Monday, April 6, 2015

Press conference in Seattle on SBAC testing | Seattle Education

Press conference in Seattle on SBAC testing | Seattle Education:



Press conference in Seattle on SBAC testing

I test
Press conference on SBAC testing:
Opt Out Movement Biggest in Seattle’s History
A gathering of community groups, parents, teachers and students from across Seattle question the equity and validity of SBAC testing
Garfield High School teachers and parents to announce their opposition to high stakes testing.
Technological malfunctions are creating testing chaos in schools.
Seattle/King County NAACP to announce position on the new SBAC exam.
Opt out numbers from schools around Seattle will be revealed.
Who: Parents, students and teachers from schools across Seattle, including Nathan Hale, Garfield, NOVA, Franklin, Chief Sealth, Dearborn Park, and more.
What: Press conference on growing opposition to SBAC testing
When: Tuesday April 7, 4:00pm
Where: Seattle NAACP Headquarters, 715 23rd Ave S, Seattle, WA 98112
Why: The movement to opt out of high-stakes, standardized testing in Seattle has never been bigger.  A growing number of schools around Seattle are experiencing unprecedented numbers of parents opting their students out of standardized testing, especially the new SBAC exams. Parent Carolyn Leith said, “I’m opting my daughters out of SBAC testing this year because these test are robbing our children of valuable class time.  My children are developing many skills–such as collaboration, creativity, and problem solving–that can’t be measured by this test.”
At the press conference, the newly formed organization “Seattle Opt Out” will reveal the numbers they have collected so far of how many students have opted out of the exams.  Parent opt out leader Anastaisa Samuelsen said, “Our newly formed Seattle Opt Out group has grown significantly, and raised parent’s awareness in every part of our District.  We have organized several regional forums around Seattle–and more are forthcoming–attended by dozens and dozens of parents.  Parents who vote.  Many have shared heartbreaking stories about the undue stress testing brings, and the dislike of school their children are developing.  We are very concerned about this.”  Parents from several of these schools will be on hand to explain why they have opted their students out of the tests including:
  • SPED parents who will talk about how these tests unfairly punish and demoralize their students
  • ELL parents who will address why these tests are not culturally or linguistically appropriate
  • Parents of color who will talk about the way these exams maintain institutional racism
This parent uprising against the SBAC is also being supported by teachers.  Teachers atNathan Hale, Chief Sealth, Ingram, Schmitz Park Elementary, Garfield, and others have issued statements about their many objections to SBAC testing.  As award winning Nathan Hale history teacher Doug Edelstein said, “Many teachers, educational researchers and parents have determined after responsible research that the SBAC tests could cause harms to our students. There is no valid reason to force these tests on Seattle kids.” Garfield High School Language Arts teacher Heather Robison added, “My conscience demands that I publicly and emphatically assert that high-stakes standardized tests like the SBA as graduation requirements and teacher evaluations tools are Press conference in Seattle on SBAC testing | Seattle Education:
Posted by at

Join the Obamas and "Opt-Out" of High-Stakes Testing | Alan Singer

Join the Obamas and "Opt-Out" of High-Stakes Testing | Alan Singer:

Join the Obamas and "Opt-Out" of High-Stakes Testing








 It was easy for Barack and Michelle Obama to opt-out. They send Sasha and Malia to the prestigious Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC where tuition is about $35,000 a year and students do not take high-stakes Common Core aligned tests. Michelle and Barack chose this school because it offers children an enriched curriculum, not constant test prep. It was also easy for New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to opt-out. According to her 2013 tax returns, her children, ages twelve and seven, attend the Capitol Hill Day School where they do not have to take high-stakes standardized tests either.

Wealthy celebrities who are part of the opt-out movement because their children attend or attended expensive private schools where they do not have to take high-stakes standardized tests include Tom Cruise (daughter Suri, Avenues school in New York) and the children of the Jolie-Pitt clan (Lycée Français de New York).
Now you can join Barack, Michelle, Kirsten, Tom, Angelina, and Brad and have your children opt-out of high-stakes testing too. Children from families that opt-out of the tests, even ordinary children like ours, cannot be punished in any way and it is not that hard to opt-out. NYS Allies for Public Education has a sample "refusal" letter and video instructions on its website. All parents have to do is fill out the letter and deliver it to the school principal, either in person or via email. They also recommend a follow-up call before the test dates to remind school personnel. Last year approximately60,000 New York State students refused to take the tests. In New York State, high-stakes Common Core aligned math and reading tests will be administered in grades 3-8 from April 14 - 16 and April 22 - April 24.
Karen Magee, president of the New York state teachers' union (NYSUT) is calling for a statewide boycott of the Common Core aligned tests in protest against new testing regulations and test-based evaluations of teachers propagated by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Despite evidence against the validity of evaluating teachers using student scores on these tests, Cuomo demanded that 50% of every teacher's evaluation be based on test results in their schools. Meanwhile, he is unable to explain how the 70% of teachers who do not teach tested subjects can legitimately be judged based on the tests.
Magee dismissed the tests as "not valid indicators of student progress" or of teacher performance. "I'm a parent. My child is in 11th grade at this point in time. Had he been a third to eighth grader, he would not be taking the test. The tests are not valid indicators. The American Statistical Join the Obamas and "Opt-Out" of High-Stakes Testing | Alan Singer:Association has said there is no direct link to tie these tests to student performance or teacher evaluation."
Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, the governing body for schools in the state, is trying to undermine the growing opt-out movement by offering to exempt teachers from high-performing school districts from evaluations based on student test scores. But children in those districts would still have to take the high-stakes tests and sit through months of test prep.
Jen Debler, a middle school teacher whose own children attend school in a high-performing Long Island district is not tricked by Tisch's offer. She emailed me that "I am refusing testing for my children again this year because I want creativity to return to their classrooms. I miss projects, book reports, and artwork. My middle schooler wishes for more hands on activities. I see a stark difference in the learning experiences of my older child compared to my middle and youngest. A flurry of module based worksheets has left my first grader uninspired by math."
Long Island parents Henry and Christina Dircks also had both of their children opt-out from the high-stakes tests last year and they will opt-out again. They discussed it as a family and the children and parents all signed the opt-out letters. The Dircks family's reasons for opt-out were featured in a letter published by a local newspaper. Henry wrote, "I'm opting out my two children because I believe that these Join the Obamas and "Opt-Out" of High-Stakes Testing | Alan Singer:

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
Home
Click Here to go to the Website FairTest

Posted by at

Twitter Storm of the Century #Chuy2015


Twitter Storm of the Century #Chuy2015













2015 National Conference – Chicago

The Countdown to Chicago Has Begun!

The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago 


Posted by at

empathyeducates – Chomsky: The Corporate Assault on Public Education

empathyeducates – Chomsky: The Corporate Assault on Public Education:

Chomsky: The Corporate Assault on Public Education

Our kids are being prepared for passive obedience, not creative, independent lives.

By Noam Chomsky / Originally Published at AlterNet. March 8, 2013 | Pouring water into a vessel kills interest, deadens the mind, but makes students more passive and obedient and less trouble. (Photo: Tim Platt)




The following is Part II of the transcript of a speech Noam Chomsky delivered in February on “The Common Good.” Click here to read Part I.

Let’s turn to the assault on education, one element of the general elite reaction to the civilizing effect of the ‘60s. On the right side of the political spectrum, one striking illustration is an influential memorandum written by Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer working for the tobacco industry, later appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon. At the other end of the narrow spectrum, there was an important study by the Trilateral Commission, liberal internationalists from the three major state capitalist industrial systems: the US, Europe and Japan. Both provide good insight into why the assault targets the educational system.

Let’s start with the Powell memorandum. Its title is, “The Attack on the American Free-Enterprise System.” It is interesting not only for the content, but also for the paranoid tone. For those who take for granted the right to rule, anything that gets out of control means that the world is coming to an end, like a spoiled three-year-old. So the rhetoric tends to be inflated and paranoid.
Powell identifies the leading criminals who are destroying the American free-enterprise system: one was Ralph Nader, with his consumer safety campaigns. The other was Herbert Marcuse, preaching Marxism to the young New Leftists who were on the rampage all over, while their “naive victims” dominated the universities and schools, controlled TV and other media, the educated community and virtually the entire government. If you think I am exaggerating, I urge you to read it yourself (pdf). Their takeover of the country, he said, is a dire threat to freedom. That’s what it looks like from the standpoint of the Masters, as the nefarious campaigns of Nader and the ‘60s popular movements chipped away very slightly at total domination.
Powell drew the obvious conclusion: “The campuses from which much of this criticism emanates are supported by tax funds generated largely from American business, contributions from capital funds controlled or generated by American business. The boards of trustees at universities are overwhelmingly composed of men and women who are leaders in the business system and most of the media, including the national TV systems are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend on profits and the enterprise system on which they survive.”
Therefore, the oppressed business people who have lost all influence should organize and defend themselves instead of idly sitting by while fundamental freedoms are destroyed by the Marxist onslaught from the media, universities and the government. Those are the expression of the concerns elicited by ’60s activism at the right end of the mainstream spectrum.

But in the ‘60s, something dangerous happened. Special interest groups began to try to enter the political arena and press for their demands. The special interests were women, minorities, young people, old people, farmers, workers.

More revealing is the reaction from the opposite extreme, the liberal internationalists, those who staffed the Carter administration, in their study called “The Crisis of Democracy.” The crisis that they perceived was that there was too much democracy. The system used to work fine when most of the population was silent, passive, apathetic and obedient. The American rapporteur, Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard, looked back with nostalgia to the good old days when “Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers,” so that democracy flourished, with no crisis.

But in the ‘60s, something dangerous happened. Special interest groups began to try to enter the political arena and press for their demands. The special interests were women, minorities, young people, old people, farmers, workers. In other words: The population, who are supposed to sit obediently while the intelligent minority runs things in the interest of everyone, according to liberal democratic theory – and this is no exaggeration either. There’s one group omitted in the lament of the liberal internationalists: The corporate sector. That’s because they don’t comprise a special interest; they represent the national Interest. Therefore their dominant influence in what we call democracy is right and proper, and merits no mention or concern.
One leading concern of the Trilateral scholars was the failure of the institutions responsible for the “indoctrination of the young” — the schools, the empathyeducates – Chomsky: The Corporate Assault on Public Education:


Posted by at

Blaming Teachers While Students Self-Destruct

Blaming Teachers While Students Self-Destruct:



773070-bullying-school-sad-student-depressed

Blaming Teachers While Students Self-Destruct

 BY  LEAVE A COMMENT
Two recent articles, and published comments, unfairly incriminate teachers as those who fail students. One comes from The Independent today, “‘Exam Factories’ Conditions at School Causing Children to Self-Harm, Says New Research”and is about the serious issue of students there harming themselves due to the high pressure of exams.
The other article, from yesterday, by Jay Matthews, “Why Can’t We Have More Teachers Like the Ones We Loved?” of the Washington Post, might seem like a folksy good nature yarn about highlighting the great teachers in one’s life, but the message I see is, how can we make all the bad teachers like the few good ones we have known.
Let’s look at the article out of the U.K. first. The report is serious, could have likely been reported in the U.S., and is worthy of grave concern. Students are hurting themselves due to high-stakes exams. It notes that harmful testing came from previous Education Secretary Michael Gove, but some of the comments blame teachers.  Here are a few of the U.K. statements that criticize teachers:
If our teaching profession was excellent with regard to the phonics provision in the first place, there would be more than enough time to be creative and no need to pull children out for intervention year after year.
And another:
Generally I can manage to sympathise with the ‘teacher’s lot’ when it comes to the Blaming Teachers While Students Self-Destruct:
Posted by at

Thompson: Atlanta Is Still Just the Tip of the Testing Icebergs

This Week In Education: Thompson: Atlanta Is Still Just the Tip of the Testing Icebergs:

Thompson: Atlanta Is Still Just the Tip of the Testing Icebergs



The criminal trial of a dozen Atlanta Public Schools employees accused of conspiring to alter and boost students’ standardized test scores opened on Monday. Credit Pool photo by Kent D. Johnson


 Once again, the convictions of the eleven surviving educators for their role in Atlanta's infamous cheating scandal provides a "teachable moment" in regard to the inherent harm of high stakes testing. The Guardian's Max Blau, in Why the Atlanta Cheating Scandal Failed to Bring National Reform, cites Fair Test's Bob Schaeffer who says, “Atlanta is the tip of the iceberg. ... Cheating is a predictable outcome of what happens when public policy puts too much pressure on test scores.”

During the NCLB era, other cheating scandals have occurred in Baltimore, Camden, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Houston, El Paso, Norfolk, Virginia and, yes, in Michelle Rhee's Washington D.C. As Schaeffer explained to the Christian Science Monitor's Stacy Teichner Khadaroo, in Atlanta Teacher Conviction: Do Standardized Tests Pressure Foster Cheating?, today's testing “creates a climate in school where you have to boost scores by hook or by crook.”
Khodaroo also cites Harvard's Daniel Koretz who explains why high stakes testing reveals just the tips of other dangerous icebergs. Koretz describes “shortcuts” that educators are encouraged to take, such as teaching to the “'power standards' – the types of items most commonly tested." He says that "states now routinely offer teachers old test items to use for test prep," even though that practice was frowned upon in the 1980s.
“'Clearly cheating is unethical, but at what point does this other stuff become unethical?'” Koretz says.
In my experience, these more subtle means of manipulating metrics are the most pervasive and thus the most destructive.
In my two decades of teaching and working with my school system's data, I have never witnessed cheating or anything that could be clearly defined as unethical. Although we scrupulously followed the NCLB regulations, those regulations allowed for an unbelievable array of loopholes regarding students who could be excluded from school level accountability reports (which were the metrics that were widely read and thus the most important.) And, few things are easier than using NCLB loopholes to reduce absenteeism and increase graduation rates. Although I have never seen outright cheating, neither would I ever again trust data that is based on NCLB metrics. 
My biggest complaint about the inherent damage done by high stakes testing involves an issue where it is impossible to even articulate an ethical position. Surely we can all agree that it is wrong to focus unflinchingly on students' weaknesses and on remediation, while ignoring their strengths and failing to challenge inner city kids to meet real standards of learning. But, if teachers don't agree to distort and cheapen instruction by concentrating on the reteaching of End of Instruction Tests to students who failed them the first time, an unconscionable number of low-skilled students will be denied a high school diploma. So, we all participate in education malpractice to a greater or lesser extent. 
Would inner city educators be more morally upright if we remained true to our values, taught our classes in the engaging ways that most benefitted our students who were on track for graduation, hugged our kids as they received their diplomas, and ignored the huge number of our other students who would end up on the streets without a degree?
And, that brings me back to Blau's question of why American schools are still oppressed by the test, sort, and punish policies imposed by top-down reform. Why have we not rejected the bubble-in accountability that has corrupted our schools in so many outrageous, as well as subtle This Week In Education: Thompson: Atlanta Is Still Just the Tip of the Testing Icebergs:
Posted by at

NYC families to boycott state math, reading exams: activists - NY Daily News

NYC families to boycott state math, reading exams: activists - NY Daily News:

Thousands of NYC families will boycott state math, reading exams: activists



Thousands of city families will boycott the state’s math and reading exams, according to activists who oppose testing.
SUSAN WATTS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thousands of city families will boycott the state’s math and reading exams, according to activists who oppose testing.


 Thousands of city families will boycott the state’s math and reading exams, which begin April 14, according to activists who oppose standardized testing in the public schools.

The exams are used in decisions to promote students, rate teachers and evaluate schools. They are not mandatory, but many teachers spend weeks preparing students for them.
But critics say the tests are too difficult to accurately measure academic achievement and they take up too much valuable teaching time.
“More and more parents are interested and aware and talking about opting out,” said Leonie Haimson, founder of the education advocacy group Class Size Matters.
“More and more parents are interested and aware and talking about opting out,” said Leonie Haimson, founder of the education advocacy group Class Size Matters.
“More and more parents are interested and aware and talking about opting out,” said Leonie Haimson, founder of the education advocacy group Class Size Matters. “We’re certainly encouraging parents to opt out.”
State reading and math exams are administered to grades three-through-eight over six days in April. Students who opt out of the tests are given alternate lessons.
There are no penalties for refusing the tests, but relatively few parents have opted for their children to skip the exams, city Education Department officials said.
In 2014, just 1,925 city students opted out of either one of the state reading or math tests given to students in grade three to eight.
That number represented less than 1% of all students tested that year, but it included only kids who attended school on the days of the exams and formally refused them.
Activists don’t yet know how many families will opt out of the tests this year, but at some schools large portions of families have said they’ll boycott the tests.
At influential Public School 321 in Park Slope, parent activists said a quarter of families have signed letters saying they would refuse the tests this year.
NYC PAPERS OUT. Social media use restricted to low res file max 184 x 128 pixels and 72 dpi
Chancellor Carmen Fariña has encouraged students to participate in the exams but has also said the decision to take a test or not is a family matter.
Chancellor Carmen Fariña has encouraged students to participate in the exams but has also said the decision to take a test or not is a family matter.
David Rosenberg said his daughter Julia, who attends fifth grade Public School 3 in the West Village, will be sitting out the state exams this year.
“We are emphatically refusing to test,” said Rosenberg, who works in IT. “Any politician who says they are doing this to save the kids is a liar. It’s all political. It’s not about the kids.”NYC families to boycott state math, reading exams: activists - NY Daily News:

Posted by at

Atlanta Is Burning | A Day In the Life

Atlanta Is Burning | A Day In the Life:
Atlanta Is Burning




So I've had my blog off line for a long time.

No one actually asked me why, or seemed to notice, one person told me I had poor editing I should work on, but I noticed how often-at first-I wanted to write to something, and then as months passed eventually I noticed that the world went on without me.

I would like to comment NOW as a teacher, comment emotionally on the coming sentencing of educators in the Atlanta testing scandal, where it looks like they might get twenty years. This the result of fancy Georgia style prosecuting, the use of the RICO laws, test based punitive testing systems, their own mistakes, and an increasingly strong wave of criminalizing that has taken a hold of our country.

I remember when Diane Ravitch commented in remarkable insight, " just don't cheat- ever." I remember thinking that was probably sound advise that would help obscure the real issue in play in THIS particular mess. Never cheat. Black and white.

I also remember a federal government guy in the region I work in telling a group of administrators in an NCLB meeting I was sent to, "kick the teacher's in the ass" if necessary to achieve the unachievable when NCLB mandates brought into play the BIG legislated lie that 100% of children, no matter what, were to perform proficient or above on their state tests. Turns out no one, absolutely no one, will be held "accountable" for a testing system built on a lie.

That to me challenges my notions of fairness and legality.

That, for me, remains the main "crime" in the Atlanta situation.
Perhaps we need to use something other than RICO as a device to unwind and understand and frame that real situation, and the dynamics in play that came to result in an ugly time with erasers and "better results. "
By 2014 every child, no matter what proficient and above was not set as a goal-it was set as a truth, a mandate, and a punishable offense, and the mechanisms to achieve it were "ass kicking" and other forms of debasement. I know-I lived it. I saw it, and I saw how people behaved in schools in poverty reacting to that mandate and law and carrying it out.

Atlanta, it seems had plenty of spineless acceptance of this overarching system.
Guess what? Some of us said way back in 2006- writing and hurting ourselves- that the saddest part were those that "bought in" and actually beat themselves up doing this-those that now champion marching kids around in CHAMPS failing to see exactly what kids get marched and whose kids do not. (I call these folks the ones that are always hoping to one day cross over and be the elite....saddest of all. ) We made puns of the "collaborative" demand back then, and we documented our peers having cheerleading assemblies before tests, "We Can Do It", we noted the "No Excuses" banners and we silently witnessed the fact that the tests had "issues" we can never discuss because now we were forced to sign pledges that stated we could never discuss the tests. EVER.  The "bad teacher" entered the forum as the real shadow to defeat. And the gap in achievement that was 100% tied to economic status, just stayed smiling, and showed us how effective these new ideas really were. There must be more straw bad teachers left out there-things still look like money gets you something a free, fair public education does not.

Apparently in Atlanta principals lost jobs because of these damned educators who are manacled and awaiting their jail term, people erased scan sheets, bubbles got bubbled for kids too poorly taught to bubble in for themselves,  but nationally it was seen as a great "good" people began teaching to the test at least 50% of the time in a year, with Atlanta Is Burning | A Day In the Life:
Posted by at

School closings inevitable if Emanuel wins second term ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎DumpRahm

Chicago Teachers Union | School closings inevitable if Emanuel wins second term:






School closings inevitable if Emanuel wins second term

BY CTU COMMUNICATIONS  |  04/06/2015
CHICAGO—Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.
Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.

“Rahm’s pledge not to close additional schools for five years, which he refused to put into writing or pass into law, will conveniently run out if he wins a second term,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey. “In Ken Griffin, who is among the top donors to both Emanuel and his friend, Bruce Rauner, he has a billionaire puppet master for whom he’ll have to do a lot of dancing if he is fortunate enough to retain his office.”
In return for Griffin’s generosity, Emanuel has rejected holding the city’s most wealthy accountable for their growing untaxed income while he simultaneously fleeces working class families with regressive taxes. Emanuel also has committed millions of dollars in tax increment financing to one of Griffin’s hotel investments and remains silent on suggestions for a millionaire tax that nearly 2/3 of the state of Illinois voted to support.
In deference to his central contributors, Emanuel has refused to claw back losses from toxic swaps, capital appreciation bonds, TIFs and other forms of predatory finance that will cost the city $3 billion—money that would be better used in meeting pension obligations and expanding city services.
If Griffin himself were taxed at the individual income tax rate before it declined from 5 percent to 3.75 percent on January 1, 2015, his $1.2 billion annual income would have garnered $60 million. That amount alone would have saved 30 neighborhood public schools from closing, according to the Chicago Board of Education’s own calculations. If this same formula was applied to members of the Pritzker family, Grosvenor Capital Management CEO Michael Sacks and other financial titans financing Emanuel’s campaign, there would be substantially more resources available to the district to offset its projected $1 billion shortfall.
“If the mayor had the courage to take on the banks’ toxic swaps for market manipulation, unfair dealing and misinformation—along the lines of what the Department of Justice has done federally—we could recoup nearly $1.2 billion for our schools and the city, eradicating the current deficit,” Sharkey said. “Instead, CPS will face more mass school closings, more layoffs, more losses of retirement security for educators and more students in our already overcrowded classrooms.”

If the district closed the additional 75 schools that Griffin has called for, Emanuel’s handpicked Board of Education would have to layoff approximately 9,000 teachers, which would result in class sizes of 50 or more in most schools. Emanuel has threatened such actions in the past. If Chicago had a mayor who chose the city’s residents, their schools and communities over the interests of wealthy benefactors, the pain and suffering that Emanuel has caused can be avoided in the future.
Emanuel is the bankers’ candidate, for it is the bankers who are most enthusiastic about his willingness to defend their interests. His refusal to hold them accountable is an indication that future budget cuts and school closures are a certainty.





Posted by at
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)