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Changes to Accountability System Adopted by State Board of Education
Posted 9/15/2016
After receiving 139 comments from parents, educators, and concerned citizens, the State Board of Education has voted to adopt several changes to the rules that govern the accountability system that determines school and district ratings. See the changes and read more.
Education Budget News, Charter School Update
Posted 9/12/2016
Governor Bryant made public schools a priority in the latest round of budget cuts by exempting the MAEP. While funding to local schools is not affected by the recent reduction, the MDE's budget will be cut by $4.8-million. Read more about budget cuts and see today's charter school update here.
The Parents' Campaign Submits Comments Regarding Accountability System Changes
Posted 9/12/2016
The Parents' Campaign submitted public comments to the MDE regarding proposed changes to the business rules of the state accountability system. These changes affect the way schools and districts are graded. See our submission here.
What is the Purpose of School? Who Knows? Who Cares?
I look forward to reading PDK's annual poll about public education. I think the information we get from broad surveys of people about the schools in their community, and public education in general, tells us a lot about things that matter most. Certainly more than school-to-school comparisons using the latest value-added formula, which leave us with no idea how to proceed once the "adjusted" scores are rank-ordered, beyond closing schools (which citizens in the PDK survey reject, 85 to 15%) or public shaming.
PDK also seems to have the knack of putting their finger on the right questions: More taxes to support education? (A surprising amount of support.) More career and technical education, rather than straight-academic College prep? (Why, yes. The word is evidently getting around that not everyone's going to college--or needs to.) Pay veteran teachers more, rather than hiring lots more newbies? (Yes. Gratifying news.) And my perennial favorite: Evidence that 60% of parents like their child's traditional public school, even if they think public education in America is terrible.
Today's perspectives are no different from those throughout our history; the American public does not agree on a single purpose for public education. The past 16 years have seen an over-reliance on student achievement on state standardized test scores as a measure of success. Whether Presidents Bush and Obama intended for standardized tests to be the de jure purpose of public education, they certainly have become the de facto purpose, as most school systems are organized to promote success on these measures.
I know that good survey-makers can't have too much open-endedness in the questions they ask--it makes the data gathered less reliable and analysis more troublesome. Although it was good to know that a solid quarter of adults still believe in school as the place we learn to be good citizens. I see and hear a lot less of that today than when I was a K-12 student.
But I can't help wondering what would happen if the question were phrased as a constructed response. What if we asked parents, childless millennials or retirees: What's the purpose of public education? Why do we collect taxes and build buildings and elect school boards and argue about phonics vs. whole language? What's the end game?
If you had asked my parents about the purpose of school they both would have been solidly in the "to help you get a better job" camp--to advance yourself in the world. If you asked me why I sent my children to public schools, the answer would be centered on finding and enhancing their academic and personal strengths in a setting that promotes community.
I would have gone full Dewey, given the time and space. But I know I'm an anomaly--and I also believe the purpose of schooling is one of the great unexamined questions in our national conversation about public education.
It's also a question well worth exploring, again and again. If we were clear about our purpose, or purposes, for public education, it might illuminate policy-making at all levels.
Here's an example: What if we divided public school students, at age 16, into two groups--those who will follow a technical course leading to a skilled trade, and those who will pursue a professional or liberal arts degree at a four-year college or university? (The German system looks something like this, although much more complicated.)
This would certainly be efficient in preparing students for the world of work. No floundering around, trying to decide if college is "right" for Jacob or Jessica. No taking out loans that lead to nothing but a decade's worth of debt. Let's get some good data, and send students in the direction they're best suited to go--their designated career pipeline.
But this is America, where charter schools use their college admission (not completion) rates as marketing, where the purpose of K-12 education seems to be getting into a college, the more prestigious, the better. A place where parents with means will ensure their child ends up on the pathway they choose, system be damned.
I think Joshua Starr is on to something. Recently, the purpose and product of public education has been achievement data--and this change has clearly been driven by policy. Why?
This article explores three alternative goals for American education that have been at the root of educational conflicts over the years: democratic equality (schools should focus on preparing citizens), social efficiency (they should focus on training workers), and social mobility (they should prepare individuals to compete for social positions). These goals represent, respectively, the educational perspective of the citizen, the taxpayer, and the consumer. Whereas the first two look on education as a public good, the third sees it as a private good. Historical conflict over these competing visions of education has resulted in a contradictory structure for the educational system that has sharply impaired its effectiveness. More important still has been the growing domination of the social mobility goal, which has reshaped education into a commodity for the purposes of status attainment and has elevated the pursuit of credentials over the acquisition of knowledge.
I think Labaree got this exactly right: We like to talk about citizenship and the world of work, but our real purpose is credentialing--and our current drive toward market-based, quasi-privatized educational "choice" has made public education a commodity.
Allies Should Work Together, But Not Everyone Agrees
Jim Horn has a website called “Schools Matter.” He opposes corporate reform, as I do. I have never met him. I hear he doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. I thought we were fighting for the same goals.
The first time I became aware of his hostility was when he posted a photograph of me with the caption, “Nice face job, Diane.” Very puzzling as I have never had a facelift. Sexist too. I ignored him.
When Anthony Cody and I decided to create the Network for Public Education, aiming to build alliances among the many individuals and groups fighting against corporate reform, we selected a board and announced our existence. Horn emailed to say that he was going to attack us because we included a much admired NBCT African American teacher from Mississippi. Horn discovered that she had written an article praising merit pay. Many emails went back and forth among him, Anthony, and me. He decided not to poison us at our birth.
But he has an intense and personal animus towards me. Again, I can’t explain it. I don’t know why.
I thought I would share with you his latest blast, which was (I assume) a response to my post about how progressive movements die when they turn on one another. In the post, I urged us all to work together towards our shared agenda. Apparently he is angry that I supported ESSA; I supported it because it eliminated NCLB (No Child Left Behind), AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), and VAM (value-added modeling or test-based teacher evaluations). If ESSA had not passed, NCLB would still be federal law, and John King would have the authoritarian power that Arne Duncan had over the nation’s schools. If I were writing the law, I would have eliminated all federal mandates for accountability and testing, but I was not writing the law.
Despite what he writes, we are on the same side of the issues. Like him, I oppose standardized testing, other than for sampling purposes. I oppose evaluation of teachers by test scores. I oppose segregation. I support equitable and ample funding of schools. I support teacher professionalism and collective bargaining. I support public education and oppose privatization. Yet he says I am his enemy. He wants us to fail.
This is what Jim Horn wrote yesterday:
Today’s Communique to the Ravitch Forces
After what seems to me to have been a pretty effective skirmish, the Ravitch forces have climbed out of their tent at their permanent Basecamp, stomping the ground and waving their, um, whatevers. For those Ravitch acolytes who are not too drunk on revenge to read, here’s something to ponder, as I am working on a next book today and don’t have time to attend to your whining.
In everything I have seen from D. Ravitch and the band of intellectual eunuchs who comprise the NPE echo chamber, a theme stands out, which is that we cannot afford to fight among ourselves, that allies cannot be ripped asunder, that we must stick together in the same tent, blah blah. So let me speak to Diane directly here, and I hope that all of her disciples will read this carefully.
The problem is, Diane, our goals are not the same. My goals are ending testing accountability in all forms, ending segregated classrooms in all forms, and ending corporate education reform in all forms. I can’t work toward those goals with any effect while misleaders like you and the union suits are cutting deals on ESSA to guarantee another generation of testing accountability, segregated classrooms, and corporate control. Have you read the history of NCLB?
What is competency-based education? Twenty or thirty years ago, it referred to skill-based education, and critics complained that CBE downgraded the importance of knowledge. Today CBE has a different meaning. It refers to
Dana Goldstein writes here about New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign to establish a universal program of free, public pre-kindergarten, equally available to the poor, the middle-class, and the rich. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016
Last week a group of children in Detroit, Michigan sued the governor, the state board of education, the superintendent of public instruction, the director of technology, management and budget, and the state school reform/redesign officer.
The lawsuit runs over 100 pages, but the table of contents provides a pretty clear outline of the argument:
1) Literacy is a fundamental right 2) The state of Michigan's role in securing educational rights (subheadings: it has one) 3) The failure to provide access to literacy in plaintiffs' schools 4) Failure to deliver evidence-based literacy instruction and intervention programs in plaintiffs' schools 5) Failure to ensure educational conditions necessary to attain literacy (including failure to provide course selection, to maintain a decent physical plant for education, to meet students' needs, to provide a supported and stable staff, and to demand accountability with charter and school closings). 6) The state's failure to implement evidence-based reforms to address literacy
The details and accounts of the state's failure is stunning, almost unimaginable, from a "lake" in a classroom cordoned off with tape to the math classes taught by an eighth grader for a month-- and that's not because nobody was paying attention, but because that was the solution the school came up with for their staffing issue.
A lot of outrage has been expressed as the lawsuit's details have spread, supported by photographs from many sources. Yesterday, columnist Nancy Kaffer tried to explain to Detroit Free Press readerswhat the suit was about and just how bad things are for the largely African-American student population of the five schools named in the suit. But here's the part of her piece that jumped out at me: Detroit's traditional public school district (the former Detroit Public Schools, now the newly created Detroit Public Schools Community District) has operated under state oversight for most of the last 16 years. The schools haven't gotten better. Nor have schools removed from the old DPS and placed in the state reform district, the Educational Achievement Authority. Nor have, in aggregate, the charter schools that were supposed to offer parents better options (at the literal expense of traditional public schools) delivered on that promise. The State of Michigan played a strong hand in the creation of this three-part system, and so the suit argues that it is responsible for fixing it.
Michigan has run the entire table of reformster ideas-- takeover of the district, creation of anachievement district, and charter operators brought in to replace the publics. Detroit is now a reformy buffet. Moreover, Detroit should be a beautiful display of how well the various reformster policies work. Except that it isn't, because they don't.
The other day a friend told me that a mutual acquaintance, a private school teacher, had fallen seriously ill. The teacher’s friends and colleagues, he said, were raising money for her through GoFundMe, the online site for charitable giving, because the expenses she faced were almost as daunting as her illness. A few days later, I learned the Newark Teachers Union (NTU), an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, also had opened a GoFundMe site to raise money for itself and members. It too, apparently, faces a daunting fate.
The personal problems faced by a person are, of course, more compelling than the financial problems faced by a public employee union. Still, when an organization on which thousands of men and women rely for essential services– like medical insurance—seeks charity, then those men and women should be concerned.
John Abeigon, the NTU president, views the effort as a sort of David vs. Goliath effort.
“The corporations that have been funding the attack on teachers have very deep pockets,” he says. “No one can say the union has deep pockets.”
Abeigon speaks mostly of the efforts by state administrators running the Newark district to use the new tenure law—a weakling compared to prior job security measures—to fire tenured teachers. Under former state-appointed superintendent Cami Anderson and then her successor, former state education commissioner Christopher Cerf, the state-operated district sought to dismiss a score or more of tenured Newark teachers by using a patently wrong interpretation of the new statute.
The law and accompanying regulations called for a year of experimental use of the new law before any district could begin using its punitive elements to dismiss Why does the Newark Teachers Union need charity? |:
Meet the New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE)
By: Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director BATs and Steering Committee Member NYSAPE
Who is NYSAPE? What do they do? Here is who they are and what they have accomplished!
-->Gov. Cuomo stopped his bullying and created a task force.
-->Ed Reformer Chancellor Tisch decided not to seek another term
--->NYSAPE supported our Hero Regents who are now all at the helm of creating education policy in NY!
--->Instrumental in leading the drive of over 260,000 (22%) test refusals in NYS (2016).
1. No one funds NYSAPE. NYSAPE has NO budget but is able to successfully counter such highly funded organizations like High Achievement NY and StudentsFirstNY .
In our pursuit of a world powered by love and reaching toward joy and justice, imagination is our most formidable and unyielding ally—the people’s common asset, an endowment to each one and the indispensable weapon of the powerless. Yes, they control the massive military-industrial complex, the sophisticated surveillance systems, the prison cells, and the organized propaganda—and these are on constant display as if to remind us every minute that there is no hope of a world without the instruments of death and oppression—and we have only our minds, our desires, and our dreams—and each other And, yes, in a fixed war or a traditional conflict we are finished before we start. But it’s also true that there’s no power on earth stronger than the imagination unleashed and the collective human soul on fire. In irregular combat or a guerrilla struggle that pits our free imaginations against the stillborn and stunted imaginations of the war-makers and the mercenaries, we will win.
When we choose life, we leap into the whirlwind with courage and hope. Hope is a choice, after all, and confidence a politics—our collective antidote to cynicism and despair. It’s the capacity to notice or invent alternatives, and then to do something about it, to get busy in projects of repair. I have a T-shirt that reads: “Depressed? Maybe it’s political.”
The future is entirely unknown and unknowable; optimism, then, is simply idle dreaming, while pessimism is no more than a dreary turn of mind—they are twins, two sides of the same deterministic coin. Both optimists and pessimists delude themselves into thinking they know for sure what’s coming. They don’t; no one does. The day before Rosa Parks sat down on that bus, Jim Crow was immutable; the day after, the Third American Revolution was unstoppable. The day before John Brown’s assault on Harpers Ferry, the end of slavery was impossible; the day after, abolition was inevitable. The day before the Zapatistas declared a state of war against Mexico from its small base in Chiapas, the idea of a peasant and indigenous-led civil resistance was unthinkable; now it is a model for Demand the Impossible! (excerpt 3) | Bill Ayers:
The LAUSD School Board needs a parent's perspective. None of the current Board members has a child enrolled in the district.
One size education does not fit all. The District must provide opportunities to all students, not just those who are college bound. We will fight to block the closure of special education centers and return funding to vocational education.
Eli Broad's plan to privatize education must be stopped. Unlike Mรณnica Garcรญa's campaign, this campaign will not be funded by the charter industry. I will answer to the parents and students of the district, not corporate donors.
Money and race, money and race. Some weeks it feels as if that's all this is really all about. Remember to link and share and pass on the readings that speak to you. Everyone can amplify the voices they believe should be heard.
Yet another writer reaches the not-mysterious conclusion that the teacher shortage mostly has to do with the desire to avoid spending money on education
The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at some recent attempts by the charter industry to regain their footing after a long, hard summer, and what these attempts reveal about the flawed thinking of charteristas.
What teachers wish they knew before they started teaching
There are quite a few steps you need to take before you become a teacher.
To become an elementary school teacher in a public school, for example, you not only need to hold a bachelor's degree, but you also need to prove you have the skills necessary to teach elementary education and have a certain number of hours of supervised educational experience under your belt.
All this job training can only take you so far, however, and inevitably you enter the teaching world not entirely prepared for what's ahead.
To help prevent aspiring teachers from getting caught by surprise, we asked teachers everywhere what's one thing they wish they knew before becoming a teacher, and more than 50 teachers responded.
We've anonymously included some of their answers here:
Politics play a huge role
"I wish I knew how political education was. I don't think I was prepared for that."
It's a lot of work
"There is a ton of paperwork, and the job is 24/7. During the school year it is very hard to find a balance between being super teacher and finding time to be one's own person."
The job is so rewarding
"I never expected to love teaching as much as I do."
Your days rarely end when the bell rings
"The paperwork never stops, and it's not just grading, which would be fine — it's the district and state mandated paperwork on top of everything else."
Being an extrovert only carries you so far
"The amount of time you spend in front of a group is exhausting. Having a bad day is magnified in direct relation to how long you have to 'be on' and pretend you are not having a bad day. School isn't just about making a fool out of yourself in front of students. A school is an incredibly social environment where you will also have thousands of opportunities to put your foot in your mouth in front of colleagues, administrators, counselors, and maintenance staff."
It's really not about teaching what you love
"It's about managing the classroom beyond everything else."
You're held responsible for things that are completely out of your control
"I had students who were absent about 50% of the time. I had high school students come in and steal my stuff, push me into walls, refuse to do any work, curse at me and say sexual things to me, and run around the classroom screaming, and I got zero — ZERO — support from the administration. And when these kids inevitably were failing, I was told it was my fault, because my lessons weren't engaging enough."
Parent involvement is key
"Build up relationships with adults as much as you do the children."
You can be stretched thin
"I wish I knew that teaching was such an exploitative career. Not only are you responsible for the behavior and performance of almost a hundred other humans, but it's assumed you're available to teach up to five distinct preps per semester, often without any resources provided by the school. The amount of work involved in such an endeavor is immense and results in a lot of stress and hardly any time for the self.
