Data Smokescreen Covers Up Real Problems in Public Education

Data Smokescreen Covers Up Real Problems in Public Education:

Data Smokescreen Covers Up Real Problems in Public Education

Last week, a very distinguished panel convened by the National Research Council published an Evaluation of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia. The report is 341 pages long and cost millions of dollars to produce. What’s most impressive about this evaluation is how very far removed from reality it is.

The experts who contributed to the analysis relied principally on data sets that covered the city’s DC-CAS standardized tests, the NAEP nationwide standardized tests, and the local teacher evaluation model called IMPACT. They also considered other data such as graduation rates, attendance, dismissal, and teacher retention. The third of three major recommendations from this evaluation cannot be denied: the school system needs to address the so-called “achievement gap,” which—as noted elsewhere—has been greatly exacerbated since “school reform” came to the District in 2007.

What are recommendations one and two? The first is to create “a comprehensive data warehouse.” The second is to pay for ongoing independent evaluation of this data. Really.

The purpose of this column is not to criticize the National Research Council’s evaluation. To be fair, the Council did what it was asked to do. The problem is not this particular study; it is how this evaluation perfectly illustrates the way our nation’s education debate has become a shipwreck, adrift in a sea of numbers. In search of objective “metrics,” education experts have lost sight of the purpose of public education: to provide each and every child the opportunity to achieve their fullest potential in life.

To compile a real evaluation of the District’s public schools, one needs to interview teachers who have served long enough to remember what the school system was like before the mayoral takeover of 2007. (Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of experienced teachers have been driven out of D.C.’s high-poverty schools, and those few who are left insist on anonymity because truthful testimony would surely get them fired.) But here is what they would tell you:

Students in high-poverty schools are forced to waste tremendous amounts of instructional time preparing for, practicing, or taking standardized tests. Most students took about 20 days of tests and pre-tests this year. All the test-taking skills taught and employed during these days are useless in real life.

Teachers in high-poverty schools are required to teach to the standardized tests; in fact, their jobs depend on it. Homework is often in the style of test questions downloaded from a central test-oriented website. This mode of instruction and form of homework would astonish those of you who attended middle-class or upper-middle-class schools.

Course offerings to high-poverty students have been narrowed to focus their studies on reading and math. It is common for these schools to provide little or no band, chorus, art, or foreign languages. Some schools have required students to take double periods of reading and math. Some require kids to take classes specifically to improve test-taking or study skills. These children’s knowledge of geography, history, social studies, and science is often abysmalData Smokescreen Covers Up Real Problems in Public Education:

Why a child poverty target is good education policy - First Focus

Why a child poverty target is good education policy - First Focus:

Why a child poverty target is good education policy

While both the House and Senate continue work on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, the primary federal education legislation), Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL), Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) introduced a bill that would have a major positive impact on children’s education, but it falls outside the jurisdiction of the education committees and does nothing to amend ESEA.

The Child Poverty Reduction Act of 2015 (H.R. 2408), introduced on May 19, 2015, would establish a national goal of cutting child poverty in half in ten years and eliminating it in 20. To help achieve these goals, it would also authorize an interagency working group to develop a plan to meet these targets and request a study from the National Academy of Sciences to assist in developing a plan to reduce child poverty.

This legislation is important for children’s education because of the well-researched impact of povertyon children’s academic achievement, likelihood to graduate from high school, and pursue higher education. Children living in or near poverty experience toxic stress (which continues to affect children well beyond their early years), instability, community violence, and other environmental hazards like lack of heat in their homes. What does this all mean for children’s education? Higher rates of absenteeism; inability to concentrate on schoolwork; increased likelihood of depression; reduced motivation, determination, cognition, and memory; diminished social skills; and ultimately lower academic achievement and a higher risk of not finishing high school.

Considering the “new majority” in our schools, where over half of students in school from kindergarten through grade 12 qualify for free or reduced price lunch (FRPL), The Child Poverty Reduction Act is indispensable in the effort to increase achievement for all children. To qualify for FRPL, children must live below 185 percent of the poverty line (income of about $34,000 per year for a family of four) or in communities with such a high proportion of low-income families that they also qualify. The report above also shows that disproportionately more students of color live in low-income households than Why a child poverty target is good education policy - First Focus:

Common Core Dilemma - Who Owns Our Schools?: Mercedes K. Schneider

Common Core Dilemma - Who Owns Our Schools?: Mercedes K. Schneider: 9780807756492: Amazon.com: Books:

Common Core Dilemma - Who Owns Our Schools?

 In her new book, bestselling author Mercedes Schneider provides little-known details about the history of the Common Core State Standards. She lifts the veil on how the Common Core was developed, who was present in the back room, the push to copyright it so that test-makers could profit, and the urgency for governors to sign commitments before the standards were even completed. CCSS is publicized as being a state-led, teacher-developed approach guaranteed to ensure that all students are college- and career-ready. By the end of this eye-opening book, readers will come to understand the CCSS and its attendant assessments as something very different -- an education-restricting, profit-garnering opportunity packaged as an education-sounding sales pitch. Common Core Dilemma will appeal to readers across the political spectrum who want to better understand the role of corporations, nonprofits, big donors with strings attached, and the federal government in exercising control in our schools.Common Core Dilemma - Who Owns Our Schools?: Mercedes K. Schneider: 9780807756492: Amazon.com: Books:



deutsch29 | Mercedes Schneider's EduBlog http://bit.ly/1dy4dWo

Robert Reich Sounds Off On How America Has Failed Its Students

Robert Reich Sounds Off On How America Has Failed Its Students:

Robert Reich Sounds Off On How America Has Failed Its Students

This story originally appeared on Capital & Main.

It’s no secret that former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich has some misgivings about the direction of the American economy. But the prolific writer, radio commentator and longtime University of California, Berkeley professor isn’t thrilled about how we are educating our kids, either.

As part of a new project with the activist group MoveOn.org, Reich recently released a video that described our education system as “squashing passion for learning, eroding the love of teaching and grinding up generations of young people.” The critique is accompanied by a set of proposals to reinvent American education – one of 10 planks in a broader agenda titled “10 Ideas to Save the Economy.”

Reich has addressed the nation’s education challenges in his books, including 2011’sAftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, as well as in his 2013 filmInequality for All (available on NetFlix, iTunes and DVD). But rarely has he been so blunt in his assessment or his prescriptions.

Capital & Main spoke last week with Reich about his views on how the country has failed its kids, and what it must do to right the ship.

Capital & Main: Have we bought into a collective myth that the answer to economic inequality is better education, when in fact there may be more immediate solutions that could help tens of millions Americans struggling today?

Robert Reich: Education is not the only answer and it’s certainly not the immediate solution. At best, it’s a necessary, but not sufficient response to widening inequality.

C&M: How would you grade President Obama and his education czar, Arne Duncan?

Reich: They’ve certainly brought a lot of attention to education — in terms ofattention I’d give them an A. Unfortunately, the emphasis has been on standards and on testing. This is not unique to the Obama administration [and] as much as I understand the importance of setting benchmarks and having tests to assess whether students are learning, we have gone way overboard on testing. Many students now are learning to take a test rather than to think. Teachers are being promoted or given raises based upon their ability to teach students to succeed on the test rather than to teach students how to solve problems and to come up with new ways of viewing problems. So I would grade the administration far more harshly because of its emphasis on standards and grades.

C&M: Many of the recommendations you make in the MoveOn video seem relatively non-controversial: increasing federal funding, limiting class size, boosting pay of teachers, offering high school students technical training. Who’s opposing ideas like these?

Reich: Well unfortunately many do not want to increase federal funding at all. They are afraid of the federal government, they hate the federal government. These are the same state officials who don’t want to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid. In terms of limiting class size, some education officials pay lip service to this but if you Robert Reich Sounds Off On How America Has Failed Its Students:

Chris Christie Suggests College Students Should Sell Themselves To Investors To Pay Tuition

Chris Christie Suggests College Students Should Sell Themselves To Investors To Pay Tuition:

Chris Christie Suggests College Students Should Sell Themselves To Investors To Pay Tuition

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) spoke about student debt, school choice and teacher accountability at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, on Thursday. Christie is expected to announce a presidential run soon.

Read the whole story at ThinkProgress

Reviews of the Best Sugar Daddy Websites 2015

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Aiming to set the record straight about 'the Common Core lie' : News

Aiming to set the record straight about 'the Common Core lie' : News:

Aiming to set the record straight about 'the Common Core lie'

Editorial: Republicans continue to peddle the Common Core lie

A conservative Republican might understandably have been confused in reading Post-Dispatch reporter Elisa Crouch’s Thursday story about how Mi… Read more

In “Republicans continue to peddle the Common Core lie” (June 8), the editorial board lamented that Missouri took two steps back in education policy. The piece was such a work of fiction, it barely qualified for the opinion page.

We’d like to set the record straight about “the Common Core lie” and ask questions of clarification.

Fiction: Missouri legislators (especially Rep. Kurt Bahr) are playing their constituents for chumps because HB 1490 did not eliminate Common Core.

Fact: Gov. Jay Nixon would not to sign a bill with language explicitly eliminating Common Core. HB 1490 instructs work groups constituted in 2014 to develop academic learning standards, not rubber stamp copyrighted ones. Rep. Bahr sent a written communication to the work groups stating that the intent of the bill is for Missouri to have standards in public domain. According to the editorial, “Those standards are likely to mimic Common Core. And even if they don’t, the Board can (and will) dismiss them.”

Question: Is the Post-Dispatch suggesting that the State Board of Education intends to defraud the public, by rejecting the work submitted by the work groups a priori?

Fiction: The Republicans, responding to wealthy campaign donors, are off-loading Common Core as an Obama initiative.

Fact: Several Republican presidential candidates and governors have been stalwart in their support of Common Core, even in the face of increasing public rejection of the standards.

Question: Is the board making a back-handed endorsement of Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee, who support the Common Core standards? Why did the board finger wealthy campaign donors for messing with education policy and, not mention funding from wealthy private (Gates) and corporate (Pearson) underwriters of the Common Core State Standards Initiative? Is the Post-Dispatch suggesting that the 1 percent is only philanthropic in giving?

Fiction: Legislative meddling caused a succession of tests that inhibits comparison of scores.

Fact: In February, Cole County federal judge Daniel Green, ruled that the SBAC Consortia is an unlawful interstate compact and prohibited payment of SBAC membership fees. Further, SBAC Aiming to set the record straight about 'the Common Core lie' : News:

Mary Byrne  •  Springfield, Mo.

Anne Gassel  •  Ellisville

Gretchen Logue  •  Kirkwood

Co-founders, Missouri Coalition Against Common Core

The Story Behind The Record-High Graduation Rate : NPR Ed : NPR

The Story Behind The Record-High Graduation Rate : NPR Ed : NPR:

The Story Behind The Record-High Graduation Rate

The U.S. high school graduation rate was 81 percent in 2013, the most recent year in which federal data are available.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama had some sure-fire applause lines: "More of our kids are graduating than ever before" and "Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high."

Which raised some interesting questions: "Is that really true?" and "Why?" and "How do we know?" and "So what?"

A seed was planted that grew into our project this week examining that number. Our reporting shows many of the individual stories behind a single statistic: 81 percent, the current U.S. graduation rate.

But in the course of pulling this project together, our team fell into a rabbit hole over something that doesn't often get attention: the origin of the statistic itself. It turns out to be a fascinating story, and not just for data wonks. It's a story of collaboration across the political aisle, heroic efforts and millions of dollars spent by state governments, and dogged researchers uncovering new insights that arguably changed the lives of tens of thousands of young people.

Many individuals worked hard, and worked together, to make the nation do a better job counting high school graduates. The effort had complex — sometimes contradictory — results.

The ABCs And No Child Left Behind

When we say 81 percent is an all-time high, let's put that in context for a moment.

For most of American history, high school was a rare achievement — one, by the way, that qualified you for a white-collar job.

Estimates vary depending on the method used, but generally speaking, the graduation rate didn't exceed 50 percent of the population until 1940. It peaked at the end of the 1960s, but continued to undulate, hitting the doldrums between 1995 and 1999.Historically, racial and ethnic minorities trailed behind.

While not quite a historic low, the "dropout crisis" was getting plenty of attention in 2002. That was the year of the No Child Left Behind Act, when the federal government got involved. The law required states to make measurable progress on high school graduation rates or face sanctions such as a loss of funds for poor students.

And it wasn't just a matter of legislation. New research was influencing the public discussion, creating a sense of urgency around high school completion.

Elaine Allensworth at the University of Chicago published work identifying what was later called the early warning ABCs: Attendance, Behavior and Course Performance, which reliably predict graduation by freshman year.

Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University singled out the nation's "dropout factories." At almost 1,000 high schools nationwide, they said, your chance of graduating was no more than 50-50.

On the economics front, "We knew that 63 percent of jobs in the next decade would require some postsecondary education," says Sunny Deye, who works on education policy for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "There was an understanding that the way we were preparing kids for the 21st century economy needed to change. We had to shift the paradigm from allowing some kids to drop out to recognizing that a high school diploma was now the bar."

So the game was on. States had a legislative imperative to raise graduation rates; they knew where to target intervention (early on, and at failing schools); and they knew they would feel it economically if they didn't.

But there was a problem. The early 2000s were a dark time for state education statistics. States could report high school graduation rates any old way they pleased, and many did. Just to take one example, at the end of the 20th century, "North Carolina was reporting a four-year high school graduation rate in the high 90s," says The Story Behind The Record-High Graduation Rate : NPR Ed : NPR:

Three wrong-headed ideas driving reform of U.S. teaching force - The Washington Post

Three wrong-headed ideas driving reform of U.S. teaching force - The Washington Post:

Three wrong-headed ideas driving reform of U.S. teaching force

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan in 2012. (REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)

“When the going gets tough in our wealthy societies, the powers-that-be often choose quick fixes. In search of a silver bullet instead of sustained systemic improvement, politicians turn their eyes on teachers, believing that asking them to do more with less can compensate for inconvenient reductions in school resources.”

So writes Pasi Sahlberg, a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and international educational practices.  Author of “Finnish Lessons 2.0: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?” and former director general of Finland’s Center for International Mobility and Cooperation, Sahlberg has written a number of important posts for The Answer Sheet, including “What the U.S. can’t learn from Finland about ed reform,” and “How GERM is infecting schools around the world.” In this post, which appeared in the ATA Magazine of the Alberta Teachers Association, Sahlberg writes about three fallacies underpinning efforts to change the teaching force in the United States and beyond. I am publishing it with permission.

By Pasi Sahlberg

Governments in Alberta and Finland are under economic pressure to reduce public spending as a result of failed national politics and unpredictable global economics. When government budgets get off track, bad news for education systems follow. The recently defeated Finnish government carried out huge cuts in education infrastructure. As a result, small schools were closed, teaching staff lost their jobs and morale among educators declined. Albertans are now facing similar threats.

When the going gets tough in our wealthy societies, the powers-that-be often choose quick fixes. In search of a silver bullet instead of sustained systemic Three wrong-headed ideas driving reform of U.S. teaching force - The Washington Post:

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the American Federation of Teachers hatch new initiative for tech education | Crain's New York Business

Mayor Bill de Blasio and the American Federation of Teachers hatch new initiative for tech education | Crain's New York Business:

De Blasio and teachers' union launch tech education initiative

Funded by the American Federation of Teachers' Innovation Fund, the program will support career and technical education in New York and four cities.

The American Federation of Teachers is announcing an initiative to fund career and technical education in New York and four other cities.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his Peoria, Illinois, counterpart Mayor Jim Ardis will join AFT President Randi Weingarten to discuss the five-city partnership on Thursday.

The initiative is modeled after New York City's career and technical education programs. The aim is to provide students with technical proficiency for skilled trades, applied sciences and technology.

The program will be funded through the AFT's Innovation Fund. It will provide grants to union affiliates in Peoria, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Miami-Dade County, Fla.Mayor Bill de Blasio and the American Federation of Teachers hatch new initiative for tech education | Crain's New York Business:

Bill De Blasio Is Waiting On Hillary Clinton To Speak Out On Trade

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said he's waiting on former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton to come out against President Barack Obama's trade deal.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, de Blasio said he wants Clinton to make "a very clear statement that this trade deal should be opposed and should be stopped."

“Democrats all over the country are looking to her for leadership," de Blasio said,Bill De Blasio Is Waiting On Hillary Clinton To Speak Out On Trade

Jesse Turner: Still Walking, Five Years Later - Living in Dialogue

Jesse Turner: Still Walking, Five Years Later - Living in Dialogue:

Jesse Turner: Still Walking, Five Years Later

By Anthony Cody.

It is a bit hard to recall where we were five years ago, but this re-post might help jog your memory, as it did mine. At the time, my blog had been running for a little less than two years at Education Week, and I had started a project called “Teachers Letters to Obama.”

Here is what I posted, in March of 2010:

Regular readers may recall that back in November [of 2009] I expressed my frustrations with the direction Obama and Duncan have taken in education through an open letter to the President. I also began a Facebook group, Teachers’ Letters to Obama, and collected over 100 passionate and well-informed letters, which I sent to Obama and Duncan in December. One of those letters stuck with me. I wanted to share it with my readers, but the author asked me to wait — he had some plans in the works. Those plans are now in place, so today I share with you this letter from Jesse Turner:

Walking is an old story for me. As a child my mother, sisters, and I spent a winter without gas heat, (Father walked out on us–we could not pay the gas bill before the winter legal shut off date). We had a little kerosene heater for our only source of heat in our apartment. It was the coldest winter of our lives. My mother was a waitress working 10 hours a day six days a week. There was never enough of anything.

I guess you might call us the original latch key kids of the 1960’s. We stole electricity from a socket in the hallway. Only one appliance at a time could be put on, and only at night. We were afraid someone would find out what we were doing. Each evening as our mother climbed the three flights of stairs to our little apartment we were there at the door complaining, “we’re cold, mom, and tired of sandwiches.” We moaned and we moaned every night.

She would kick off her white shoes, take off the red apron, and sit
down, and say “how was school today?”

We would shut off the lamp, put on the candle, and turn on the electric kettle. We tell her school was warm. We tell her no one got in trouble. My sisters would say we went to the library. The library was warm, and the library ladies were nice. As soon as she took that first sip of tea almost on cue I would say, “I’m cold mom.”

It never ceases to amaze me how she held it all in. Always a brave smiling face saying “well, then, let’s all have some tea” to warm everyone up. We would sleep with blankets, coats and sweaters.

We woke up during each night with cold noses, and blew warm air into cupped hands to warm them. I love doing that to this very day on a cold day.

Mother came home from work one particularly bad snowy night to find us huddled together complaining about how cold it was in our little apartment. This night tea was not enough. So she says “let’s walk around. Let’s walk around the apartment. Let’s start in the kitchen, and move from room to room. Let’s keep walking. Don’t stop! Keep walking now. Let’s keep adding some more clothes. Put a pair of pants over your pajamas. Put an extra shirt on. Keep walking. Don’t stop. Put on an extra sweater. Put your coats on. Keep walking — don’t stop.”

“Hey little Jess, you look like you are sweating. You must be hot.” “Oh yes, momma, I’m hot. Let’s take off our coats.”

All warm and cozy we sat down, and mom told us the story of the Hebrews, and how they walked for 40 years in the desert. We grew up watching Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, walk all over this nation of ours on Jesse Turner: Still Walking, Five Years Later - Living in Dialogue:

Please check out his FaceBook Event page.

Accountability of Administration - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice

Accountability of Administration - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice:

Accountability of Administration

Each layer of administration in our education system — in schools, on school boards, at the district level, in state’s departments of education and the United States Department of Education — exists for a reason and to serve a purpose. As institutions designed to serve the public need, how are they being held “accountable” to the public?

Many education officials seem to have become more “accountable” to federal or state authorities for record keeping purposes rather than for the real purposes for which they exist. And too many times administrators are ignoring the people they are supposed to serve — students, parents, and society.

The responsibility for public education is seen as a “states rights” issue – or so we believe. But what does it really mean when the courts imply that they are not responsible for “quality” education such as they did in Detroit?

“…the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 7 the State of Michigan has no legal obligation to provide a quality public education to students in the struggling Highland Park School District.”

No legal obligation? That just blows me away! We are forced to test, label, close down schools, and move students all over the place but no one is responsible to ensure quality education is offered in all schools so that all schoolchildren can have equal access.

That is the problem and should be the focus of the solution!

We know there are huge disparities in this country.

I happen to live in the state with the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation. Has our (or your) state defined: what are adequate funding levels? Do we have a funding formula designed to obtain more equitable funding? Do we have expectations for student “performance” to improve and “achievement gaps” to narrow? (SURE) Have we defined what resources they need to get there?????

We say we have higher “expectations.” Where are the quality indicators for all levels Accountability of Administration - The Crucial VoiceThe Crucial Voice:

NEWS: Info on New Orleans Graduation Rates Pre-Katrina | deutsch29

NEWS: Info on New Orleans Graduation Rates Pre-Katrina | deutsch29:

NEWS: Info on New Orleans Graduation Rates Pre-Katrina

Today I read a May 2014 post, Charter Schools’ Memory Hole, written by Adam Hubbard Johnson.

His piece opens as follows:

Pre-Katrina New Orleans graduation numbers are charter school advocates’ exhibit A for reform. One problem: The U.S. and Louisiana Departments of Education say they don’t exist.

What Johnson attempted to do was track the supposed pre-Katrina New Orleans graduation rate of 54.4% to a primary source by contacting those who have cited this stat, including NOLA.com reporter Danielle Dreilinger and former state board member Leslie Jacobs.

Even the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) communicated to him that they did not have “published graduation rates” that went back that far (Johnson asked for 2002-04).

No primary source available.

Well. I have some graduation data on Orleans Parish pre-Katrina, and it comes from LDOE data.

Here is the process that I followed:

In his post, Johnson noted that the url for the LDOE website has changed five times in the past ten years.

I used the web archive search engine Wayback Machine and plugged in the first of Johnson’s reported LDOE urls. Archived page views went back to 2006.

Not far enough.

So, in an effort to find a document with an older LDOE url on it, I googled the term, “louisiana department of education 2001 pdf.” Sure enough, I came up with doe.state.la.us.

When I plugged that into the Wayback machine, it showed archived LDOE page views going back to November 1996.

Here are some that I saved– and they are a trove of archived data that LDOE cannot erase:

La. overview, data and reports

La. student data, 1998-2003

La. district composite reports, 1996-2003

La. first-time college freshmen state reports, 1997-2002

La. dropout numbers and percents, 2001-02

My goal in this search was to find information on Orleans Parish graduation rates in NEWS: Info on New Orleans Graduation Rates Pre-Katrina | deutsch29: