War on Women Teachers - Fight On, Ladies BY MARLA KILFOYLE AND MELISSA TOMLINSON

War on Women Teachers:

Fight On, Ladies

BY MARLA KILFOYLE AND MELISSA TOMLINSON

Opponents of Common Core educational standards were at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver to voice their opposition to the program Getty Images http://bit.ly/1AVUVMu

 As we usher in Women’s History Month it is important to examine the many battles that women have faced over the years. From bell hooks, to Susan B. Anthony, to Aurora Levins Morales, we have seen women battle misogyny and marginalization. Nothing rings more true to us at this time as the war we see on teachers. The war on teachers IS a war on women.

Women United for Public Education wrote a powerful article on this a few months ago where they said,

“an occupation that houses predominantly women is the direct target of a male-dominated system. Is the drop and halt of this profession as seen in the statistics above due to economics? That may be partly responsible. But, as the gender-defining roles within our society become even more blurred, we feel that those in power are feeling the potential loss of their hierarchical stature and are seeking to retain their positions.”

As woman fight even harder against the dominance of a male-centered society, the push against them becomes even stronger. Within the last several months, we have seen women in the education activist world targeted for speaking out for children and their profession. Deborah Vailes, a teacher in the Rapides Parish School District, shared a photo showing a little girl crying about Common Core . She did this from her home computer. Vailes post was reported to her principal by a third party and she was called in by her principal, Dana Nolan, and given a written reprimand. Vailes is currently suing to keep her job.

Peggy Robertson, one of the founders of United Opt Out, announced earlier this year she would not be administering the PARCC in a heartfelt letter to the community in which she teaches.  In theletter she states,

“We must begin to take down this profit machine by beginning with the data the corporations so dearly love. No data. No profit. I will not hand over Colorado’s children (and their data) to the corporations via federal mandates.” 

“Our children are not gaining from the Common Core standards, curriculum, and testing; instead, I see corporations profiting immensely, along with politicians and various other individuals who have jumped on the Common Core train. The link between the Common Core standards, curriculum, and testing is inextricable…. Public education is the new cash cow; privatization is the end goal. We must begin to take down this profit machine by beginning with the data the corporations so dearly love. No data. No profit. I will not hand over Colorado’s children (and their data) to the corporations via federal mandates.”

The Denver Post on March 1st documented the district’s thoughts that Robertson’s stance was indeed “job threatening.” Sadly, her local refused to publicly support her. Pam Shamburg spokesperson for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, states that the, “DCTA board did not vote to encourage teachers to refuse test administration.”

In another case, a female teacher in Wyoming, who asked not to be identified, shared with the news outlet Truth in American Education that she had a gag order placed on her regarding talking about her opposition to the Common Core Standards. She writes about sharing her concerns at a department meeting,

“I shared my feelings, concerns and opinions. I suggested they become aware that there are two sides to this and to be prepared to have an opinion. I pointed out that questions could come from concerned parents or others in the community. I also shared that my main concern was with the changes to data privacy and losing local control. When I was finishing my War on Women Teachers:

2013-2014 Final School and District Evaluation Results Released | New York State Education Department

2013-2014 Final School and District Evaluation Results Released | New York State Education Department:

2013-2014 Final School and District Evaluation Results Released

The New York State Education Department today released the final results of the second year of statewide teacher and principal evaluation. These data include district- and school-level results. The aggregate, preliminary statewide results were released in December 2014. 

The final evaluation results show more than 95 percent of teachers statewide are rated effective (54 percent) or highly effective (42 percent); 4 percent are rated as developing; 1 percent are rated ineffective.  Ninety-four percent of principals are rated effective (66 percent) or highly effective (28 percent).

“The ratings show there’s much more work to do to strengthen the evaluation system,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch said.  “There’s a real contrast between how our students are performing and how their teachers and principals are evaluated.  The goal of the APPR process is to identify exceptional teachers who can serve as mentors and role models, and identify struggling teachers to make sure they get the help they need to improve.  The evaluation system we have now doesn’t do that.  The ratings from districts don’t reflect the struggles our students face to achieve college and career readiness.  State law must be changed to build an evaluation system that supports teaching and learning in classrooms across the State.  Our students deserve no less.”

“Unfortunately, in far too many districts across the State, we see evaluation results that do not reveal the true performance of educators, and annual student growth goals that do not reflect rigorous expectations,”  Acting Commissioner Beth Berlin said.  “We have recommended common-sense changes to State law that will ensure evaluation results reflect true differences in teacher effectiveness and student growth.”

Berlin noted that New York City implemented an evaluation system for the first time in the 2013-14 school year and almost 70 percent of districts submitted material changes to their APPR plans since the 2012-13 school year, making year to year comparisons difficult.  Berlin also noted that, in response to the Department’s Testing Transparency Reports issued July 1, more than 100 districts submitted changes to their APPR plans that reduced testing (see: http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/test/teachers-leaders/teach-more-test-less/home.html). 

Results disaggregated by district and by subcomponents vary significantly across the state.  Some district evaluation systems provided a greater level of differentiation, which means that teachers and principals in these districts will benefit from more individualized professional feedback.   

New York City, whose evaluation plan was imposed by former Commissioner King when the New York City Department of Education could not reach agreement on the terms of the evaluation plan with the teachers union, showed greater differentiation than most districts in the State.  Although New York City teachers and principals were evaluated on the same overall subcomponents as the rest of the State, the three subcomponents used different scoring ranges to determine the subcomponent rating categories (i.e., Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, Ineffective).  Less than 10 percent of teachers in the city are rated Highly Effective, while 83 percent are rated Effective, 7 percent are Developing and 1 percent are Ineffective. 

Tisch and Berlin said the Governor and Legislature should leverage lessons learned from districts that have effectively differentiated performance and amend Education Law in three ways:

1. Require statewide scoring ranges for all three of the subcomponents, as was done under the New York City APPR plan.  
2. Eliminate the locally-selected measures subcomponent.  The data reveal that the local processes for assigning points and setting targets in this subcomponent do not differentiate performance.  Elimination of this subcomponent could also reduce the number of local assessments students are required to take, addressing the most frequent parent concern with this State law.
3. Require that for a teacher to be rated “Effective” or better on the other comparable measures of student growth (also known as student learning objectives (SLOs), which are used for more than 80 percent of teachers who do not have State-provided growth scores), districts must set a rigorous target that a teacher’s students achieve at least one year of academic growth. 

A number of districts showed similar or more differentiation than New York City, including a number of districts participating in Strengthening Teacher and Leader Effectiveness (STLE) grant program.  The level of differentiation is significantly impacted by local collective bargaining agreements and the manner in which local measures and student learning growth targets were implemented. 

Some districts showed less differentiation in 2013-14 than in 2012-13 when they made changes to their evaluation plans.  Although all evaluation plans are reviewed by the Department and revised by districts prior to approval, differentiation in approved plans can still be limited by statutory allowance for local decision-making through collective bargaining.  Although the Department has issued corrective action plans, those corrective action plans are prevented by statute from requiring changes that conflict with local collective bargaining agreements, even when the result is lack of differentiation. 

The differences in ratings show there is much more work to be done.  The Board of Regents has proposed allocating $80 million in the 2015-2016 State Budget to support the continuation of the STLE grants to help ensure that all teachers and principals across the state benefit from a strong evaluation system that supports student learning and personalized professional development.

The full results can be found at http://data.nysed.gov.  Under the 2013-14 "Available State Data", select Annual Professional Performance Review Ratings and State Provided Growth Ratings.  Data are available under the “2013-14” tab at the State, County, BOCES, District and School level by using the search box or navigation tool bar.2013-2014 Final School and District Evaluation Results Released | New York State Education Department:

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Follow the Commissioner on Twitter: @NYSEDNews

Turning Conflict Into Trust Improves Schools And Student Learning | Shanker Institute

Turning Conflict Into Trust Improves Schools And Student Learning | Shanker Institute:

Turning Conflict Into Trust Improves Schools And Student Learning

 by Greg Anrig -- March 3, 2015

Our guest author today is Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs at The Century Foundation and author of Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools.

In recent years, a number of studies (discussed below; also see here and here) have shown that effective public schools are built on strong collaborative relationships, including those between administrators and teachers. These findings have helped to accelerate a movement toward constructing such partnerships in public schools across the U.S. However, the growing research and expanding innovations aimed at nurturing collaboration have largely been neglected by both mainstream media and the policy community.

Studies that explore the question of what makes successful schools work never find a silver bullet, but they do consistently pinpoint commonalities in how those schools operate. The University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research produced the most compelling research of this type, published in a book called Organizing Schools for Improvement. The consortium gathered demographic and test data, and conducted extensive surveys of stakeholders, in more than 400 Chicago elementary schools from 1990 to 2005. That treasure trove of information enabled the consortium to identify with a high degree of confidence the organizational characteristics and practices associated with schools that produced above-average improvement in student outcomes.

The most crucial finding was that the most effective schools, based on test score improvement over time after controlling for demographic factors, had developed an unusually high degree of "relational trust" among their administrators, teachers, and parents.

Five organizational features contributed to this success:

• A coherent instructional guidance system, in which curriculum and assessment were coordinated within and across grades with meaningful teacher involvement;
• An effective system to improve professional capacity by providing ongoing support and guidance for teachers, including opening teachers' classroom work for examination by colleagues and external consultants;
• Strong ties among school personnel, parents, and community service providers, with an integrated support network for students;
• A student-centered learning climate that identified and responded to problems individual students were experiencing;
• Leadership focused on cultivating teachers, parents, and community members so that they became invested in sharing responsibility for the school's improvement.

These five features tended to reinforce one another; a significant weakness in any of them could threaten progress. Schools with strong rankings on all five criteria were 10 times more likely to improve than schools that were weak in the majority of the areas. The consortium also found that principal Turning Conflict Into Trust Improves Schools And Student Learning | Shanker Institute:

Opting Out of Testing: A Befuddling Mix of State Rules - Curriculum Matters - Education Week

Opting Out of Testing: A Befuddling Mix of State Rules - Curriculum Matters - Education Week:

Opting Out of Testing: A Befuddling Mix of State Rules

By Catherine Gewertz on March 2, 2015 10:17 AM

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Spring testing season has officially begun, and in 2015, that can only mean one thing: another injection of fuel into the fire of assessment opt-outs. 

We have three exhibits to offer you this morning: The New York Times examines the wave of testing opt-out activity nationwide. The Associated Press reports that thousands of students in New Mexico are using social media to organize a test boycott. And Pennsylvania's Patriot Newscontinues to roll out a series of stories on anti-testing sentiment in the Keystone State.

Even as assessment pushback grows, however, the state of the law on the right to boycott tests isn't as clear as you'd expect. The Education Commission of the States, a research group based in Denver, took on the thorny question of what's permitted, and found a confusing assortment of laws and policies, and a whole lot of even-more-confusing silence on the question on opting out. 

In a new white paper, the ECS found that only a handful of states have clear laws one way or the other on whether parents can keep their children out of state-mandated tests. But in most states, there is no law on the subject, or the law isn't clear. In such murky terrain, some state departments of education have clarified their policies on opt-outs, but others "are often silent on the issue," the ECS says.

Activists have plunged into that gap. United Opt Out, which has helped organize testing boycotts in a number of states, has issued guidance to help parents mount arguments against schools that resist their attempts to keep their children out of testing. FairTest has built a page of resourcesfor parents and students who wish to opt out. 

The ECS paper makes it clear that in many states, the law books are not the place to look for clarity on the question of whether parents can excuse their children from state testing. Few states have clear laws on that issue, but California and Utah do: they allow opt-outs. Texas and Arkansas have laws, too, but they tilt the other way: they forbid opt-outs.

More often, the question is addressed by state departments of education, when it's addressed at Opting Out of Testing: A Befuddling Mix of State Rules - Curriculum Matters - Education Week:

National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Worst - 10th Period

10th Period:

National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Worst

For years now, I've been saying Ohio is unique among the 50 states for its crazy charter school system. And last week, many prominent charter school supporters and advocates agreed.

"Then you have folks at the low end, of which Ohio is a strong case."
"There are operators who are exploiting things."
"Ohio needs a top-to-bottom overhaul of its charter school sector."

These are all quotes from prominent national, pro-charter figures (some of whom have criticized me for being unfair to charters in the past). But the data are what the data are. When your charter sector receives more Fs than As, Bs and Cs combined on your report cards, there's a problem. When that's being done at the expense of state resources for the 90% of kids who aren't in charter schools, it compounds the problem.

Yet there remain folks who cling to the fantasy that Ohio's charter school sector, on the whole, is performing just fine. I really hope this newly revealed national perception shames the legislature into the bold, necessary action our kids need. Ohio's a joke on this issue. You know how we, as Ohioans, have mocked West Virginia over the years as backward? Well, that's exactly what the rest of the country is doing to us on charter schools. And I'm mad. Because it didn't have to be this way.

But because of huge campaign contributions made over the years (Bill Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and David Brennan of White Hat Management have contributed more than $6.5 million to politicians and received about 1 out of every 4 dollars spent on Ohio charters since they started), here we are. Here we are with my two kids losing significant state revenue so that big campaign contributors can collect money. Here we are with nearly one-third of all Ohio dropouts coming from those big contributors. Here we are with a sector whose overall failure is so staggering it borders on unbelievable. Here we are staring at three decades of failure -- an entire generation of our children -- with an unprecedented opportunity to make right what has gone so wrong.

Will our leaders live up to their title? I pray they do.

The time for debate is over. Ohio's charter school sector -- save for a few really great schools in Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus and a few other cities -- sucks. Only the deadest of dead-enders can't see it. Our kids in both charter and local public schools deserve better than this now $8.3 billion boondoggle.

We need to shut down the worst schools, ensure all financial records of all 10th Period:

Stop Testing and Punishing Teachers - NYTimes.com

Stop Testing and Punishing Teachers - NYTimes.com:

Stop Testing and Punishing Teachers

Mercedes Schneider is a high school English teacher and the author of "A Chronicle of Echoes: Who's Who in the Implosion of American Public Education."

UPDATED MARCH 3, 2015, 3:30 AM

When I began teaching in 1991, the quality of a teacher would never have been reduced to a student's score on a standardized test. However, it is 2015, and standardized-test-driven education “reform” dominates the political and business minds driving nationwide education policy. “Quality” in the public education classroom has become synonymous with “high test scores,” and a good teacher is the one who raises student scores on standardized tests.

If you want good teachers, reduce class size and give us autonomy, respect and time to plan during the day and confer with our colleagues.

As result, teachers are being forced to choose between viewing students as multifaceted human beings worthy of opportunities for well-rounded, healthy development via a dynamic teacher-student relationship and our professional self-preservation, gained by twisting our students’ classroom lives into a largely dehumanizing, career-saving vehicle. Get those scores up, or lose your job.

I choose the healthy development of my students, without reservation. However, I understand the pressure teachers are under to put test scores ahead of students.

This school year is the second time in which I must “prove my effectiveness” based on my students’ test scores. Their performance is 50 percent of my rating. Classroom observations will count for the other 50 percent, unless my students’ test scores are too low, in which case low test scores override any positive administrative rating.

Last year I was rated “highly effective.” Many of my talented colleagues did not fare as well. For my "highly effective" rating, I received a "bonus" of $427.76. But since I don’t control test selection nor test results, and since there is no selective admission into my classroom, this year’s “highly effective” rating could easily be next year’s “ineffective” one. And then what?

We are sailing a test-score-driven sea of professional uncertainty.

If this skewed thinking continues to drive educational policy, no smart person will want to be a teacher. And there will be no teaching profession, because dedicated classroom teachers will give up in the face of this insanity.

If we want to assess and retain good teachers, for starters we need to stop the test-and-punish ratings systems. A second step would be to ask teachers what they need to do their jobs effectively. I know, for instance, that if my classes exceed a certain size (around 20 students), it becomes difficult for me to work individually with students and to differentiate based on skill level. I also need time to plan during the day, talk to my colleagues and discuss what works in the classroom. And I need support and trust from administrators.

To thrive, the teaching profession must be afforded respect and autonomy. Teachers choose teaching because they desire to invest their lives in other human beings. No test score can capture the value of such an investment. 

Stop Testing and Punishing Teachers - NYTimes.com:

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Topics: Education, schools, schools and schooling, teachers

The 'It’s Never Too Early to Revise History’ Award | National Education Policy Center

The 'It’s Never Too Early to Revise History’ Award | National Education Policy Center:

The 'It’s Never Too Early to Revise History’ Award

To Sonecon, Inc. for The Economic Benefits of New York City’s Public School Reforms, 2002-2013

Read Review →

Read all 2014 Bunkum Award winners →

Michael Bloomberg hadn’t yet left New York’s City Hall before a series of publications were released that put a rosy gloss on his administration’s educational record. One such report, The Economic Benefits of New York City’s Public School Reforms, 2002-2013, was produced by Sonecon, Inc. a Washington, D.C., economic advisory firm that claims to apply “methodologies that produce analytically unassailable results.” Sonecon’s chairman, Robert Shapiro, authored the report along with Kevin Hassett, the American Enterprise Institute scholar who co-authored the visionary (i.e., delusional) 1999 book, “Dow 36,000.” The Sonecon report credited New York City education reforms during the Bloomberg years with boosting the City’s economy to the tune of $74 billion. “While such estimates are always an exercise in some level of speculation, this report relies on highly inappropriate assumptions to reach its conclusions,” reviewer and NYU economics of education professor Sean Corcoran explained. “Specifically, it attributes all gains in high school completion and college enrollment to the reforms, applies national statistics on earnings and college completion to the marginal graduate in NYC, and extrapolates cross-sectional associations between graduation rates and home prices at the zip code level as the causal effect of higher graduation rates.” For example, breaking down the report’s math, Corcoran finds that the estimated impact of the Bloomberg-era reforms on property values is equivalent to “two-thirds of the entire increase in residential property values between 2007 and 2013.” Finally, let’s not forget that the Bloomberg-era reforms were preceded by a landmark court ruling which, Corcoran notes, “helped drive a large increase in state resources for the City’s schools”—yet that case is not mentioned in the Sonecon report. The “back of the envelope” estimates that the Sonecon report makes, Corcoran concludes, “are pure fantasy.”

And finally…The 'It’s Never Too Early to Revise History’ Award | National Education Policy Center:

Superintendents – You will held responsible for misleading parents and students on the SBAC Opt-Out Issue - Wait What?

Superintendents – You will held responsible for misleading parents and students on the SBAC Opt-Out Issue - Wait What?:



Superintendents – You will held responsible for misleading parents and students on the SBAC Opt-Out Issue

 Last year Governor Dannel Malloy’s State Department of Education sent out an inappropriate, offense and disrespectful memo to local school superintendents instructing them on how to mislead and hassle parents into falsely believing that they did not have the right to protect their children from the new Common Core SBAC Testing Scheme.

After the memo received media attention here at Wait, What? and elsewhere, the memo disappeared from the State Department of Education’s website (You can find it here: State Department of Education SBAC Memo)

This year Malloy’s Education Department is ducking the issue but it continues to communicate with superintendents through the director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS).

Using last year’s memo and information provided by CAPPS, some Connecticut school superintendents continue to mislead students, parents, teachers and the public about the fundamental right that parents have to opt their children out of the inappropriate, unfair and discriminatory Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) Testing Program.

Superintendents who are claiming that parents cannot opt out their children from of the Common Core SBAC test because there is, “No opt out provision in Connecticut law,”  are intentionally overlooking the fact that parents have the fundamental right to remove their children from the Common Core SBAC Testing program and that there is no federal or state law, regulation or policy that allows the government or local school district to punish a child (or parent) who decides to opt their children out of the Common Core SBAC Test.

Superintendents who continue to mislead parents are placing themselves and their local Boards of Education in significant legal jeopardy.

Any attempts to place inappropriate barriers in the way of parents implementing their legal right to opt their children out of the test will be met with swift legal action, including the potential use of lawsuits alleging that superintendents are intentionally violating the constitutionally protected civil rights of parents.

In addition, superintendents who fail to adhere to Connecticut’s Code of Professional Responsibility for School Administrators (Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies Section 10-145d-400b) will face extremely serious complaints that their behavior violates their legal duty to follow the code associated with their state certification and that disciplinary action is needed against those individuals

As every Connecticut school superintendent knows, according to state regulation, that superintendents and otehr professional school administrators must;

• Respect the dignity of each family, its culture, customs and beliefs;
• Promote and maintain appropriate, ongoing and timely written and oral communications with the family;
• Respond in a timely fashion to families’ concerns;
• Consider the family’s perspective on issues involving its children;
• Encourage participation of the family in the educational process; and
• Foster open communication among the family, staff and administrators

In addition, the code requires that professional school administrator, in full recognition of obligation to the student, shall;Superintendents – You will held responsible for misleading parents and students on the SBAC Opt-Out Issue - Wait What?:

Parents Can Opt Out - United Opt Out National

Click Here to go to United Opt Out National: 

Click Here to go to the Website- United Opt Out Team

Better neighborhood schools - Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago

Better neighborhood schools - Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago:

I believe it is necessary to change course dramatically from the so-called "reforms" offered by Mayor Emanuel and instead take a new, holistic approach.

The Garcia education platform

My program involves giving the school system back to the people through an elected school board; reducing to the barest legal minimum the plethora of high-stakes, standardized tests by which we falsely judge schools, students, and teachers; placing a moratorium on further charter schools; expanding public education to include pre-kindergarten and even earlier; and reducing class size, which is one of the largest in the state.

We must further provide a multitude of proper books, libraries, and recreational facilities and course offerings in languages and the arts.

As Mayor, I will make sure critical bilingual and dual-language programs will be available to all students that need and desire them. We need a serious expansion of dual language programs into all communities in Chicago. There is solid evidence that fluency in a second or even third language, starting at an early age, helps students academically across the board, putting them in position to be truly college and career ready.  These programs are also essential in our increasingly globally tied economy, as recognized by the recently established Illinois State Seal of Biliteracy.

I would like to establish more small schools, such as the one I helped create in Little Village, which includes students from North Lawndale, where several specialized schools operate creatively in a single high-school building.

We can add more excellent schools within the public system rather than adding more charters. We have great selective enrollment schools, which should be used as examples of what can be done within the public system.  We should use them in the way that charters were originally intended—to adapt and utilize the techniques developed there to proliferate throughout the system.

The key points in my education platform are:

• Halt school closings
• Restore democracy with an elected school board
• Pull the plug on high-stakes standardized testing
• Stop starving public schools to feed charters

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Halt school closings

The recent school closings have been a disaster for affected students and the neighborhoods in which schools were shuttered. We should do all in our power to undo the damage to students and neighborhoods that suffered from the needless mass closings of some 50 schools under the Emanuel regime.

Closings were promoted as matters of economy, yet a recent NBC 5 investigation showed that "Utility bills are almost as much as they were when all of those school buildings were open, and some have incredible amounts of vandalism damage."  One building alone will require $12 million to repair.

Restore democracy with an elected school board

We are the only school district in the state with an appointed, not an elected, school board, thanks to state legislation passed in 1995—which I voted against as state legislator. This is the board that closed our schools and cut the education budget, following Mayor Emanuel’s orders. Would this have happened with an elected board, responsible to the citizens?

This raises the question of constitutional rights and civil liberties: the right to elect those who govern an institution so vital to our city.  School systems are perhaps the main governmental bodies touching the lives of a majority of our citizens. That's why I believe an elected school board is a constitutional right.

Therefore, one of my first acts as mayor will be to go to Springfield and ask the legislature to revoke the mayoral control legislation and let Chicago take its place with the rest of Illinois by having an elected board.

Lacking action in the legislature, I will file a federal voting-rights lawsuit based on the Constitution and civil rights laws.

Pull the plug on high-stakes standardized testing

When it comes to standardized, high-stakes testing, our kids are over-tested and under-educated. Let's be clear: “grade level” standards in reading and math are seriously flawed from the start. The current “grade level” or passing mark is a number agreed upon in a jurisdiction, usually in collaboration with the publishers of the tests themselves. Even US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan acknowledges that “standards” vary wildly from place to place.

Worse yet is the reinforcement of the notion that testing well in one or two subjects—important as reading and math may be—is any real measurement of genuine education. Educating kids to be good citizens includes teaching reasoning, critical thinking, creativity, about human relationships and so forth.

Making everything dependent on test scores in two subjects simply builds in larger failures. Ultimately it causes teachers, schools and entire systems to narrow educational goals and teach to the tests—or cheat, which we’ve seen recently around the country and in Chicago in past years.

It is especially unfair to teachers to evaluate their performance on how their students do on standardized tests. There are far better ways, including peer review and collaborative teaching.

On testing, according to a recent article in The Nation,"The teachers’ arguments were bolstered by 88 researchers from 16 Chicago-area universities who had signed an open letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel opposing the city’s plan for using student test scores to evaluate teachers and principals. The letter said, ‘The new evaluation system… centers on misconceptions about student growth, with potentially negative impact on the education of Chicago’s children.’” 

Although the new standards for evaluating schools recently announced by CPS are said to reduce the proportion that tests will play in evaluating schools, there is still far too much reliance on those tests—65 percent for elementary schools and 45 percent for high schools.

Standardized test proliferation has given rise to a national opt-out movement. And it is small wonder that thousands of kids and parents, here and elsewhere, have boycotted them. Several jurisdictions including some in Florida and the entire state of Colorado are working on opting out.

I must note that at present I have deep reservations about Common Core, which sounds at first like an improvement on the standardized tests on math and reading, but it was thrust upon the country untried and untested—not ready for prime time.

Stop starving public schools to feed charters

Charter school proponents like Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett, argue that those publicly funded, semi privatized schools offer communities greater choice in education because dropping union regulations enable the schools to develop innovative new programming and thus improve education by creating models for public schools to adapt.

This may have been the case historically, but charters long ago ceased offering anything new that public schools could utilize, particularly since teachers unions in today’s world have reformed significantly, focusing more on education than protecting the jobs of teachers. Credit American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Chicago counterpart Karen Lewis for this.

Critics raise several issues about charters. Students at some perform well, but in Chicago and New York even the best charters are outperformed by the best public schools. Furthermore, charters drain increasing amounts of public money while paying staff lower wages. Many believe that the charter movement’s ultimate goal is privatizing public education.

Further, Chicago has shamefully allowed some charter schools to openly flout state requirements for many years by not offering necessary bilingual services. Many students enter the Chicago Public Schools without sufficient fluency in English nor the ability to master academic subjects that are taught in English.  It is critical that Chicago offer the best bilingual education programs so that these students can learn English while not falling behind in their other subjects.

Last year CPS slashed the budget and closed 50 schools, claiming closures will reduce the $1 billion debt, however they have not provided any proof of savings. And here’s Alice-in-Wonderland part: Mad Hatter Emanuel now wants to open 22 new charters, some in areas where he closed schools because of “underutilization.” These will cost Chicagoans $225 million over the next decade.

Why all the new charters? Because they are the new coin of political patronage. A glaring example is the UNO group, until recently led by Juan Rangel, who was forced out after exposes of cronyism and corruption in its charter network. UNO received more than $100 million in state money and Rangel, who earned $260,000 a year, was a co-chair of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign at the same time that UNO personnel worked against Emanuel’s critics in local political campaigns.

One of the first steps I would take is to require that charters report the same data as traditional public schools—and data that is unique to them related to lotteries, student discipline, declines in student population from grade to grade, etc—so that real comparisons can be made to inform intelligent decisions.

Share the education platform with your friends!

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Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

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