CURMUDGUCATION: MD: Asking the Wrong Questions about Testing

CURMUDGUCATION: MD: Asking the Wrong Questions about Testing:

MD: Asking the Wrong Questions about Testing

 The Maryland state school board has noticed what many other folks have noticed as well-- if you make the PARCC test your state graduation requirement, a huge number of young'uns in your state are not going to graduate from high school.


Maryland rolled out the PARCC last year, and over half of their students performed below expectations, or as folks put it more colloquially, "failed." Had the PARCC been a graduation requirement, it would have created a mess of epic proportions. So the Maryland board had what the Baltimore Sun called a "spirited debate" about the topic.

Some of the spirit was predictable, given the players. Chester Finn, a long-time reformster and former chief of the Fordham Institute, a right-tilted thinky tank that has reliably and relentlessly pushed the Common Core, Big Standardized Tests, and charter schools.

"I thought the move to PARCC was to increase standards," he said. "We are headed toward telling Maryland students they will get a Maryland diploma and they are not ready." He said a low standard would mislead the public.

Mislead in what way is not entirely clear, but Finn has a solution-- a two-tier diploma system: "one for students who passed PARCC and are considered ready for college and a second diploma, equivalent to what is given today, for students who have fulfilled the course requirements and CURMUDGUCATION: MD: Asking the Wrong Questions about Testing:

Vergara Lawsuit Targets Teaching Profession - California Teachers Association

Vergara Lawsuit Targets Teaching Profession - California Teachers Association:
Vergara Lawsuit Targets Teaching Profession

VERGARA V. STATE OF CALIFORNIA

LATEST: Oral arguments for Vergara v. State of California set for February 25, 2016 in Los Angeles. Labor leader and civil rights icon Dolores Huerta will join educators and community members for a news conference Thursday morning, immediately prior to oral arguments.

 NEA seeks reversal of deeply flawed Vergara decision

Vergara v. State of California is a meritless lawsuit brought by Students Matter, an organization created by Silicon Valley multimillionaire David Welch and a private public relations firm for the sole purpose of filing this suit. Students Matter is supported by Michelle Rhee and Students First, Parent Revolution Executive Director Ben Austin, Billionaire and school privatizer Eli Broad, former lawmaker Gloria Romero, and other corporate "education reformers "with an interest in privatizing public education and attacking teachers’ unions.

The suit challenges California statutes governing due process in teacher dismissals, using experience as a criteria during school layoffs, and the two-year probationary period for teachers. The suit wrongly alleges those laws are unconstitutional and hurt students. The defendant in the suit is the State of California. CTA and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) intervened in the case to ensure all stakeholders have input in educational policy decisions and to protect the rights of educators. 

Simply put, this lawsuit highlights the wrong problems, proposes the wrong solutions, and follows the wrong process. This is yet another attempt by the usual corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their agenda on California public schools and students. Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their due process rights will not improve student learning, will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms, and ignores all the research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching. This is a blatant effort to legislate from the bench, keeping parents and educators out of education policy decisions. 

RECENT ACTION:

 

Some of the nation’s top legal scholars, education policy experts, civil rights advocates, award-winning teachers, school board members and administrators filed five amici curiae, or “friend of the court,” briefs with the California Court of Appeal on September 16, 2015.  The filings shine a spotlight on the numerous and major flaws that would harm students in last year’s decision striking down important due process rights for California educators, as well as other laws governing hiring and layoffs of state educators. The briefs strongly criticize the Vergara ruling on both legal and policy grounds, urging the decision to be reversed. 

Back on May 1, 2015, CTA and the California Federation of Teachers, on behalf of their more than 400,000 members, filed opening briefs for a legal appeal asking that Judge Rolf M. Treu’s ruling inVergara v. State of California be reversed in its entirety. Stating that Judge Treu’s decision striking down five California Education Code provisions “is without support in law or fact,” the original notice of appeal says that Treu’s reversible errors are “too numerous to list.” The brief not only outlines the numerous legal errors in the ruling, but clearly shows that the laws in question provide great benefit to California students.  

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

 

• From the beginning, this lawsuit has highlighted the wrong problems, proposed the wrong solutions, and followed the wrong process. This lawsuit was not about helping students, but yet another attempt by millionaires and corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their agenda on California public schools and students.
• CTA, CFT and its education partners will appeal today’s disappointing decision, while we continue to proceed with providing all our students a quality education. There is nothing unconstitutional about these laws and the plaintiffs clearly failed to show harm to any student. Testimony and research actually showed that experience enhances teacher effectiveness and increases student productivity at all grade levels, and that all three of the issues in this case contribute to better outcomes for students.  
• Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their due process rights will not improve student learning, will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms, and ignores all the research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching.
• California’s probationary law gives a school administrator two years to determine if a teacher is effective or not. During those first two years a teacher can be fired for no reason at all. Prolonging the probationary period would not benefit students, and would have the unintended effect of keeping ineffective new teachers in classrooms longer.
• California’s experience-based layoff system is fair, objective, and the most efficient way for school districts to deal with the unfortunate circumstance of layoffs due to budget cuts or declining enrollment. Current law already allows districts to consider student needs and other factors when issuing layoffs.  But switching to an “effectiveness”-based system based largely on student standardized test scores, as the plaintiffs advocated would turn what is now a fairly streamlined system into a logistical nightmare.
• California’s due process in performance-based dismissal cases helps ensure teachers are not fired for speaking out on behalf of students, or for teaching subjects some find controversial. They allow teachers facing dismissal to present their side of a case, and to have their case heard by objective third parties.
• The legislature is the place for policy decisions like this, not through court cases brought by phony front groups created by PR firms and millionaires. In early May, lawmakers in Sacramento worked to pass a bill that would streamline the dismissal process to keep students safe, while protecting the due process rights of educators. AB 215 was approved by the state Senate and Assembly and was signed by the governor. It went into effect January 1, 2015. The bill prioritizes, updates and streamlines the teacher discipline and dismissal process.

WITNESSES

Linda Darling-HammondA Stanford University education professor and chairwoman of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Ms. Darling-Hammond opposes the use of test scores in teachers’ evaluations and is a proponent of performance tests for aspiring teachers.

Jesse RothsteinA professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Rothstein has raised concerns about the stability of value-added measures and their appropriateness as a part of teacher evaluations.

Susan Moore JohnsonThe Harvard professor has written extensively about peer-assistance and -review programs, which unions say help weak teachers improve.

BACKGROUND

Appeal Opening Brief

Intervenors' Post-Trial Brief

State Defendants' Post-Trial Brief

Motion to Strike Costs Signed

State Defendants Notice of Motion and Motion to Tax Costs

CTA State Council Condemns Vergara Lawsuit, Passes Resolution In a unanimous vote, delegates of the CTA State Council of Education denounced the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit attacking educators’ professional and due process rights that’s being bankrolled by millionaires and corporate special interests.

Trial Underway for Meritless Lawsuit Targeting Teachers' Rights

Attorneys for the State of California, as well as attorneys for intervening parties CTA and CFT laid out strong opening arguments for why their case would show that the plaintiffs claims are completely without merit, and that these laws actually provide students with a quality, stable teaching force. 

Putting Educators’ Professional Rights on Trial Hurts Students, Wastes Taxpayer Dollars and Time “This most recent shenanigan by corporate special interests and billionaires to push their education agenda on California public schools is resulting in a waste of taxpayer dollars and time – time that should be spent focusing on providing a quality education to all students as the economy improves.  CTA will continue to fight to ensure we have qualified and experienced teachers in the classrooms whose rights are respected as set forth by law, and not subject to arbitrary and capricious behavior or favoritism.” - CTA Past President Dean Vogel  

NEWS & COMMENTARY ON MISGUIDED LAWSUIT VERGARA V. STATE OF CALIFORNIA

01.15.16 Court of Appeal to hear arguments in Vergara lawsuit next month | EdSource

09.17.15 Union supporters weigh in with briefs in Vergara appeal | LA School Report

09.17.15 AAUP joins Amicus Brief in Vergara case | The Academic Blog

07.21.15 Group created by Silicon Valley millionaire targets teacher evaluations in California |Huffington Post

03.03.15 Teacher Tenure: An Innocent Victim of Vergara v. California | Education Week



More newsVergara Lawsuit Targets Teaching Profession - California Teachers Association:

AMICUS BRIEFS

 Constitutional Law Professors Brief

 Educational Scholars Brief

 Outstanding Teachers Brief

 School Board Officials Brief

 Civil Rights Groups Appendix

 Civil Rights Groups Brief

 Unions Supporting Brief

 NEA Amicus Brief

 AFT Amicus Brief

RESEARCH

 Evidence: Teacher Seniority Rights Do Not Negatively Impact Teacher Placement in Disadvantaged or Hard-to-Staff Schools

 Who’s behind "Students Matter" and Vergara Legal team

 History of "Tenure" in California

How To: Objections to Disclosure of Student Records - Web Site Information (CA Dept of Education)

Objections to Disclosure of Student Records - Web Site Information (CA Dept of Education):
Objections to Disclosure of Student Records

 Notice of Disclosure of Student Records (PDF) 

Parents and students can object to the disclosure of students’ protected personal information and records arising from the court order in the Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Association and the Concerned Parent Association v. California Department of Education lawsuit; (See case # 2:11-cv-03471-KJM-AC.)

Aviso de Divulgación/Publicación de Records Escolares (PDF)
Los padres de familia y estudiantes pueden objetar que los registros y documentos estudiantiles privados y protegidos sean publicados por la demanda judicial entre la Asociación de Padres Preocupados de Morgan Hill y la Asociación de Padres Preocupados v. el Departamento de Educación de California (Vea el caso número 2:11-cv-03471-KJM-AC)

Form / Formulario

Objection to Disclosure of Student Information and Records (PDF)

Objeción a la Publicación de Información y Registros Estudiantiles (PDF)

Questions:   California Department of Education | 916-319-0800

Objections to Disclosure of Student Records - Web Site Information (CA Dept of Education):

The rich get richer: Should the wealthy get a tax break for endowing elite universities? - LA Times

The rich get richer: Should the wealthy get a tax break for endowing elite universities? - LA Times:

The rich get richer: Should the wealthy get a tax break for endowing elite universities?

Big donor, and your partner in charity? Nike co-founder and Stanford benefactor Phil Knight.

 (Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)

 Stanford University on Wednesday announced the largest donation in its history: a $400-million gift from Nike founder Phil Knight to endow a graduate program modeled after the Rhodes Scholarships.  

As a U.S. taxpayer, are you suffused with personal pride about this? Perhaps you should be, because you're paying for much of it. Assuming that the billionaire Knight, an alumnus of Stanford's business school, is charged the top marginal federal tax rate on his income, the donation will give him a $158-million tax break.

That's your share.

What justifies the high per-student government subsidies at the elite private universities, and the low per-student subsidies in public universities? There is no justification.- Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, UC Berkeley

Knight's gift and its tax consequences should reignite a dormant debate over how much the endowments of America's richest universities cost taxpayers. Tax deductions for donations are only one type of hidden public subsidy that nonprofit universities collect; their investment gains also are untaxed, as is their real estate. 

These benefits arguably contribute to America's rising crisis in income and wealth inequality. Elite universities chiefly educate the children of the wealthy and upper middle class; institutions that educate working-class kids are starved of resources by comparison.

A data survey by Nexus Research last year put the mismatch in stark terms by comparing the implicit per-student subsidy at rich private institutions with the government funding of public colleges in their state. In California, it showed that Stanford received about $63,000 per student, while UC Berkeley got $10,500, Cal State Fullerton got $4,000 and Fullerton Community College $8,100.

The public contributed much more per full-time student to private Stanford than to California public institutions.

 (Nexus Research and Policy Center)

The figures reflected estimated exempted capital gains taxes for the private schools and government appropriates for the others; in the interest of full disclosure, Nexus is partly The rich get richer: Should the wealthy get a tax break for endowing elite universities? - LA Times:

How to Get Rich From Public Schools (Without Actually Educating) | gadflyonthewallblog

How to Get Rich From Public Schools (Without Actually Educating) | gadflyonthewallblog:

How to Get Rich From Public Schools (Without Actually Educating)

Gold!

There’s gold in them thar schools!

Don’t believe me?

When you drive by an inner city school, it doesn’t exactly look like the Taj Mahal. Does it? Even relatively upscale suburban schools wouldn’t be mistaken for a house on MTV Cribs. And some of those fly-by night charter schools look more like prisons than Shangri-La.

But I’ve got it on good authority that there’s $1.3 trillion available for someone who knows how to take it.

That someone is Harold Levy, an expert on how to get rich through school privatization.How to Get Rich From Public Schools (Without Actually Educating) | gadflyonthewallblog:

What’s the Point? | EduShyster

What’s the Point? | EduShyster:

What’s the Point?

  

Even as the debate over charter schools in Massachusetts heats up, the ultimate goal of the experiment is increasingly unclear…

It’s time for a field trip, reader, and today we’re headed to a little place I like to call *an alternate reality,* otherwise known as Malden, Massachusetts. Shall I summon forth the scene?

A special meeting of the Board of Education is underway. Members have convened to discuss the single most successful school turnaround in state history: once failing Brockton High School, which 15 years ago under went a teacher-led transformation. Board chair Paul Sagan has allotted extra time to hear from teachers who helped lead the acclaimed literacy initiative, subject of national accolades (although, weirdly, mostly ignored in Massachusetts). Secretary of Education James Peyser has a question. Is it true that a third of each graduating class or some 300+ kids per year, at a school where 63% of students are considered *high needs* and 20% are still learning English, routinely qualifies for the state’s Adams scholarship, guaranteeing four years of funding to any public university in the state? Peyser does the math on his phone, then checks it on his other phone. He strokes his chin, musing aloud that this number dwarfs the combined total of grads from Boston’s charter schools, and seems to include not just girls but boys too. Another question, this one from state Commissioner Mitchell Chester: this teacher-led concept sounds promising. Since every school has teachers is it replicable? At which point Board members pause to check their calendars to schedule a visit so that they can see for themselves what lasting, teacher-led transformation looks like.

OK—so that’s not exactly how things went down. Instead, the Board voted to gift Brockton with a new regional charter high school that will compete against Brockton High by offering less—Look Ma, no art or music!—all the while draining an estimated 5% of the city’s total education budget per year. 

Is it just me?
Any questions? You—the agitated woman in the second row who keeps making weird faces at Secretary Peyser. Why that would be me, and as it happens, I do happen to have a question. Several of them, as a matter of fact. Is it just me or is there no longer even basic agreement—even amongst the edu-crat officials who are supposedly running the show—about the point of the great Massachusetts charter school experiment? Remember that bit about laboratories of innovation? If the repository set up by the state’s Office of Charter Schools is any indication, that particular dream has died. I couldn’t find any *best practices* more What’s the Point? | EduShyster:

Join the PAA Book Club! | Parents Across America

Join the PAA Book Club! | Parents Across America:

Join the PAA Book Club! 

PAA Book Club For some time, PAA has been having our own discussions about poverty, race and educational opportunity. We’ve gathered a lot of very important facts and research, created some useful materials, and shared them in webinars and workshops. We’d like more people to join us in this important conversation, and we thought that an online book club would be a good way to do that. Much of the information we’ve been collecting has come from Dr. P. L. Thomas, a professor at Fordham University whose work was first brought to our attention by PAA Board member Nate Harris in a workshop Nate presented at our 2013 annual meeting. Dr. Thomas is a well-respected, prolific blogger and author on topics of schools and social justice. Since then, Dr. Thomas has become a mentor to PAA, helping us define the impact of poverty, race and cultural bias on students’ education opportunity. Diane Ravitch calls P. L. Thomas “the conscience of American education. He is our North Star.” So, of course, the first book we’ve selected for our book club is Dr. Thomas’ newest book, “Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance.” Dr. Thomas will be joining us for this session. First book club date: Tuesday, March 29 at 8 pm ET Register here!  We’re going to use Eventbrite for book club registration and the Zoom meeting program for the book club itself. Once you register for this session via Eventbrite, we will send you the log-in information for the Zoom meeting. You will need to download the free Zoom program at zoom.us. Buy the book! You can try your local library for a free copy or you can just buy the book. All Garn Press ebooks are 50% off this month, and that includes “Roadbuilders,” which is going for $4.95 on Kindle. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can get a free app from Amazon to read a Kindle book on your phone or tablet. About the book Beware the Roadbuilders: Literature as Resistance was born out of blogging as an act of social justice. Over a period of about two years, many posts built the case against market-based education reform and for a critical re-imagining of public education. This book presents a coordinated series of essays based on that work, using a wide range of written and visual texts to call for the universal public education we have failed to achieve. The central image and warning of the book—“beware the roadbuilders”—is drawn from Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. The book presents a compelling argument that billionaires, politicians, and self-professed education reformers are doing more harm than good—despite their public messages. The public and our students are being crushed beneath their reforms. In the wake of Ferguson and the growing list of sacrificed young black men—Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner—the essays in this book gain an even wider resonance, seeking to examine both the larger world of inequity as well as the continued failure of educational inequity. While each chapter stands as a separate reading, the book as a whole produces a cohesive theme and argument about the power of critical literacy to read and re-read the world, and to write and re-rewrite the world (Paulo Freire). Supporting that larger message are several key ideas and questions: What are the confrontational texts we should be inviting students to read, that anyone should read? Instead of reducing texts to the narrow expectations of New Criticism or “close reading,” how do we expand those texts into how they inform living in a free society and engaging in activism? How do traditional assumptions about what texts matter and what texts reveal support the status quo of power? And how can texts of all types assist in the ongoing pursuit of equity among free people? Hope you can join us on the journey.

- See more at: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/join-paa-book-club/#sthash.imwDfixx.dpuf

Ruling Raises Objections to Release of Personal Student Data - ABC News

Ruling Raises Objections to Release of Personal Student Data - ABC News:

Ruling Raises Objections to Release of Personal Student Data

A recent federal court ruling ordering the release of personal data on more than 10 million California students highlights the growing amount of information schools now collect — and the loopholes that allow it to be released.

The order involves a lawsuit filed in 2011 in which plaintiffs are requesting data kept by the California Department of Education to determine whether the state is fulfilling its federal obligations for disabled students.

Judge Kimberly Mueller issued the order in late January directing state officials to release student information stored in Department of Education databases. The data includes everything from grades, test scores and specialized education plans for disabled students to more personal information such as names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and health records.

The data can only be viewed by the plaintiffs and must be destroyed or returned at the end of the lawsuit. Nonetheless, parents across the state are expressing concern and filing objections to stop their child's information from being released.

"Some of the things they are asking for are very personal and can be very detrimental in the wrong hands," said Justine Fischer, president of the California State Parent Teacher Association.

The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was created in 1974 to protect the privacy of student records, but it was written at a time when test scores and addresses were kept on paper and locked in a filing cabinet. The law also includes specific exemptions allowing student data to be released, including when mandated by court order.

Schools now collect significantly more information on students — a result of recent pushes to track and improve individual student performance using data, new federal reporting requirements, and apps and devices in classrooms. More than 35 states have passed bills in the past three years to protect student privacy, but updates to federal law have lagged.

Most of the federal law's exemptions involve sharing information for educational purposes, such as when a student transfers schools or applies for financial aid. The law also allows schools, without a student's permission, to release data to organizations conducting studies and "directory" information like names and addresses.

"The ability to collect information and store information and analyze it has greatly improved," said Matt Johnson, an associate with the Cooley firm in Washington, D.C. "There's a lot of good that can be done with that. But it can get to a point where you get past that and people can get uncomfortable. "

As a result of the court order in California, three state Assembly members are drafting a bill that would prohibit school districts from gathering Social Security numbers and other sensitive information unless required by federal law. California already has one of the nation's more conservative student data privacy laws, which prohibits online services and apps from selling student information.

"As a mom, I've seen my kids' schools over the years request Social Security numbers, medical information and other private information they don't need or have a right to," Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, said in a statement.

Keric Ashley, a deputy superintendent with the California Department of Education, said 90 Ruling Raises Objections to Release of Personal Student Data - ABC News: