Why Our Many Big Plans to Raise Educational Standards Will Never Work (Jay Mathews) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Our Many Big Plans to Raise Educational Standards Will Never Work (Jay Mathews) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Why Our Many Big Plans to Raise Educational Standards Will Never Work (Jay Mathews)

Jay Mathews is a veteran journalist for The Washington Post who has covered education for more than three decades. He has written books on Jaime Escalante, a Los Angeles high school math teacher and KIPP charter schools. This article appeared in the Post April 17, 2021.

As one of our most celebrated education reforms — the Common Core State Standards — sinks into oblivion, will we finally give up on big-time top-down plans to save our schools?

I bet we won’t. We can’t help ourselves, even with convincing proof from an intriguing new book that any further outsized attempts to raise achievement with better standards will fail, as all the others have.You can feel the exasperation in every word as Tom Loveless, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, sums up his main conclusion in “Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core.”

“The idea of standards-based reform should be abandoned. It doesn’t work,” he wrote.

Those of us who put our faith in bottom-up reforms, with individual teachers raising standards for each child, can find some hope here. “It could be that CONTINUE READING: Why Our Many Big Plans to Raise Educational Standards Will Never Work (Jay Mathews) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Valerie Strauss: Growing Number of States Want Waivers from Annual Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Valerie Strauss: Growing Number of States Want Waivers from Annual Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

Valerie Strauss: Growing Number of States Want Waivers from Annual Testing

Valerie Strauss writes in her Washington Post blog called “The Answer Sheet” about the growing number of states that want waivers from the federal requirement for annual testing. DeVos granted waivers last year but said she would not do it again. But she will be gone. Now it is up to Joe Biden and Miguel Cardona to decide whether it is wise to subject students to high-stakes standardized tests in a year where schools have repeatedly opened and closed, beloved teachers have died, family members have fallen ill, and many families are without food or a secure home.

I am sorry that the Secretary of Education-in-waiting describes the standardized tests as “an accurate tool,” because the only thing they accurately measure is family income, disability status, and English language proficiency. There are cheaper ways to get this information than to subject millions of children to useless standardized tests of reading and mathematics The tests are completely useless and provide no information to teachers about student progress: None. As Strauss points out, the results come in months after the tests were given, the students have different teachers, the teachers seldom see the questions and are not allowed to discuss them, and they never discover how their CONTINUE READING: Valerie Strauss: Growing Number of States Want Waivers from Annual Testing | Diane Ravitch's blog

SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog

SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog

SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization

Those who seek to apply business thinking on education make a huge error. SomeDAM Poet, a regular commenter, cites the work of the brilliant education scholar Yong Zhao, who has consistently argued that progress and creativity relies on diversity, not standardization. This is, for example, a fundamental flaw of the Common Core, which claims without evidence that the imposition of national standards for teaching, testing, teacher education, and curriculum will lead to vast improvements. Predictably, over a decade, it has failed to produce what was promised.

Bill Gates saw the Common Core standards, which he funded in their entirety, as necessary and beneficial standardization that would transform education. In 2014, he told a conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that teachers should defend the Common Core.

He said:

“If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t CONTINUE READING: SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog

NYC Educator: Mayor Bozo Ready to Lower Standards Yet Again

NYC Educator: Mayor Bozo Ready to Lower Standards Yet Again

Mayor Bozo Ready to Lower Standards Yet Again

If you're a teacher, you constantly hear talks of standards. The standardized test is the Bible, the Holy Grail, and the Ten Commandments all rolled into one. If your student gets 64 on the NY State English Regents, she is unfit to graduate. However, her classmate who gets a 65 is college and career ready. That's because this instrument is so precise and absolutely reliable it cannot be mistaken, even if some who've studied it contend it's an unreliable piece of crap. 

On the other hand, who needs standards for a deadly disease? Mayor Bill de Blasio has been running a clown show ever since his pathetic bid for the presidency. He failed to close the schools when the pandemic had us in dead in its sights, and had the chancellor demand 108,000 signatures from epidemiologists before bending to what was obvious to the whole world, save City Hall and the White House. 

Then came September. We're opening. We aren't opening. We'll open next week. No, the week after that. No we don't have to test anyone for COVID. Well, if the UFT is going to strike, maybe we will do a little testing. We'll make it mandatory, but if students don't consent, we'll ignore it and hope for the best. And if Cuomo says we'll close at 5%, we'll do better. We'll close at 3%, because we have higher standards than the state.

But once the mayor followed through with that promise, it turned out that there was public sentiment against him. Evidently, some of the 35% of families who chose in person learning a day or two a week were upset. How dare this mayor deprive their children of the opportunity to sit socially distanced and masked far away from one another? How could they lose that opportunity?

And what a system it was. We had a hybrid. It was sometimes in person and sometimes on line. The way it worked was this--if one third of the students were in school, two-thirds were online. And because there weren't actually enough teachers to do this, he'd hire some more. You can teach 12 kids in the school, and I can teach 56 others online. But that wouldn't be so bad because there would be a virtual content specialist planning the CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Mayor Bozo Ready to Lower Standards Yet Again

CURMUDGUCATION: GA: State Super Wood Outmaneuvers DeVos

CURMUDGUCATION: GA: State Super Wood Outmaneuvers DeVos

GA: State Super Wood Outmaneuvers DeVos

Richard Woods was elected state superintendent for Georgia in 2014. He's a Republican, but what makes him special among stat education bosses is that prior to his election, he spent twenty-some years as an actual honest-to-God educator. Not some Teach for America insta-expert, but an actual fourteen years in the (rural) classroom (HS social studies) then another decade as an administrator educator. He's even married to a thirty-year veteran teacher. Yes, there's still plenty of charter school foolishness loose in Georgia, and Kemp is still their governor, but when I read what Woods has to say in interviews, I get the impression that he actually remembers what he learned as a teacher. Things like how teachers are the only professionals who have to outfit their own workspace, and what it will take to recruit and retain them.

And testing.

Woods ran, twice, on the idea of radically reducing Georgia's massive testing requirements. He ran literally on "students are more than a score." And he made some real progress. So when the world turned to viral crap last spring, Georgia was first in line to suspend the test, and right there asking the feds for a waiver to excuse them from the Big Standardized Test requirement.

They were already angling for one this year, because it's fairly obvious that 1) this year's results won't mean bupkus and 2) the time spent on test prep could be better spent on life prep. 

But Betsy DeVos has signaled that she's n ot doing that waiver thing again, right after Georgia became the first state to ask for one for 2020-2021. Woods said he was disappointed. Well, actually, he said, "It is disappointing, shows a complete disconnect with the realities of the classroom, and will be a detriment to public education." 

But, he said, nobody needs to worry. He had a workaround.

He announced his plan and it appears on the agenda for the next state board meeting. While CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: GA: State Super Wood Outmaneuvers DeVos

SSPI Thurmond Announces Recommendations to Draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

Draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Announces Recommendations to Draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum

Recommendations kick off public input period before March 2021 adoption deadline

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced today that the California Department of Education (CDE) has posted online its latest recommendations to the draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. The recommendations are scheduled to be reviewed by the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) at its quarterly meeting on August 13, the next in ongoing opportunities for public input before final adoption.

The CDE recommends that the model curriculum remain rooted in four foundational disciplines of ethnic studies—African American Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicano Latino Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. The CDE also recommends the draft include educator resources for engaging in expanded, critical conversations that can be customized to reflect a school community’s diversity and engage in broader social justice issues.

“Our schools have not always been a place where students can gain a full understanding of the contributions of people of color and the many ways throughout history—and present day—that our country has exploited, marginalized, and oppressed them. At a time when people across the nation are calling for a fairer, more just society, we must empower and equip students and educators to have these courageous conversations in the classroom,” said Thurmond. “I am proud to submit these recommendations for a draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that will not only serve as a roadmap for educators but, hopefully, inspire action across the nation.”

California is required by law to develop a model curriculum in ethnic studies to be utilized as a guide and outline for schools as they consider implementing ethnic studies courses. This guide will help districts and schools as they begin to develop their own ethnic studies curriculum reflecting their student demographics and community.

The CDE’s recommendations and proposed edits were informed after reviewing tens of thousands of public comments, learning from ethnic studies subject matter experts and thought leaders, listening to educators, and engaging with students across the state. Based on stakeholder feedback, the CDE has recommended removing all language that can be perceived as anti-Semitic and has recommended a draft that provides resources educators can use to acknowledge California’s diversity and make connections to the experiences of all students.

“Our recommendations are to stay true to the fidelity of the ethnic studies movement, which has been fighting for this type of curriculum for decades, and which remains urgently relevant today—as we can see through the countless demonstrations for racial justice in our communities,” Thurmond said.

More information on the CDE recommendations and the draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum can be found on the IQC Agenda for August 13. CDE’s recommendations to the draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum are in alignment with state law and the State Board of Education-adopted (SBE) guidelines, which can be found on the CDE Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Guidelines web page.

The IQC will review the CDE recommendations at its August 13 meeting and will post the revised draft of the model curriculum for a 30-day period of public review prior to taking action later this year to recommend the model curriculum to the SBE. State law requires the SBE to take final action on the model curriculum by March 31, 2021.

More information on the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum can be found on the CDE Model Curriculum Projects web page. Individuals and groups will have the opportunity to submit public comment on the draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum during the 30-day review period. The IQC will review and consider those public comments at its November meeting. Comments can also be submitted at any time to ethnicstudies@cde.ca.gov.

To engage a diverse cross-section of students more deeply in the four core disciplines of ethnic studies, Superintendent Thurmond earlier this month hosted a four-part series of virtual classroom lessons featuring civil rights icons, prominent ethnic studies instructors, and state leaders. The archived webinars can be found on the CDE Facebook page.

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Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

Draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)