Tom Torlakson Honors Latino Heritage Month - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education)

Tom Torlakson Honors Latino Heritage Month - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson Honors

Latino Heritage Month

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today honored Latino Heritage Month with a celebration at the California Department of Education (CDE) headquarters building.

Torlakson recognized the many contributions of Latinos to California's economy, society, government, entertainment, business, culture, and public education system and stated he is “Latino de Corazon”—Latino at heart. California has nearly 15 million Latinos in the state population.

Of the more than 6.2 million students in California public schools, 53 percent are Latinos and 1.4 million are English Learners.

“This is a terrific day to recognize the outstanding accomplishments that Latinos have achieved, and continue to achieve, throughout every part of California life. Latinos have added so much to the rich cultural diversity that makes California such a great and dynamic place to live,” Torlakson said.

According to the 2014 U.S. Census, there are 55.3 million Latinos in the United States. More than 65 percent of the foreign born are of Mexican descent. Today marks Independence Day for Mexico.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the “National Hispanic Heritage Week,” beginning September 15, to coincide with the independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres of California submitted a bill in 1987 to expand the celebration to a full month. For more information, visit the National Hispanic Heritage Month  Web page.

The California Department of Education encourages students to learn about the world around them and to learn other languages. It recognizes high school graduates who have demonstrated proficiency in another language by giving them a Seal of Biliteracy on their diplomas.

California was the first state in the nation to give out this award and will be honored on September 23 by the U.S. Department of Education for this groundbreaking program.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Don't Believe the Charter School Hype

Don't Believe the Charter School Hype:

Don't Believe the Charter School Hype

The people seeking to blow up the cap on the number of charter schools here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) have turned on the afterburners in recent weeks, as we get closer to balloting in which a referendum on lifting the cap will be placed before the voters. The airwaves are thick with commercials about how lifting the cap on charter schools will provide more money to public schools, which is a dodge, because charter schools are not in any important sense public schools.

There is no public oversight. There is little public input. They are privately run and funded with public money. This is the same principle that has worked out so well with prison food.

In New York on Monday, Jonathan Chait jumps into the issue with both feet. (To his credit, Chait is quite clear that his wife works for a charter company.) He argues no less a case than that the referendum is "one of the most important tests of social justice and economic mobility of any election in America this fall." Glorioski! And, of course, he characterizes the opposition to lifting the charter cap as wholly influenced by the all-powerful teachers union, which he casts as a thoroughgoing villain, and which he comes dangerously close to accusing of enabling racism—or, at the very least, as heedless to the concerns of the poor and disadvantaged.

This is noxious garbage; the great majority of the people represented by the teachers union work in classrooms that most of us wouldn't walk into on a bet. And, anyway, as the very excellent Diane Ravitch points out, a huge number of local school boards have lined up against lifting the cap. These are not all puppets of the evil teachers union. Many of them are composed of people who have looked around the country and seen that an untrammeled charter system is an amazing entry vehicle for waste and fraud. Chait dismisses these people as the heirs to Louise Day Hicks or something. From New York:

The localism argument is correct: Charters are regulated by the state's excellent, rigorous oversight board, which has closed 17 schools it deemed ineffective or mismanaged. If you believe that schools must be managed by local communities rather than by statewide regulators, you might oppose charters. But a fetish for localism is an off principle for liberals to espouse. The "separate but equal" argument is bizarre. The defining trait of a segregated system is that people are forced into inferior systems and given no choice. It is the unions who want to deny them choice. The cap unions support is what forces urban students to attend inferior schools. Lifting the cap would give more of those students the choice to attend high-performing schools.

If Massachusetts has done charters better than, say, Ohio or Florida, it is because the state has exercised the excellent, rigorous oversight that he mentions, and the cap has been an essential part of that oversight. The current campaign to eliminate the cap is not being done to benefit poor children. It is being waged to benefit the charter school industry, which wants to demolish that Don't Believe the Charter School Hype:

 

Charter school bill calls for accountability - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Charter school bill calls for accountability - The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Charter school bill calls for accountability

A coalition of state leaders and community groups in California is pushing Gov. Jerry Brown to sign legislation that would step up charter school accountability and financial transparency.

Assembly Bill 709, sponsored by Assemblyman Mike Gipson, D-Carson, would require charter schools to more closely report how they spend taxpayer funds. It also requires that charters comply with California open meetings, open records and conflict of interest laws; and it bans charter board members and their relatives from profiting from their schools.

“I truly believe that when charter schools were approved in California, taxpayers had the mindset that charters would be transparent and accountable,” Gipson said. “Charters should be just as accountable as traditional public schools.”

Brown has until Sept. 30 to act on the legislation. Advocates said the law is needed in the wake of recent reports that found California charters have engaged in fraudulent spending and unfair enrollment practices.

A study released in July by the ACLU found 20 percent of charters have biased admissions policies that allow charters to weed out low-performing students. Last year three education policy groups issued a report showing that charters are subject to lax financial oversight and vulnerable to fraud, mismanagement and abuse.

State Treasurer John Chiang, Los Angeles Unified School District School Board Vice President Dr. George McKenna, and Anaheim Union High School District Superintendent Mike Matsuda are among the legislation’s supporters.

The California Charter Schools Association opposes Gipson’s legislation, saying it goes too far and would restrict financial flexibility. What’s more, the vast majority of charter schools are non-profit corporations that follow the Corporations Code, which lays out procedures and restrictions to address concerns over potential self-dealing on non-profit boards,” said association spokesman Steven Baratte .

“And unlike school districts, during a fiscal crisis, charter schools often are unable to borrow money from banks at a low interest rate,” Baratte said in a statement. “Thus, charter schools often rely on loans or donations from charter school board members to keep their doors open.”

Charter critics argue that the governor has been reluctant to approve significant changes to charter laws, having vetoed legislation in the past. In 2014, Brown vetoed a bill that would have imposed restrictions on charters that operate outside their home districts — instead assigning a team to analyze the matter and report back. A spokesman for the governor said there is no follow-up to report on the issue.

Nearly 25 years old, the California Charter Schools Act gives charters freedom from some Charter school bill calls for accountability - The San Diego Union-Tribune:

 

CURMUDGUCATION: 16 Policies for the Next President

CURMUDGUCATION: 16 Policies for the Next President:

16 Policies for the Next President

Bellwether Education Partners, a reliably reformy right-tilted thinky tank, recently issued a compendium of policy ideas for the next President. "16 for 2016" comes with sixteen writers and sixteen ideas, though it's not entirely clear which candidates it's aimed at-- presumably not Hillary, whose contacts among the right-leaning world of corporate education privatizing are probably better than Bellwether's, and presumably not Trump, who neither takes nor comprehends advice.

Hmm. What do all these policies have in common?

So let's think of this as both a thought experiment and a look at the kind of policy ideas reformsters will be pitching to Congress, as well as a signal of the kinds of things reformy types would like to push these days. I have read this so that you don't have to, but since there are, in fact, sixteen of these things, I am going to summarize pretty brutally here.

1) Seed More Autonomous Public [sic] Schools

Sara Mead argues that we've proven that bad urban schools can't be turned around, but (citing a 2015 CREDO study) some charters do some better with some students similar to the urban poor students. So instead of trying to turn around low-performing schools, let's just open a bunch of charters to replace them. This is not so much about improving education as it is about opening markets to charter profiteers.

2) Transform School Hiring

Chad Aldeman has a point-- many schools have crappy hiring practices. He observes that it is a homegrown business, with the majority of new teachers working within twenty miles of their home town. And if you read here regularly, you already know how much I agree with this:

Despite complaints of a “teacher shortage,” districts act like the laws of supply and demand don’t CURMUDGUCATION: 16 Policies for the Next President:

How much does it cost to educate a student with special needs? Nobody knows. | Michigan Radio

How much does it cost to educate a student with special needs? Nobody knows. | Michigan Radio:

How much does it cost to educate a student with special needs? Nobody knows. 

Figuring out all the different pots of money that go into paying for special education is complicated, but you know what’s even more complicated? Figuring out how much special education in Michigan actually costs. And if we don't know that, we don't know whether we're spending too much or too little on special ed. 

It’s so complicated even the people who specialize in school finance can’t figure it out.

The Michigan Legislature last year paid $399,000 to the Colorado-based firmAugenblick Palaich & Associates (APA) to figure out how much an adequate education costs in Michigan, and they came back with an amount: $8,667 per student plus extra for at-risk students and English-language learners.

But there was one glaring omission in the report: the cost of special education.

According to the report, “there was difficulty ensuring that the study team could account for all district expenditures for special education students.”

In other words, APA couldn’t figure out how much money is adequate for students with special needs because APA couldn’t figure out how much districts actually spend on students with special needs. 

From the report:

The study team recommends creating a system that better tracks special education expenditures from all sources. The report did not dig deeply into current special education expenditures by district, since accounting for these expenditures is complex. As mentioned in the data collection section

How much does it cost to educate a student with special needs? Nobody knows. | Michigan Radio:

School reform: What went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future - The Washington Post

School reform: What went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future - The Washington Post:

School reform: What went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future

For years the United States has embarked on an effort to reform its public education system, a civic institution, that has been based on market principles and the belief that standardized testing is the best way to assess students, teachers, principals, schools, districts and states. The results? Not exactly what market reformers had hoped.

A new book edited by William J. Mathis and Tina M. Trujillo takes a look at, as they write in the post below, “what went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future.” The book is titled “Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act,” and was published by the National Education Policy Center, a think tank at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Mathis and Trujillo asked a number of scholars to assess key aspects of the reform agenda and they assembled the work in a smart, wide-ranging book.

Mathis is the managing director of the NEPC and the former superintendent of schools for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont. He was a National Superintendent of the Year finalist and a Vermont Superintendent of the Year. He currently serves on the Vermont State Board of Education and chairs the legislative committee. He has published or presented research on finance, assessment, accountability, standards, cost-effectiveness, education reform, history, and Constitutional issues. He also serves on various editorial boards and frequently publishes commentary on educational policy issues.

Trujillo is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. She is a former urban public school teacher, school reform consultant, and educational evaluator. She uses tools from political science and critical policy studies to study the political dimensions of urban district reform, the instructional and democratic consequences of high-stakes testing and accountability policies for students of color and English Learners, and trends in urban educational leadership.

Here’s a piece by Mathis and Trujillo about the book and its findings.

By William J. Mathis and Tina M. Trujillo

Washington was euphoric. In a barren time for bi-partisan cooperation late in 2015, both Democrats and Republicans were happy to get rid of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).  The K-12 education law was almost universally excoriated as being a failure — particularly in that most important goal of closing the achievement gap. Looking at long-term trends from the National School reform: What went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future - The Washington Post:

LEONARD PELTIER: On Solidarity with Standing Rock, Executive Clemency and the International Indigenous Struggle

On Solidarity with Standing Rock, Executive Clemency and the International Indigenous Struggle:

On Solidarity with Standing Rock, Executive Clemency and the International Indigenous Struggle

Greeting Sisters and Brothers:

I have been asked to write a SOLIDARITY statement to everyone about the Camp of the Sacred Stones on Standing Rock. Thank you for this great honor. I must admit it is very difficult for me to even begin this statement as my eyes get so blurred from tears and my heart swells with pride, as chills run up and down my neck and back. I’m so proud of all of you young people and others there.

I am grateful to have survived to see the rebirth of the united and undefeated Sioux Nation at Standing Rock in the resistance to the poisonous pipeline that threatens the life source of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It is an honor to have been alive to see this happen with you young people. You are nothing but awesome in my eyes.

It has been a long, hard road these 40 years of being caged by an inhuman system for a crime I did not commit. I could not have survived physically or mentally without your support, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul for encouraging me to endure and maintain a spiritual and legal resistance.

We are now coming to the end of that road, soon arriving at a destination which will at least in part be determined by you. Along the lines of what Martin Luther King said shortly before his death, I may not get there with you, but I only hope and pray that my life, and if necessary, my death, will lead my Native peoples closer to the Promise Land.

I refer here not to the Promise Land of the Christian bible, but to the modest promises of the Treaties our ancestors secured from enemies bent on their destruction; in order to enable us to survive as distinct peoples and live in a dignified manner. Our elders knew the value of written words and laws to the white man, even as they knew the lengths the invaders would go to try to get around them.

Our ancestors did not benefit from these Treaties, but they shrewdly and persistently negotiated the best terms they could get, to protect us from wars which could only end in our destruction, no matter how On Solidarity with Standing Rock, Executive Clemency and the International Indigenous Struggle:

Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger

Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger:

Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation

What does it mean when somebody gives you a bad grade for who you are?  That is exactly what the new school district report cards in Ohio do.  School achievement tends to correlate with aggregate family income, and metropolitan areas across the nation are quickly resegregating by income.  Research shows there are fewer and fewer mixed income communities and more very poor and very rich ones.  Ohio gives the schools in very rich communities “A” grades; and Ohio gives schools in very poor and in mixed income communities “Ds”and “Fs.”

In his fascinating book, Our Kids, that tracks the impact of growing income inequality on children, Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam poses this question: “Do schools in America today tend to widen the growing gaps between have and have-not kids, do they reduce those gaps, or do they have little effect either way?” (p. 160) Putnam answers his own question by reporting ground breaking research studies released five years ago by Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon: “In a landmark study, the Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon demonstrated a widening class gap in both math and reading test scores among American kids in recent decades… He summarizes his key finding succinctly: ‘The achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 30-40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born twenty-five year earlier.’ … Strikingly, Reardon’s analysis also suggests that schools themselves aren’t creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and, he reports, does not grow appreciably as children progress through school.” (pp. 160-162)

The Ohio Department of Education released school district report cards and school district summative letter grades—“A-F”—last Thursday based on standardized test scores from 2015.The Plain Dealer reports that among the 20 “A” graded school districts, 8 are white, affluent suburbs of Cleveland; 4 are white, affluent suburbs of Cincinnati; 2 are white, affluent suburbs of Akron; one is a white, affluent suburb of Toledo; and one is a white, affluent suburb of Ohio’s 2015 School District Report Cards Encourage Economic Segregation | janresseger:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Malcolm Jenkins

Eagles' safety Malcolm Jenkins on tonight's team protest

 “Really it’s just to continue to push forward the conversation about social injustice, and that’s a range of things from police brutality to wages and job opportunities, education. There’s just a lot of things systematically that have been set up in this country since its inception that put minorities, especially African Americans, at a disadvantage when you talk about quality of life and actually growing in this country.” -- Washington Post

Pres. Obama

"My name may not be on the ballot, but our progress is on the ballot. Tolerance is on the ballot. Democracy is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Good schools are on the ballot. Ending mass incarceration, that’s on the ballot right now.” -- Speech to Congressional Black Caucus

Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier

I call on all my supporters and allies to join the struggle at Standing Rock in the spirit of peaceful spiritual resistance and to work together to protect Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth. -- CounterPunch

Charles Blow

 Trump has claimed that Bill Ayers Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2

Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2:

Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2

Since Diane Ravitch has chosen to slime me in her most recent blog post, I have decided to publish some of the dozens of emails that I have exchanged with Ravitch since her highly advertised conversion from neoconservative elitism to neoliberal elitism.  It is important, I think, to read these emails for the facts that Ravitch has ignored in order to depict me the dangerous, misogynistic, and racist bad guy.

Soon after NPE was created, I wrote to Diane in March 2013 to better understand her choice of two NPE board members who had advanced the concept of performance pay for teachers.  NPE board members, Anthony Cody and Renee Moore, had promoted performance pay for teachers as a good idea, while working with crackpot, Barnett Berry, whose neoliberal think tank in North Carolina has provided and promoted a number of bad ideas, e.g., Relay, to NCATE, the Gates Foundation, and other oligarchic groups.

After leaving  Berry’s nest, Cody had since backtracked on the performance pay idea, but Schools Matter: Publishing My Email Exchanges with D. Ravitch, Part 2:

CA Dept of Education Releases New Information to Help Students in Foster Care

California Department of Education Releases New In - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

California Department of Education Releases New Information to Help Students in Foster Care

SACRAMENTO—The California Department of Education (CDE) today released new information about the nearly 70,000 foster youth in the state’s public schools as part of a coordinated effort to assist these vulnerable and academically at-risk students.

California’s groundbreaking Local Control Funding Formula, passed by the California State Legislature in 2013, significantly increased funding for high-needs students including foster youth, English learners, and economically disadvantaged students. School districts also received greater flexibility to meet student needs.

The law requires CDE to collect detailed information about educational results for foster youth annually.

Today’s reports are the first in a series and include the number of students in foster care at the county, district, and school levels. Details of student achievement are based on statewide test results. In the next few months, the CDE will release reports on suspensions and expulsions, graduation rates, and student mobility.

“We know that foster youth face unique challenges,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. “The California Department of Education is leading new efforts to help improve outcomes for foster youth, but California can and should do more to help these young people succeed on their way to 21st century careers and college.”

The Department is helping two counties—Orange and Shasta—develop model teams of educators to expand foster student services, oversee case management, and monitor student progress. And the CDE collaborates with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) to share data and let districts know which of their students are foster youth so that they can be better served.

School districts are required to identify how they will use state funding to better serve foster youth in their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs), which are key tools for establishing goals to improve student outcomes and to align spending decisions with those goals.

Data released today confirm the need to focus attention on these students. For example, foster students scored lower on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress “Smarter Balanced” tests in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. More than three million students took the online tests this year in grades three through eight and grade eleven.

The percentage of foster students achieving at the lower score levels was much higher than the percentage of non-foster students. For English language arts, 3.9 percent of foster students exceeded standards compared to 16.3 percent for non-foster students. For mathematics, 2.5 percent of foster students exceeded standards compared to 14.3 percent for non-foster students.

The percentage of foster students achieving at the lower score levels was significantly higher. For English language arts, 56.2 percent of foster students did not meet standards (compared to 30.5 percent for non-foster students) and for mathematics, 64 percent of foster students did not meet standards (compared to 37.3 percent for non-foster students).

In 2015, the Legislature renamed an existing program the Foster Youth Services Coordinating (FYSC) program and gave CDE responsibility for contracting with two county offices of education to provide technical assistance, increase collaboration, and improve policies and practices for assisting foster students. County offices of education in Shasta County and Orange County are leading these efforts, which the other 56 counties across the state can follow and use to build up their own programs.

The reports can be viewed on DataQuest by selecting “foster” under the Student Demographics heading.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

 California Department of Education Releases New In - Year 2016 (CA Dept of Education):

New Mexico Is “At It Again” | VAMboozled!

New Mexico Is “At It Again” | VAMboozled!:

New Mexico Is “At It Again”

“A Concerned New Mexico Parent” sent me yet another blog entry for you all to stay apprised of the ongoing “situation” in New Mexico and the continuous escapades of the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). See “A Concerned New Mexico Parent’s” prior posts here, here, and here, but in this one (s)he writes what follows:

Well, the NMPED is at it again.

They just released the teacher evaluation results for the 2015-2016 school year. And, the report and media press releases are a something.

Readers of this blog are familiar with my earlier documentation of the myriad varieties of scoring formulas used by New Mexico to evaluate its teachers. If I recall, I found something like 200 variations in scoring formulas [see his/her prior post on this here with an actual variation count at n=217].

However, a recent article published in the Albuquerque Journal indicates that, now according to the NMPED, “only three types of test scores are [being] used in the calculation: Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers [PARCC], end-of-course exams, and the [state’s new] Istation literacy test.” [Recall from anotherarticle released last January that New Mexico’s Secretary of Education Hanna Skandera is also the head of the governing board for the PARCC test].

Further, the Albuquerque Journal article author reports that the “PED also altered the way it classifies teachers, dropping from 107 options to three. Previously, the system incorporated many combinations of criteria such as a teacher’s years in the classroom and the type of standardized test they administer.”

The new state-wide evaluation plan is also available in more detail here. Although I should also add that there has been no published notification of the radical changes in this plan. It was just simply and quietly posted on NMPED’s public website.

Important to note, though, is that for Group B teachers (all levels), the many variations New Mexico Is “At It Again” | VAMboozled!:

Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake. - Lily's Blackboard

Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake. - Lily's Blackboard:

Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake.

With age comes wisdom, or at least perspective. You learn that disappointment and loss are facts of life. You understand that when it comes to hurt and emotional pain, no feeling, overwhelming as it may be, lasts forever.

But “This too shall pass” is hard enough for many adults to grasp, let alone students without the perspective and life experience to even begin to accept that truth. It’s important that we stay alert to the signs of problems that are too big for our students to handle on their own.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and October 2-8 is Mental Health Awareness Week. 

“Mental health is all too often one of the last things that we pay attention to, even though we know how immensely important it is,” says David Anderson, senior director, ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center, Child Mind Institute.

We don’t want to contemplate it, but suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. Ninety percent of children and adolescents who die of suicide have an underlying mental health disorder. Many of these—including post-traumatic stress syndrome, anxiety, bipolar disorder and depression—go undiagnosed and, therefore, untreated. That means they receive no therapy, counseling or medication.

As many as 1 in 5 adolescents ages 13 to 18 has a mental health disorder, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. But school districts have cut back on the very people who play an important role in helping these students: counselors, nurses, social workers and psychologists. Counselors on average are responsible for 500 students each; for school nurses and psychologists, it’s 1,100 and 1,400, respectively.

Some districts are resorting to outsourcing these important positions. But outsourcing doesn’t allow for the deep connections that are most helpful when students are in distress.

Most of the students who have mental health disorders, thankfully, will not take their own lives. But of course, there is other fallout. When a young person is struggling with a mental health issue, it’s harder for an educator to reach Mental health, suicide and outsourcing. Our kids are at stake. - Lily's Blackboard:

Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”? - Wait What?

Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”? - Wait What?:

Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”?

Check out the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) website and you’ll see that they proudly declare that;

Rhode Island has implemented a statewide diploma system to ensure access for all middle and high school students to rigorous, high quality, personalized learning opportunities and pathways.

An announcement about the details surrounding the “new diploma system” is expected later this fall, now that the public comment process on the proposed regulations has concluded (Rhode Islanders had until September 15, 2016 to weigh in on the propose changes).

Earlier this month, pro-education reform governor Gina Raimondo, whose husband is part of the education reform and charter school industry, announced that she was “open” to using the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory SAT testing scheme as a graduate requirement in Rhode Island.

As numerous academic studies have revealed, grade point averages, not standardized test Will the SAT become Rhode Island’s high school “exit exam”? - Wait What?:

Russ on Reading: Stop the Nonsense (Words)

Russ on Reading: Stop the Nonsense (Words):

Stop the Nonsense (Words)

Let's get the main idea of this blog post out of the way early. Nonsense words should not be used for decoding instruction. Period. No how. Not ever.

A while back, I wrote a post that argued that the commonly used early literacy assessment called DIBELs, led to poor literacy instruction because it focused on the bits and pieces of literacy learning rather than looking at the big picture. Paraphrasing literacy luminary, P. David Pearson, I wrote, "the widespread employment of DIBELS has had dire consequences on the actual teaching of reading."

Like many early literacy assessments, DIBELs uses nonsense words to assess student ability to decode. This is a well-validated practice and can provide useful information for diagnostic purposes. But diagnosis is not treatment and nonsense words should never be used for instruction. When a doctor suspects a broken bone, that doctor will often order an X-Ray. If the X-Ray shows a broken bone, the doctor treats the bone with a cast, a wrap or surgery, not with another X-Ray. So it is with nonsense words - they point to a problem, but are not to be used to treat the problem.

Why not?

Because learning to read is an act of communication and communication Russ on Reading: Stop the Nonsense (Words):