for many, these three types of people might benefit from delaying college, or even skipping it altogether.

1. You’re not sure what you want to do

Dropping a lot of money on a college education without knowing what you really want to do after you graduate can be an expensive mistake. In some cases, just taking a year off after high school provides perspective and life experience that can help you decide whether you want to go to college or do something else.

“At first I wanted a year off because I thought it was going to fun,” Jules Arsenault, who took a gap year after college, told Time. “But now I realize that it will give me time to figure out what I want to do. I didn’t want to go to college and not know what I want to study, or get a degree just to have one. With what college costs these days, I wanted to get a degree in something that would be useful to me.”

2. You want a career that doesn’t require a four-year degree3 Types of People Who Should Not Go to College:

Lessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn

Lessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn:

Lessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn

Most Americans already know what's been hiding in the water in Flint, Michigan: dangerous levels of lead and other lethal toxins. But whatever mind-warping poisons lie in the supply 75 miles southeast in Grosse Pointe Farms — a nearly all-white Detroit suburb — remain a mystery.

Officials at Grosse Pointe South High School apologized this week after an anti-black rant from some of its students surfaced in an online video.

The footage shows students using racial slurs and advocating that black people be shipped back to Africa, segregated from whites or re-enslaved to restore white rule in the United States.

"Alright — so what are you going to do to them in 2040?" one student asks another, referring to his plans for African-Americans.

"They're going to be owned by white people and white people are going to be the dominant [sic] of the country," the other student replies. The students also talked about burning blacks at the stake, maiming the enslaved with cattle brands and trading them for booze.

 Principal Moussa Hamka condemned the comments as a "deplorable" violation of the school's code of conduct, the Associated Press reported Friday. 

"The majority of our students and community members do not accept and will not tolerate such bigotry," Hamka said in an email. He also indicated the students in the video could face consequences.

This is the second time in recent months Grosse Pointe officials have had to address racism among their white students. In March, the school suspended four students who posed in a photograph with the word "n*gger" scrawled on their stomachs and legs. 

The photo went viral online. Grosse Pointe's new NAACP chapter praised the school's response to that incident.

"It's not easy to stand up to bigotry, especially if you have people out there saying, 'You can't control people's attitudes, you can't impose your values on others,'" Greg Bowens, co-founder of the chapter, saidLessons on Racism for White Students at This Detroit-Area High School — Because, Goddamn:

these girls got suspended for 5 days when they should've been expelled. they go to desert vista high school pic.twitter.com/q3Q5UKmh04

— blarissa (@calerissa) January 22, 2016

White Michigan students suspended for writing the word n*gger across their stomaches: https://t.co/rCTeYufdQ6 pic.twitter.com/PU0tXkpFfj

— The Root (@TheRoot) March 16, 2016

A Look At The Private Interests Funding California's Charter Schools

A Look At The Private Interests Funding California's Charter Schools:

A Look At The Private Interests Funding California’s Charter Schools

“They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools.”

Big Education Ape: Failing the Test: A New Series Examines Charter Schools- CAPITAL & MAIN - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/06/failing-test-new-series-examines_3.html

Charter proponents, most notably the Walton Family Foundation, contribute large amounts of money to expand charter schools in select cities around the nation. The foundation says it has invested more than $385 million in new charter schools over the past two decades and, earlier this year, announced that it plans to give $1billion over five years to support charters and school-choice initiatives.

In announcing its $1 billion strategic plan to support new and existing charter schools, the foundation has said the money would go to four initiatives – investing in cities, supporting the school-choice movement, innovation and research. It identified 13 cities nationwide where it said it can have the biggest impact, including Los Angeles and Oakland. Los Angeles already has more charter schools than any other school district in the United States and Oakland has the highest percentage of charters for any district in California.

See More Stories in Capital & Main’s Charter School Series

“If funders like Eli Broad or the Walton Family Foundation were truly committed to education equality,” says John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, “they could have taken steps to simply support reducing class size or after-school [activities] or summer programs that would provide more educational opportunity, rather than try to invest in strategies to undermine the capacities of a school district. The primary aim is to dismantle the school district as a whole and replace it with a new way of doing public education.”

Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, agrees. “They believe in privatization,” he says. Miron co-authored a critical study, sponsored last year by the National Education Policy Center, that focused on the charter industry’s funding policies.

“They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools.”

But why do so many charter advocates embrace privatization?

“I don’t think it’s about the money,” says Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “They like charters in part because they decrease the publicness of public schools. They want a system much more based on market forces because they don’t trust democracy.”

Netflix founder and prominent charter advocate Reed Hastings seemed to confirm this view when, during a 2014 convention of the California Charter Schools Association, he decried publicly elected school boards for their alleged lack of stability in governance. He then praised the closed-governance charter model of private boards whose “board members pick new board members.”

But should the private sector be in charge of public education?

“No,” says Welner. “The public sector should be in charge of public education. Public education should be under democratic control.”

Welner is not alone in his view.

“The radical agenda of the Walton family,” says a damning report issued last year by the American Federation of Teachers and In the Public Interest, “has taken the U.S. charter school movement away from education quality in favor of a strategy focused only on growth. It’s been lucrative for some, but a disaster for many of the nation’s most vulnerable students and school districts.”

The direct funding of charter schools is only one of several strategies charter advocates are using to influence public opinion and school policies. They also fund academic studies and “grassroots” organizations such as Parent Revolution, along A Look At The Private Interests Funding California's Charter Schools:

 

Gulen Charter School ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama | PennLive.com

Court ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama | PennLive.com:

Court ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama

Killing Ed | Charter Schools, Corruption, and the Gülen Movement in America - http://killinged.com/

Clarification: The headline of this article, originally containing a quote from Candace Roper of the School District of Lancaster, has been updated to ensure no confusion with the content of a court ruling in this case. 

The latest round in the School District of Lancaster's epic 3-year, $450,000 legal battle against a proposed charter school — one reportedly tied to both a convicted drug dealer and secretive Sunni Imam — has gone to the District.

Lancaster County Judge Joseph Madenspacher recently shot down an appeal filed by backers of the Academy of Business and Entrepreneurship Charter School (ABECS), finding they lacked "sufficient valid signatures" to challenge an earlier rejection of the project by the School District of Lancaster, the home district in which the charter school would be located.  

Charter schools are independent public schools established and operated under a charter from the local school board.

In this case, the School District of Lancaster's board decided not to grant that permission, citing concerns with the charter school's curriculum and administration. 

The district spent heavily defending that decision in the ensuing years, to the tune of almost half-a-million dollars to date.

"Our decision to spend the money needed for a legal fight has saved the district millions of dollars and has sent a clear message to predatory would-be schools that this is not a district that falls for charlatans posing as educators and seeking to profit at the expense of our students," board member Candace Roper said in a statement Thursday.

There are no limits to the number of times ABECS can file new applications for a charter, however, and ABECS board president Indrit Hoxha, an economics professor at Penn State Harrisburg, said they are currently considering their options.

In challenging the school board's previous rejection of their plan, ABECS backers reportedly gathered more than 2,000 petition signatures in support, or as part of an appeal. 

Judge Madenspacher weighed in last week, citing "forged, illegible and improperly gathered signatures" in deciding ABECS's appeal would not go forward, LancasterOnline reports.

School District of Lancaster officials initially challenged the signatures saying some had been collected by a convicted local drug dealer, and possibly outside of the school district's boundaries in a clear violation of the rules. It argued that others belonged to clients of a city homeless shelter whose official residency was unclear, and said at one point pages of signatures had been lost before being recovered by police and returned, raising concerns about the chain of custody and their validity.

Those questions and more have haunted the charter school ever since.

And in his ruling handed down last week, judge Madenspacher found only 580 of the 2,000-plus submitted signatures were valid, well short of the 1,000 minimum needed to carry an appeal forward to the state.  

Hoxha said this marked the reversal of an earlier court decision which found 1,066 of the signatures to be valid.

Hoxha said ABECS backers were "disappointed" in the decision.

School District of Lancaster administrators, however, were not.

Harvey Miller, school district of Lancaster board president issued the following statement: "The Board and I are grateful that Judge Madenspacher has carefully reviewed the information placed before him. We share Judge Madenspacher's conclusion that there were substantial flaws in the petition that ABECS presented to the Court."

Candace Roper called the saga "a painfully clear example of how badly we need to reform charter laws in PA," adding "That is what people need to be outraged over — the fact that a poor urban school district's only defense against these predators is going to court and draining our own precious resources."

The district has previously approved one charter for La Academia Charter School of Lancaster on North Ann Street, and has paid as much as one-million dollars a year to the school as required by the state.   

"Despite the fact that we spent a sizable sum of money on the ABECS proposal and petition fight, it was our only option to head off opening a 'school' that would have cost millions for the first year alone and would not have provided any of our district students with a high — or even mediocre — quality education," Roper added. 

Chief Financial Operating Officer with the district, Matt Przywara, agreed, saying in this case the district had to spend money to save money.

"Anytime we can invest dollars back into the classroom instead of legal defense claims, it would be better served; however, in this case the dollars spent on the defense will hopefully save local and PA taxpayers millions of dollars in the long run," Przywara explained.

The controversy surrounding the case is nothing new to the charter school industry or the ABECS brand.

Diane Ravitch, assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush and a charter school supporter-turned-critic, identified the ABECS charter school proposed for Lancaster as being under the umbrella of the "Gulen Charter School" movement, once the largest charter chain in the nation, according to Ravitch's blog, and one headed by Fethullah Gülen, a "reclusive Turkish imam who lives in the Poconos but has a powerful political movement in Turkey."

Those behind the ABECS charter proposal in Lancaster have denied any connection to Gulen, but critics insist otherwise.

'Parent leaders in Lancaster oppose Gulen Charter School'

According to Ravitch's blog, Sait Onal, a name linked to the ABECS charter proposal in Lancaster and other failed charter bids in the midstate and Harrisburg, claimed no connection to the Gulen movement, but has written for The Fountain, "a magazine produced and published by the Gulen Movement."

Supporters of ABECS call this evidence circumstantial at best, while Hoxha describes something of a smear campaign orchestrated by opponents within the Court ruling reignites Lancaster's surreal charter school drama | PennLive.com:

Big Education Ape: Update: Gulen Harmony charter school network accused of bias and self-dealing Dallas Morning News - http://go.shr.lc/1qV85Hm

Big Education Ape: Turkey Links Texas Charter Schools to Dissident - WSJ - http://go.shr.lc/1OW1ZfV

UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform | UVA Today

UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform | UVA Today:

UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform

“The Children Left Behind: America’s Struggle to Improve Its Lowest-Performing Schools,” by UVA Professor Daniel Duke, analyzes the successes and failures of the No Child Left Behind Act under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

As a classroom teacher in a low-performing school on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Daniel Duke, now a professor at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education, experienced first-hand the struggles of the public school system.

At the conclusion of the first semester of his ninth-grade classes in African-American and American history, Duke was prepared to award his students their final grades, many of which were A’s.

“They earned them,” Duke said.

But a school administrator didn’t approve, stating that such a move would result in Duke’s students, who weren’t considered college-bound, shaking up the school’s student rankings by knocking down students who were.

Duke couldn’t fathom the idea of not rewarding students with the grades that they had earned and deserved, and took that as his cue to create change.

“That convinced me that there was a need for a different kind of leadership,” Duke said.

The experience propelled Duke to earn his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of New York at Albany, arming him with the tools to become a school administrator in upstate New York. Still, Duke knew there was more he could do to address the problems he had witnessed.

So Duke entered the world of academia when he was hired by Stanford University to direct its Instructional Leadership Program, focusing his attention on guiding and shaping America’s future educational leaders and administrators.

Now at UVA, Duke researches America’s low-performing schools. An internationally known specialist on school improvement, Duke has conducted numerous studies on the school-turnaround process and has designed training programs on improving struggling schools. Duke was also instrumental in establishing the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education, a joint venture of UVA’s Darden School of Business and the Curry School that strives to help leaders in education operate school systems effectively and efficiently.

In Duke’s newest book, “The Children Left Behind: America’s Struggle to Improve Its Lowest-Performing Schools” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), he discusses the issues facing the public education system as the No Child Left Behind Act gives way to the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Q. What problems did the No Child Left Behind Act intend to address?

A. The No Child Left Behind Act received bipartisan support. At the time, the intent was to focus attention on the very lowest-performing schools. Never before had the federal government zeroed in on the lowest 5 percent.

Also for the first time, there was an actual prescription for what these schools could do. Those four prescribed strategies reflected a range of opinions about what needed to be done, including closing the schools; converting them to charter schools; firing the principal and making changes to the curriculum and in how time was allocated; and firing the principal and half of the teachers.

Q. In what ways did NCLB succeed and in what ways did it fail?

A. While some states have done reasonably well in assisting their lowest-performing schools, others have really struggled.

The Recovery School District in Louisiana has been a reasonable success. Out of over 100 schools in the district, only three or four of the highest-performing schools were kept and the others were converted to charter schools. The average performance on state tests of the African-American students in the charter schools has exceeded the performance of African-American students elsewhere in Louisiana.

Cincinnati, Ohio is the poster child for a successful district turnaround. UVA worked with Cincinnati during the early years of the Darden/Curry program.

Unfortunately, while there have been successes, they haven’t been nearly as plentiful as folks had hoped. One of the strong beliefs in our political system is that of local control, which is probably as much myth as it is reality. People cling to that belief in terms of low-performing schools. Some of the greatest successes I’ve seen have been at local level, but so have the greatest failures.

Q. What do you think the reasoning is behind some of NCLB’s failures?

A. Trying to understand the reasons why some states did better than others is a major part of the book. What comes out of the analysis is predictable: The states that have done poorly allowed the mission of

- See more at:UVA Professor’s New Book Wary of Top-Down School Reform | UVA Today:

FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks

FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks:

FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks

Just when the current crop of presidential candidates was making Barack Obama look good, John King, the new “dog” at the federal Department of Education(FedED), pulls an Arne Duncan and attacks the opt-out movement with the same old set of tricks.

FedED claims the purpose of the proposals is to give states “the clarity they need” to implement the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). But in the proposals, King and FedED aim right at the heart of the opt-out movement. They list punitive steps states must take to ensure 95% of their students take the tests or else face a cut-off of federal funds. States must assign a “comprehensive, summative rating for each school to provide a clear picture of its overall standing,” report on an individual school’s performance on each indicator, and take “robust action” against schools that do not test 95% of their students.

A summary of the proposed regulations is online.

My support for the opt-out movement and opposition to ESSA, Common Core, and Common Core aligned high-stakes testing is laid-out in a number of my Huffington Post blogs.

Ironically, the real educational issues are totally ignored by ESSA, FedED, and King.
ESSA left most educational policymaking power with the states. As long as states drill and test 95% of their students, they can use whatever tests they want, grade them as they wish, provide inadequate curriculum, systematically underfund education, and bankrupt public school systems to support cronies operating for-profit charter school networks. States are supposed to intervene to improve consistently underperforming schools, but there are no guidelines or requirements for action. The only thing FedED and King seem committed to ensuring is the end of the opt-out movement.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, after reviewing the proposals, issued a statement that she was disappointed with key parts of the regulations. According to Weingarten, “Rather than listen to the outcry by parents and educators over hypertesting, the department offers specific punitive consequences for when fewer than 95 percent of students participate in tests. This doesn’t solve the issue of the misuse of testing. It simply inflames the problem by suggesting punitive consequences for those who are so frustrated by the misuse and high-stakes nature of standardized testing that they want to opt their kids out.”

Bob Schaeffer, the public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, or FairTest, accused Secretary of Education King of continuing to “promote the kind of federal overreach that led to widespread rejection of No Child Left Behind.’”

According to FedED, they are “interested in hearing even more from stakeholders” and there will be a sixty-day “public comment period” starting May 31 and ending July 31, 2016. King et al claim, “We are taking these comments very seriously, understanding that our final regulations will be stronger because of that input.” As FedED Threatens Opt Out Movement: New Dog, Same Old Tricks: