Inside Rick Scott’s Budget Proposals For Education | Scathing Purple Musings

Inside Rick Scott’s Budget Proposals For Education | Scathing Purple Musings:

Inside Rick Scott’s Budget Proposals For Education

Posted on February 28, 2015by Bob Sikes

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Writing for PolitiFact, the joint Miami Herald-Tampa Bay Times venture, Joshua Gillin and Amy Sherman have a useful overview of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s budgetary initiatives for education. There’s good and bad. Let’s take a look:

(Scott) pledged to investigate every standardized test, and he’s taken action on this even before the session.Scott asked the Department of Education to prepare a report about every district’s testing data. After the report was released on Feb. 18, Scott issued an executive order suspending an 11th-grade language arts test. His agency is also asking the Legislature to consider several other recommendations about end-of-course exams and progress monitoring. Meanwhile, a Department-led focus group will discuss issues about implementing the controversial new Florida Standards, which are similar to the Common Core.

Scathing Purple Musings agrees.

But Floridians must be ready for more high-stakes testing drama. This year’s “pilot tests” have been “rented” from Utah for three years, and some Utah republican legislators are ready to scrap the whole thing. It may turn out that Florida’s teachers pull republicans chestnuts out of the fire as they are battle-hardened by the narrow expectation of testing. Yet they have no idea what these new tests look like. Stay tuned.

The “focus group” won’t be an actual focus group if it’s dominated by education commissioner Pam Stewart. But at least for once, naysayers will have a seat at the table.

Two other promises Scott made for K-12 education are to increase school security spending and double investment in digital learning initiatives. Scott is recommending increasing the Safe Schools Allocation, a fund that school districts use to pay for after-school programs, school resource officers and detection dogs, as well as programs aimed at preventing suicide or bullying. Scott is recommending a $14.25 million increase to bring the total up to $78.7 million. On digital learning, more money will go toward improving school district information technology infrastructure and providing computers for students. Scott is proposing doubling that money, from $40 million to $80 million.

Scathing Purple Musings gives kudos to Scott on proposing new funding for both of these need areas.

Scott’s recognition that “after-school programs, school resource officers and detection dogs, as well as programs aimed at preventing suicide or bullying” is indeed timely – Inside Rick Scott’s Budget Proposals For Education | Scathing Purple Musings:

Who really gets tested by state exams - The Washington Post

Who really gets tested by state exams - The Washington Post:

Who really gets tested by state exams

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

I entered my classroom on test day, armed with a positive attitude and a calm smile. Neither guaranteed test success or reflected my true feelings. Both made me feel better.

Preparation for the Virginia Standards of Learning tests had begun in September. Third grade was an especially demanding year, since it was the first time the children had been tested. Merely practicing for the test wasn’t enough. We practiced for the practice for the practice test. Online testing meant that a large part of the computer lab had been transformed from a time of creative discovery into endless drills. The counselor even directed a skit that was full of test tips: If you feel anxious, breathe deeply and slowly count to 10. Remember to go to bed early the night before the test. Eat a healthy breakfast on the morning of the test. Our efforts couldn’t guarantee higher test scores, but they made us feel better.

These tests were high stakes for the classroom teachers and for the schoolbut not for the 8-year-olds. The children would be promoted even if they failed the tests, and the scores would not appear on their progress reports. My goal was to be sure that my students did their best, in spite of the fact that there were no consequences — for them.

“Mrs. Baker, why do I have to do a good job on the test, if my grade doesn’t really count?”

“Well, it’s important to always do your best. Your parents and I will receive a copy of your test scores. In fact, even the principal will know how you did, and the results will always be part of your permanent record.”

“Oh, but my dad told me that the permanent record is a myth.”

So much for my goal of persuading this particular student to take the test seriously, although my explanation did make me feel a bit better.

The first child who entered my classroom on the morning of the test had red, puffy eyes, and her cheeks were streaked from leftover tears. She hated her newly (quite poorly) trimmed bangs. A bad hair day was certainly not a valid reason to exempt her from testing. However, I knew that her botched bangs would affect her score. I gave her a hug and then moved on to a particularly needy student. After getting his attention — a test in itself — I looked him in the eyes and said, “I know you are going to do well today. Just remember to answer every question and to always do your best.” He squared his shoulders and confidently replied, “Eric’s my name, and guessing’s my game!”

At that point, I took a deep breath and slowly counted to 10. My anxiety was unabated, and somehow I did not feel any better. I moved on to the Who really gets tested by state exams - The Washington Post:

House Republicans Slip Anti-Abortion Language Into Education Bill ‪#‎NOonHR5‬

House Republicans Slip Anti-Abortion Language Into Education Bill:

House Republicans Slip Anti-Abortion Language Into Education Bill

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) speaks at a House Financial Services subcommittee field hearing on mortgage markets in New York on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. (Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images) | Bloomberg via Getty Images

House Republicans attached language to a major education bill Wednesday night that would financially penalize school districts that allow school-based health centers to provide information about abortion to pregnant high school students.

The amendment to the Student Success Act, a GOP overhaul of No Child Left Behind, would withhold federal funding from school districts that contract with health centers unless the center certifies that it will not provide abortions or give students any information about abortion, including directions to the nearest abortion provider. (School-based health centers already do not provide abortion services.)

The House Rules Committee slipped the new language into a part of the bill known as the "manager's amendment," which is normally reserved for non-controversial fixes to a piece of legislation that are agreed to ahead of time.

"This amendment is a cowardly attack on young people's access to the full range of information about their reproductive health care," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. "This provision ties the hands of health care professionals in schools, and would deny teens access to important and basic information about their health care options."

"Once again, abortion opponents in the House went after women's health under the dark of night," Richards continued. "And because they know this attack on abortion is deeply unpopular, [they] won't take an actual vote on it."

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas), who authored the amendment, did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans also tried to attach an anti-birth control amendment to the bill, but it was ruled out of order, or irrelevant to the main legislation. That amendment, authored by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), would have prohibited federal funds to any school that provides emergency contraception, or a prescription for it, on the premises of a high school or elementary school. The "morning-after pill" is an example of such contraception.

The House is expected to vote on the education bill Friday. The bill would strip the federal government of much of its current power to lift up struggling schools in low-income districts, instead giving the states the authority to make such decisions.

The White House has said President Barack Obama will veto the bill if it passes, arguing that it "abdicates the historic federal role in elementary and secondary education of ensuring the educational progress of all of America's students, including students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English learners, and House Republicans Slip Anti-Abortion Language Into Education Bill:

Call and Tweet your House Rep and ask him/her to vote ‪#‎NOonHR5‬ http://bit.ly/17s6O1b

Report assails K12, Inc.-backed California virtual charter school for producing more dropouts than graduates | The Progressive Pulse

Report assails K12, Inc.-backed California virtual charter school for producing more dropouts than graduates | The Progressive Pulse:

Report assails K12, Inc.-backed California virtual charter school for producing more dropouts than graduates

Posted by : Lindsay Wagner Friday, February 27, 2015 Leave a comment In News

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A report released Thursday blasts K-12, Inc.-backed California Virtual Academies (CAVA), that state’s largest provider of online education, for producing few graduates and directing large amounts of revenue toward advertising, executive salaries and profit — while paying its teachers less than half the average wage traditional public school teachers earn.

“It is too easy for kids to fall through the cracks in CAVA’s current online schooling system,” said Donald Cohen, executive director for In the Public Interest, the Washington-based think tank that penned the report. “We are calling on California to immediately increase oversight of online education to ensure students are receiving a quality education.”

Notable findings of the report include:

• In every year since it began graduating students, except 2013, CAVA has had less than a 50 percent graduation rate, while California’s traditional public school graduation rate has hovered around 80 percent;
• Some CAVA students log into their virtual classroom for as little as one minute a day, which is enough to give the charter its daily attendance revenue from the state;
• While K12 Inc. paid almost $11 million total to its top six executives in 2011-12, the average CAVA teacher salary was $36,150 that same year — close to half of average teacher pay in California; and
• In December 2011, the California Charter Schools Association called for the closure of CAVA in Kern County because the school did not meet its renewal standards.

North Carolina’s State Board of Education gave the green light to K12, Inc. earlier this month to finally open up shop here after years of efforts on their part to open a virtual charter school in the state.

K12, Inc. has a history of producing low performance and graduation rates across the country, recently prompting the NCAA to announce that it will no longer accept coursework from 24 virtual schools that are affiliated with the company.

The company has also been compared to subprime mortgage lenders, pulling in and churning out a disproportionate amount of students who are not well prepared for the online learning model–all in the name of big profits from taxpayer budgets.

Last summer, Tennessee’s education commissioner ordered the closure of a struggling K12, Inc.-operated online school there thanks to poor academic outcomes.

While the State Board of Education has authorized the arrival of K12, Inc. in North Carolina, their approval didn’t come without reservations; several members of the board expressed concerns that the virtual school would only be accessible to those with considerable means, excluding economically disadvantaged students that lack computers or parental support critical to academic success.

Click to read the full report, Virtual Public Education in California.

Possibly related posts:

1. Virtual charter schools expected to get approval from NC this week
2. More on virtual charter school companies in front of N.C. education committee tomorrow
3. Virtual charter schools get go-ahead from NC education board
4. State Board of Education may require virtual charters to pony up computers for needy students
5. Application of predatory, for-profit virtual charter company goes before State Board of Ed

- See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/02/27/report-assails-k12-inc-backed-california-virtual-charter-school-for-producing-more-dropouts-than-graduates/#sthash.W79pUnsg.dpuf

Separating fact from fiction in 21 claims about charter schools - The Washington Post

Separating fact from fiction in 21 claims about charter schools - The Washington Post:

Separating fact from fiction in 21 claims about charter schools

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools  released a report last year titled “Separating Fact & Fiction: What You Need to Know About Charter Schools,” which takes 21 statements that it calls “myths” about charters and attempts to debunk them, one by one. Now three education researchers have completed a fact-checking analysis of the charter report, coming to some difference conclusions about each myth.  Following is part of the new analysis, which was published by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, and which you can find in full, complete with extensive footnotes on the NEPC website. (I have removed the footnotes and endnotes from the text in this post but you can see them,as well other parts of the report, here.)

This analysis was written by Gary Miron, William J. Mathis and Kevin G. Welner. Miron is a professor of evaluation, measurement, and research at Western Michigan University. Mathis is the managing director of the NEPC and a former Vermont superintendent. Welner is the director of the NEPC as well as an attorney and a UC Boulder professor of education policy.

Here are the first two parts of the seven-part fact-checking analysis of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools report:

By Gary Miron, William J. Mathis and Kevin G. Welner

Introduction

Separating Fact & Fiction: What You Need to Know about Charter Schools is a concise policy document assembled by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS).  No authors or contributors are identified. The paper (we use the term “report” throughout this review) lists 21 common “myths” about charter schools, which it then summarily rejects.

There exists an extensive body of research around charter schools, including a great deal of scholarly work published in peer-reviewed journals. The NAPCS report attempts to support its claims in response to the 21 “myths” with a narrative that includes 47 endnote references. But a closer look at these endnotes reveals that 15 of the citations came from NAPCS (the group that prepared the report), and another eight are from two reports produced by the school-choice department at the University of Arkansas, which have been strongly critiqued for advocacy-driven problems.

Because the report relies almost exclusively on other advocacy documents, does not give a balanced or thorough examination of any of the “myths,” and does not provide more than superficial research evidence to support its position that the myths are indeed false, this review will use the more neutral and factual term “criticism” instead of “myth.” The 13-page report is written for a lay audience and is beautifully laid out with colorful text and photographs of children. The criticisms are organized across four general areas: (i) charter school resources, (ii) students served, (iii) performance, and (iv) accountability and impact.

II. Findings and Conclusions of the Report

 Although the NAPCS report claims to “set the record straight on the truth Separating fact from fiction in 21 claims about charter schools - The Washington Post:

More Parents Say No To Standardized Testing | Here & Now

More Parents Say No To Standardized Testing | Here & Now:

More Parents Say No To Standardized Testing

In this Feb. 12, 2015 photo, Yamarko Brown, age 12, works on math problems as part of a trial run of a new state assessment test at Annapolis Middle School in Annapolis, Md. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

A growing number of parents and students are deciding to “opt out” of assessment tests in an effort to stem the rise of what they call a “toxic testing culture.”

Pennsylvania saw a five-fold increase in parents “opting out” over the past three years. In New York, some 67,000 students – 5 percent of all students – sat out the statewide math test.

And it seems that some officials are paying attention. U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan pledged to urge Congress to set state testing limits.

But individual states aren’t waiting for Washington to give them instructions. Just this week, a Maine lawmaker proposed a bill that requires schools to let parents know that they have the right to “opt out.”

Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Morna McDermott, founding organizer of the national “United Opt-Out” movement.

Interview Highlights: Morna McDermott

Why she is against standardized testing

“It’s sort of three-fold. There are the effects on children, including my own. There are the effects on teachers and schools. And then, you know, more broadly there’s the effects on society and what this is doing to public schools as one of our democratic institutions.”

On how to respond in states where testing is required to advance

“That’s a tricky question, I’ll be honest. I think it’s going to require a lot of pushback in order to get that repealed. So if one or two parents do that, they may face the consequences of ‘gosh, is my child going to stay back?’ I would recommend that they look closely at the law and not just rely on what they’re being told. Most likely, that law is also going to say that there are other evaluative instruments that they use in determining a child moving from grade three to grade four, in addition to that test. And one of the reason we’re advocating for what we call sort of a refusal or a boycott of the testing, is in a large part because we’re using data from a test that study after study after study have shown are not necessarily reliable or valid in assessing what they claim to assess.”

On how to measure U.S. students against other countries without tests

“People like to fall back on that narrative, but it ignores a lot of the pertinent information, first of which is that the number one determining factor of how well you will do on your standardized test is your zip code. We know that poverty is the biggest determining factor in how children perform on standardized tests. Now, if we’re under-performing, say, behind Finland that’s because we have a 50 percent poverty rate and they only have a 4 percent poverty rate. You know, it doesn’t necessarily access all of the other measures that enable us to be competitive as a nation.

“The number one determining factor of how well you will do on your standardized test is your zip code.”

“For example, we didn’t really rely on standardized testing for much of anything prior to No Child Left Behind. So, how on earth is it that we became this global empire, the top dog, before we ever had standardized testing drive our curriculum? It’s not to say that we don’t have problems in our schools. We clearly have problems of equity and poverty. We have the highest segregation rates since Brown v. Board, but none of these problems will ever be resolved by test-driven policies.”

On whether refusing to take a standardized test hurts schools or teachers

“I don’t know of any school that has been closed as a result of testing refusals. I know of no More Parents Say No To Standardized Testing | Here & Now:

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

The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch - Edison NJ News - TAPinto

The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch - Edison NJ News - TAPinto:

The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch

Beth Moroney

Friday, February 27, 2015 • 4:00am

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch Credits: Basic Books

Let's start today's review on The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch with your homework assignment. On a piece of notebook paper . . . no, scratch that … on your keyboard write the name of the best teacher that you ever had. Under his/her name list five reasons why that teacher was the best one you ever had and support your opinions. Repeat the process, substituting “best” teacher with “worst” teacher. When you have finished your two lists, compare your reasons and deduce what qualities one should look for in a good teacher. Then write a five paragraph opinion paper on the qualities of an excellent teacher.

See, anyone who ever went to school thinks that he/she is an authority on what comprises a good educator --- or so many politicians and business people have come to believe. However, Diane Ravitch, former assistant U.S. Secretary of Education, has concluded that those in politics and business have become too entrenched in public education and are steering the “great American School System” in the wrong direction.

Ravitch, who has studied education for over forty years, criticizes the path on which contemporary America schools are headed. She explains the dangers in restructuring schools, rails on using test scores to punish instructors, and points out the dangers in using charter schools to segregate the top students from the bottom instead of using charter schools to help lower ranked students become achievers. Categorically, Ravitch blasts using the “business model” to restructure American education.

Since PARCC is looming ever closer in New Jersey's schools, Ravitch's chapter on standardized testing, “The Trouble with Accountability” is particularly important. She begins, “NCLB (No Child Left Behind) opened a new era of testing and accountability in American public schools.” (150) Just as parents and educators are protesting the implementation of PARCC, those forces filed lawsuits and protested against the new standardized testing during the Bush era to no avail. But Ravitch continues stating that it was the misuse of testing, ranking schools and educators based on test scores, that became the major The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch - Edison NJ News - TAPinto: