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Sunday, November 8, 2015

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 11/8/15



CORPORATE ED REFORM




Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?
Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?: Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. RicciottiJoseph A. Ricciotti is a retired education and fellow public education advocate and commentator.  His latest article, Time to end standardized testing mania first appeared in the CT Post.Joseph Ricciotti writes;It took the power of parents in the nation as part o
by mike simpson / 4h 
The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers) | The Jose Vilson
The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers) | The Jose Vilson: The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers)Last week, I got to address the New Jersey Education Association about a number of different issues, but I need to leave this one note here for posterity. Here’s a remixed, written-out version of the remarks I made at the NJEA Convention. The intent of the message, and many of its
by mike simpson / 4h 
NYC Public School Parents: Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!
NYC Public School Parents: Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!:  Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!Fred Smith is an expert on testing and a critical voice on the flaws in the Common Core standards and the state exams.  His testimony to the Governor's Common Core task force is below. The presentation given by Lisa Rudley to the Common Core task force, co-founder o
by mike simpson / 4h 
Micah Ali, President of the Compton Unified School, Compton students, teachers file suit for 'complex trauma' - Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC
Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC: Compton students, teachers file suit for 'complex trauma'Compton students, teachers file suit for 'complex trauma'A provocative lawsuit playing out in Compton could have nationwide implications on if complex trauma could be classified as a disability under federal law. Kathryn Eidmann, Staff Attorney at Public Counsel, Pedro Noguera from UCLA and Dr. Robert Ross...Du
by mike simpson / 4h 
5 Famous Billionaires Dismantling Black Public Schools
5 Famous Billionaires Dismantling Black Public Schools: How These 5 Famous Billionaires Are Dismantling Black Public SchoolsThe biggest racists in the US aren’t running around with white hoods and burning crosses. They’re running Fortune 500 companies and burning public school systems across the country in favor of privately-run, publicly-funded charter schools.While none of the famous billionaire
by mike simpson / 5h 
Peg with Pen: Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurge
Peg with Pen: Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurge: Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurgeLearn anything anywhere, you say? Not so much. The learning you describe is clearly confined to the "efficiency" that comes with the pared-down learning found via online modules that must gather data ever so efficiently in order to meet the demands of the market - NOT the demands of lear
by mike simpson / 6h 
NYC Public School Parents: Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned exams
NYC Public School Parents: Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned exams: Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned examsBelow is the testimony that my assistant, Miho, gave  on behalf of Class Size Matters at the Cuomo Common Core Task Force listening tour in Queens on Friday.  I will be postin
by mike simpson / 6h 
Wait, what?! Here’s just a few issues that COULD be solved with Superintendent Nyland’s $13,000 Raise. | Seattle Education
Wait, what?! Here’s just a few issues that COULD be solved with Superintendent Nyland’s $13,000 Raise. | Seattle Education: Wait, what?! Here’s just a few issues that COULD be solved with Superintendent Nyland’s $13,000 Raise.“My raise is not going to solve any of the issues we have on the table. I’ve done better than anyone else and I will take the smallest raise in the district as far as I know,
by mike simpson / 6h 
CURMUDGUCATION: TN: A Broadie Amateur Takes Over ASD
CURMUDGUCATION: TN: A Broadie Amateur Takes Over ASD: TN: A Broadie Amateur Takes Over ASDImagine a hospital where the very toughest cases, the most inoperable cancers, the most stubborn infections, the most complicated reconstructive surgeries, and the most challenging diagnoses-- those are all handed over to someone who works in the personnel office and who has no medical training at all.Now ima
by mike simpson / 7h 
In Deep South, students are still paddled | SunHerald
In Deep South, students are still paddled | SunHerald: In Deep South, students are still paddledPHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY RALPH LAUER/FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM Although a majority of states have banned the spanking or paddling of students over the past few decades, public schools in some Southern states still depend on the practice - creating one more stress point for students already more likely to co
by mike simpson / 8h 
CURMUDGUCATION: Social Impact Bonds for Dummies
CURMUDGUCATION: Social Impact Bonds for Dummies: Social Impact Bonds for DummiesWe've been hearing about Social Impact Bonds, or "Pay for Success" programs for a few years now, but only recently have they entered the world of public education. Chicago, for example, launched one $17 million program last year for Pre-K, and last month Utah's United Way was happy to announce that Goldman-Sa
by mike simpson / 9h 
Suspensions discouraged. Yeah, so? | @ THE CHALKFACE
Suspensions discouraged. Yeah, so? | @ THE CHALKFACE: Suspensions discouraged. Yeah, so?There are nationwide efforts to reduce suspensions. They are applied inequitably and I definitely agree they are ineffective. Although, I will say that in some cases, everyone, teacher and student alike, need a “cooling off” period. Suspension may not be the ultimate answer, however.Our district shifted to a ne
by mike simpson / 9h 
Ann Marie Corgill Says Goodbye to Her Students | deutsch29
Ann Marie Corgill Says Goodbye to Her Students | deutsch29: Ann Marie Corgill Says Goodbye to Her StudentsAnn Marie CorgillOn October 29, 2015, 2014-15 Alabama Teacher of the Year Ann Marie Corgill resigned from teaching after being informed by the Alabama State Department of Education that she would need to complete further certification requirements to teach grades that she had been teaching for
by mike simpson / 9h 
Class Clown Or Gifted Student? It's A Matter Of Perspective : NPR Ed : NPR
Class Clown Or Gifted Student? It's A Matter Of Perspective : NPR Ed : NPR: Class Clown Or Gifted Student? It's A Matter Of PerspectiveWho doesn't love a class clown? That perfectly timed joke about the ancient Greek poet looking nothing like Homer Simpson is fun for everyone. Unless you're the teacher ... trying to teach a lesson about the Odyssey.As a teacher, the class clown is often your nemes
by mike simpson / 9h 
Randi Weingarten: Our school discipline mistake - NY Daily News
Randi Weingarten: Our school discipline mistake - NY Daily News: Our school discipline mistake: We should never have imposed zero-tolerance policies on kidsWe all want safe and welcoming school environments where students can learn and teachers can teach. But two recent disturbing examples of extreme reactions to student conduct have brought the negative effects of such responses into sharp relief
by mike simpson / 9h 
Schools Matter: Spellings Leader in NC Taliban War on Public Ed
Schools Matter: Spellings Leader in NC Taliban War on Public Ed: Spellings Leader in NC Taliban War on Public EdValerie Strauss has posted a report by James Hogan on the effects of tje Tea Party Taliban that seized control of North Carolina politics and its public education system in 2012. Besides draconian cuts to everything from teacher positions to drivers' ed, the Bircher wing of corporate edu
by mike simpson / 9h 
Hillary Clinton: Most charter schools ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’ - The Washington Post
Hillary Clinton: Most charter schools ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’ - The Washington Post: Hillary Clinton: Most charter schools ‘don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them’Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who is running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, was  campaigning in South Carolina this w
by mike simpson / 9h 
What teachers just don’t get about homework - The Boston Globe
What teachers just don’t get about homework - The Boston Globe: What we don’t get about homeworkWhen students at Dover-Sherborn High School break for Thanksgiving later this month, there’s at least one thing they won’t have to worry about: homework.In a change from holidays past, the suburban Boston school district has declared Thanksgiving vacation a “homework-free weekend.” It’s the first of sev
by mike simpson / 10h 
Going soft on school discipline is another slap at poor kids who could excel | New York Post
Going soft on school discipline is another slap at poor kids who could excel | New York Post: Going soft on school discipline is another slap at poor kids who could excelLow-income strivers — impoverished families who follow the rules and work hard to climb the ladder to the middle class — may be the most underserved population in America today.For 20 years, national policies have focused largely
by mike simpson / 10h 
Ambrose: How do we save education? | The Columbian
Ambrose: How do we save education? | The Columbian: Ambrose: How do we save education?We must reward innovation while easing federal rulesGo back a bit and there was President Barack Obama promising us educational utopia. Then move forward some and what you have is a hugely expensive, bureaucratically dumbfounding mix of autocratic, divisive policies.Next up? Just this, fellow Americans: 2015 is t
by mike simpson / 11h 
What’s next for Michelle Rhee, once the national face of education activism? | The Sacramento Bee
What’s next for Michelle Rhee, once the national face of education activism? | The Sacramento Bee: What’s next for Michelle Rhee, once the national face of education activism?Michelle Rhee, the combative former D.C. public schools chancellor who founded the national advocacy group StudentsFirst, has retreated recently from public view.Rhee, who is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, was now
by mike simpson / 11h 

YESTERDAY

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 11/7/15
CORPORATE ED REFORMWhy some LAUSD teachers are balking at a new approach to discipline problems - LA TimesWhy some LAUSD teachers are balking at a new approach to discipline problems - LA Times: Why some LAUSD teachers are balking at a new approach to discipline problems In a South Los Angeles classroom, a boy hassles a girl. The teacher moves him to the back of the room, where he scowls, makes a
by mike simpson / 1d 











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Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?

Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?:

Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. Ricciotti




Joseph A. Ricciotti is a retired education and fellow public education advocate and commentator.  His latest article, Time to end standardized testing mania first appeared in the CT Post.
Joseph Ricciotti writes;
It took the power of parents in the nation as part of the “opt out” of standardized testing movement to realize that the use of standardized tests in public education is a dismal failure.
Needless to say, to hear the President of the United States shift his views on standardized testing should now prompt other politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, to give up the notion that testing can be used to assess students, teachers and schools.
Moreover, the change in the stifling use of standardized tests as a weapon against public school teachers will deal a deadly blow to the corporate education reformers in the country who relied on these tests for denigrating teachers as well as for closing public schools and for the expansion of charter schools.
Hopefully, President Obama’s change of heart concerning testing might also be the catalyst to elevate this issue for the current presidential campaign.
For example, in light of the early endorsement given to Hillary Clinton by 
Time to end standardized testing mania by Joseph A. Ricciotti - Wait What?:

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The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers) | The Jose Vilson

The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers) | The Jose Vilson:

The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers)

ChrisChristieHead




Last week, I got to address the New Jersey Education Association about a number of different issues, but I need to leave this one note here for posterity. Here’s a remixed, written-out version of the remarks I made at the NJEA Convention. The intent of the message, and many of its controversial pieces, remain intact unapologetically. There’ll be video soon, and I’ll share it a.s.a.p.
I’d like to talk about the idea of investment, and what it means to pay into the work we do as a union. The Supreme Court handed Governor Chris Christie a victory recently in asserting that the current pension structure is unenforceable, paving the way for him to restructure the pension system as he pleases. We have every right to protest unfair pension regulations, along with overemphasis on standardized testing and lack of resources. It should make anyone who pays into their pensions, The Investment (A Message To New Jersey Teachers) | The Jose Vilson:
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NYC Public School Parents: Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!

NYC Public School Parents: Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!:

 Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!



Fred Smith is an expert on testing and a critical voice on the flaws in the Common Core standards and the state exams.  His testimony to the Governor's Common Core task force is below. The presentation given by Lisa Rudley to the Common Core task force, co-founder of NYSAPE, that Fred refers to is well worth watching and is posted here.

Statement to the Common Core Task Force–LaGuardia Community College
Fred Smith – Nov. 6, 2015

Good afternoon. My name is Fred Smith. I served as a testing specialist and analyst for the New York City public school system and retired after 33 years. I’m a member of Change the Stakes, a parent awareness group that has spearheaded the steadily growing opt-out movement in New York City. 

Thank you for giving me time to present concerns about the quality of the tests aligned with the Common Core and the State Education Department’s unwillingness to provide information about the tests to parents and independent researchers.

But first I want to acknowledge the significance of Assemblywoman Nolan in these proceedings and in shaping whatever positive outcomes the Task Force may produce, if it hopes to restore rationality to education. As a respected legislator and Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, she is its preeminent member and must be the voice of the task force.

I attended its first public meeting last week in New Rochelle and was taken by Lisa Rudley’s presentation about the imposition of the Common Core Standards over the last few years and all the testing and anxiety it has brought down on students and teachers. Lisa is a parent advocate and a founder of New York State Allies for Public Education, a galvanizing force in last April’s statewide boycott of the testing program.

She set a tone that said We, the People, are tired of yet another task force. She asked what research had been done to show the efficacy of NYC Public School Parents: Fred Smith on the Common Core: Show me the evidence!:



Nancy Cauthen on the Common Core: stop experimenting on my children and other people's kids!



Here is the testimony of Nancy Cauthen to the Governor's Common Core Task Force on Friday.  Nancy is a public school parent, a member of Change the Stakes and NY State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), and a sociologist.

My name is Nancy Cauthen and I’ve been a NYC public school parent since 2002, the year No Child Left Behind went into effect. Both of my sons, who are now in high school, attended a traditional K-8 school in Washington Heights in Manhattan.

Having had the opportunity to watch No Child Left Behind and then Race to the Top unfold, my first point to the task force is this:  I urge you to consider your charge in the context of the long process that got us here. This grand experiment with high-stakes testing and now Common Core has been going on for a long time.

Yet, instead of research or evidence, this experiment has been based on: (1) a hyped narrative about the “failure of public education”;  (2) the personal beliefs about “what works” on the part of rich and powerful people, like Bill Gates and David Coleman, who lack the qualifications to make education policy; (3) simple attributions of causality, such as “bad teachers create bad academic outcomes”; and (4) a blatant disregard for the expertise of educators and of decades of research on early childhood and how to ameliorate the effects of poverty on school performance.

I say this in part as a political sociologist who studies public policy and researches strategies to reduce child and family poverty and increase opportunity. But as a public school parent, I am sick and tired of federal, state, and local politicians and officials experimenting on my children http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2015/11/nancy-cauthen-on-common-core-stop.html
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Micah Ali, President of the Compton Unified School, Compton students, teachers file suit for 'complex trauma' - Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC

Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC:

Compton students, teachers file suit for 'complex trauma'






Compton students, teachers file suit for 'complex trauma'

A provocative lawsuit playing out in Compton could have nationwide implications on if complex trauma could be classified as a disability under federal law. Kathryn Eidmann, Staff Attorney at Public Counsel, Pedro Noguera from UCLA and Dr. Robert Ross...
Duration: 9:35





Lawsuit takes aim at Compton school district

A lawsuit filed by a group of five students and three teachers against a school district in Compton, California would force the district to provide staff training and broaden mental health services. Micah Ali, President of the Compton Unified School...
Duration: 6:25





Micah Ali, President of the Compton Unified School





Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC:
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5 Famous Billionaires Dismantling Black Public Schools

5 Famous Billionaires Dismantling Black Public Schools:

How These 5 Famous Billionaires Are Dismantling Black Public Schools





The biggest racists in the US aren’t running around with white hoods and burning crosses. They’re running Fortune 500 companies and burning public school systems across the country in favor of privately-run, publicly-funded charter schools.
While none of the famous billionaires on this list are dues-paying members of racist groups, they’re engaging in actions that prey on the linchpins of the black community — public K-12 schools. Education reform by itself isn’t overtly racist, but when looking at the actions of these billionaires with a wider lens, it becomes apparent that the effort to privatize public education is primarily taking place in minority communities.
The charter school movement is particularly insidious, as it’s essentially a form of institutionalized racism veiled in altruism. In reference to the charter takeover of the New Orleans, Louisiana school district, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch put it this way:
“These heavy-handed tactics require a suspension of democracy that would not be tolerated in a white suburb, but can be done to powerless urban districts where the children are black and Hispanic,” Ravitch told In These Times. “That model requires firing all the teachers, no matter their performance, allowing them to reapply for a job, and replacing many of them with inexperienced TFA recruits. That model requires wiping out public schools and replacing them with privately managed schools that set their own standards for admission, discipline, expulsion, and are financially opaque.”
While charter schools have lately been able to brag on themselves as reports tout their higher test scores in math and reading compared to public schools, these studies leave out the fact that many charters refuse to help struggling children and instead dump them into public schools, in order to boost their own statistics. According to NY Chalkbeat, charter schools in New York City suspended 11 percent of students during the 2011-2012 school year, while public schools suspended just 4.2 percent. In fact, 11 NYC charter schools suspended as many as 30 percent of students that year. The charter suspension rate is likely higher, as charters don’t have to report in-school suspension rates.
The push for more charter schools isn’t based on a desire to better educate kids, but for the more mundane purpose of higher corporate profit. As the Washington Post pointed out, charter schools, on average, don’t do any better or worse when compared side-by-side with their public counterparts. In fact, if one were to replace the erroneous invisible “composite” public school student that Stanford University used in their report comparing charter and public school test scores with actual public school students, the results would likely be in favor of public schools.
So why the push for privately-run, publicly-funded charter schools?
The model of education reform is threefold — first, corporate education “reformers” push for “Common Core” standards by 5 Famous Billionaires Dismantling Black Public Schools:

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Peg with Pen: Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurge

Peg with Pen: Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurge:

Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurge





Learn anything anywhere, you say? 

Not so much. The learning you describe is clearly confined to the "efficiency" that comes with the pared-down learning found via online modules that must gather data ever so efficiently in order to meet the demands of the market - NOT the demands of learners. In essence, what you are describing is a dumbed-down education system that is void of real, authentic messy learning that comes with democratic thinking among children and teachers - a democratic curriculum that is derived by watching and observing children and determining how to best support them using their strengths and their passions. 

This sort of learning (via modules) ultimately creates sheeple - learning is directed by the modules Peg with Pen: Competency = Sheeple: My comment on EdSurge:
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NYC Public School Parents: Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned exams

NYC Public School Parents: Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned exams:



Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned exams




Below is the testimony that my assistant, Miho, gave  on behalf of Class Size Matters at the Cuomo Common Core Task Force listening tour in Queens on Friday.  I will be posting the testimony of others at the event as well.  For an account of this event as well as her testimony, see Katie Lapham's blog, Critical Classrooms.   See also the Daily News and Perdido St. blog, which also features descriptions of Friday's hearings in the rest of the state. It appears that outside NYC, the testimony on the Common Core has been overwhelmingly negative, as the poll numbers indicate as well, with voters saying the standards have worsened education in the state two to one.  In NYC, the pro-Common Core contingent has mainly featured hired guns from the astroturf organizations that are funded by the Gates and Walton Foundations, including Educators for Excellence, Students First and High Achievement NY. 



Testimony of Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters
On the need to revamp the Common Core  

November 6, 2015

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.  My name is Miho Watabe; and I am giving this testimony on behalf of Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a citywide advocacy group devoted to providing information on the benefits of smaller classes to parents and others nationwide.

As you will surely hear from many people today, the Common Core exams and cut scores are inherently faulty, unreliable and designed to show that the vast majority of students across the state are failing, when they are not.  The NYS Education Department has not been able to design a consistent, reliable state exam in at least a decade.  The Pineapple question, which we were the first to expose on the 2012 state exam, is only the most obvious of the ridiculous, ambiguous and often overly abstruse questions selected for these exams. [1] First we had years of purposeful test score inflation, and now we have had years of purposeful test score deflation.  The cut scores were devised to align with a combined score of 1630 on the SAT, instead of the 1550 mark which the College Board itself has stated indicates college readiness.[2]

Why was the Common Core designed to show the vast majority of US students and schools as failing? As the conservative commentator, Rick Hess, has explained, it was designed to facilitate the imposition of the corporate reform agenda of charter schools, and test-based teacher evaluation; to which I would add, online learning and the outsourcing of education more generally into private hands: 

“First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes. (In the case of NCLB, these same folks believed their eyes rather than the state tests, and questioned the validity of the latter--but the presumption is that things will be different this time.) Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace "reform." However, most of today's proffered remedies--including test-based teacher evaluation, efforts to move "effective" teachers to low-income schools, charter schooling, and school turnarounds--don't have a lot of fans in the suburbs or speak to the things that suburban parents are most concerned about. [3]

The Common Core standards themselves were developed in a secretive process by representatives drawn mostly from the big testing corporations, with only one classroom teacher on the math committee, and not a single teacher on ELA committee. [4] And this lack of teaching experience shows. 

Three aspects of the ELA Common Core are especially defective.  As I’m sure you have heard, they are developmentally inappropriate for children in the early grades.  In addition, the quotas for assigning informational text -- 50% in grades K-3 and 70% thereafter --are absurd, with absolutely no backing in research and potentially very harmful, requiring teachers to strip novels and plays from the curriculum.  There are many studies to show that reading literature is critical for children’s cognitive development, theory of mind and empathic abilities. [5]

Finally, I don’t know of any English teacher who believes in the “close reading” strategies that the Common Core insists on, in which the teacher cannot provide any context or background knowledge for the material that is assigned, and the student is not allowed to relate the readings to his or her own experience.  It is a technique that is designed to drain all life, relevance and interest from the experience of reading into something dry, purposeless and purely academic. [6]  If one tried hard to devise a method to destroy the love of reading in students, one could not do better than quotas for informational text and the “close reading” dogma.

We urge the Commission to take a good hard look at the Common Core’s unnatural and unsupported informational text quotas and “close reading” strategies, and delete them.





NYC Public School Parents: Class Size Matters Testimony on the need to fundamentally revamp the Common Core and aligned exams:


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