2017 Medley #8 – Vouchers Come Up Short

Vouchers Come Up Short

VOUCHERS IN THE NEWS

The latest research on the efficacy of school vouchers shows that receiving a voucher does not guarantee a better education. One wonders, then, why Republicans (and some Democrats) are fighting so hard to impose more vouchers on the public to the detriment of public schools?

The current administration, under Trump, Pence, and DeVos, is pushing vouchers nationwide despite the mediocre showing of private schools compared to their public counterparts (see The Public School Advantage as well as here, here, here, and here). This is not to say that private and parochial schools are all inferior to public schools. On the contrary, some elite private schools have excellent programs unburdened by teach-to-the-test policies. However, when you consider the economic status of the students the advantage disappears.

In Indiana, vouchers began as a way to help high poverty students "escape" from "failing" public schools. The truth is that the "failing" public schools were often struggling due to the state's neglect of the economic conditions in the school communities. Children in East Chicago, for example, have been combatting the effects of lead poisoning for years. "Failing" schools in Indianapolis are due, at least in part, to a child poverty rate of 33% and an overall poverty rate of 20%, both well above the national average. Vouchers wouldn't help all those students even if private and parochial schools were "better." Public schools can and should try to improve, of course, but improvement requires support from the larger community, in this case, the state legislature and governor's office. Until politicians accept their share of responsibility for the high rate of child poverty, schools – public, charter and private – will continue to "fail."

The Indiana voucher plan began in 2011 with the promise of saved money and increased achievement. Under the Republican-led legislature and Governors (Daniels and Pence), the program has been expanded significantly. Once it became clear that private and parochial schools can't overcome the effects of poverty any better or more cheaply than public schools can, the argument has changed from "improved achievement and money saved" to "parental choice." Should parents have the "choice" to spend public tax dollars, earmarked for a public institution, at a religious or private location?

REASONS FOR VOUCHERS

Vouchers do not improve education

Vouchers in Indiana don't save money...and don't improve education. Doug Masson provides three "reasons" for vouchers that hits three nails right on the head.

In Indiana, the motivating impulse for voucher enthusiasts seems to be a combination of: a) undermining the influence of teachers’ unions; b) subsidizing the preferences of those who would want a private religious education; and c) providing access to that sweet, sweet education money to friends and well-wishers of voucher proponents.

STUNNING NEWS ABOUT VOUCHERS

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is getting some very bad news about her favorite thing, school vouchers

The LA Times reports that vouchers and school privatization doesn't really work. The reporter, a Pulitzer Prize winning business reporter named Michael Hiltzik, apparently needs more education when it comes to education reporting.

...DeVos's patron, President Trump, proposed during his campaign to shovel $20 billion to the states to support magnet and charter schools in voucher programs.

The sentence should end, "...$20 billion to the states to support magnet, charter schools, and voucher programs." Do vouchers pay for school system magnet programs and charter schools? I don't think so, but perhaps I'm wrong. It's my understanding that vouchers pay for tuition to private schools, while magnet schools are part of public school systems, and charter schools are privately run publicly funded schools. Feel free to correct me on this in the comments.

Hilzik continues, reporting the news that recent research has voucher students scoring lower on standardized tests than public school students. The claim that "education experts" are stunned by the results is, in itself, stunning. Simply changing the venue of a child's education isn't sufficient to improve achievement if the child continues to live with the out-of-school-factors related to poverty.

...the latest findings, which emerge from studies of statewide programs in Louisiana, Ohio and Indiana, have left education experts stunned. In a nutshell, they find huge declines of academic achievement among students in voucher programs in those three states.

Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins

Kevin Carey in the New York Times, echoes the "surprise" over the results of the studies. The results, he says, are "startling."

In this piece, "well-regulated charter schools" refers to charters which are "open to all and accountable to public authorities."

The last sentence is the most important. [emphasis added]

The new voucher studies stand in marked contrast to research findings that well-regulated charter schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have a strong, positive impact on test scores. But while vouchers and charters are often grouped under the umbrella of “school choice,” the best charters tend to be nonprofit public schools, open to all and accountable to public authorities. The less “private” that school choice programs are, the better they seem to work.

'REFORMERS' FIND THAT VOUCHERS DON'T IMPROVE LEARNING

I voted for school vouchers. Now I know I was wrong.

The pro-"reform" Thomas Fordham Institute studied the effectiveness of Ohio's voucher programs. Just like in Louisiana and Indiana, they don't help children achieve better than public schools and they strip public education of funding.

In this article a former North Carolina legislator concludes that tax money for vouchers would be better spent on the state's public schools.

So what did this report say that the Fordham Institute undertook, ostensibly to promote the expansion of vouchers in America? It said that vouchers have failed miserably. That’s right, a pro-voucher group had to put out a report that concluded that vouchers are failing our children. And keep in mind, this isn’t an outlier of empirical studies of vouchers’ effectiveness in educating our children. Two other recent studies (one in Indiana and another in Louisiana) came to the same conclusion.

...North Carolina is scheduled to spend over $1 billion in the next 10 years for a voucher system that simply doesn’t work. It’s time for the General Assembly to recognize this and correct course so that we can reinvest that billion dollars in public schools.

RELIGIOUS ENTITLEMENT

Vouchers a new entitlement to religious education

At first it was for poor kids to escape from "failing" schools. Now it's a way to provide public funds for religious schools and to increase the segregation of Indiana schools. [emphasis added]

When lawmakers created the program in 2011, then-Gov. Mitch Daniels said it was a way to help children from poor families find a better alternative to failing public schools. But the program has evolved into a new entitlement: state-funded religious education for middle and low-income families.

Some 54 percent of students receiving vouchers this year have no record of having attended an Indiana public school, the report says. Voucher advocates initially insisted the program would save the state money, because it would cost less to subsidize private school tuition than to send a student to a public school. But increasingly vouchers are going to families that never had any intention of sending their kids to public schools; that’s an entirely new cost for the state to take on.

Also, vouchers are more and more going to students who are white, suburban and non-poor. When the program started, more than half of participating students were black or Hispanic. Now over 60 percent are white, and only 12.4 percent are African-American. It’s reasonable to ask if, in some cases, vouchers are a state-funded mechanism for “white flight” from schools that are becoming more diverse.

JOHN KUHN SPEAKS OUT

John Kuhn: Vouchers Serve Adults at Children’s Expense

Anthony Cody wrote this about John Kuhn.

John Kuhn is a Texas school superintendent and long-time advocate for public schooling. His essays have been read hundreds of thousands of times online, videos of his speeches have gone viral, and his book, Fear and Learning in America, has sold thousands of copies. He continues to advocate for teachers and fight for the constitutional promise of free public schools for all American children.

I've quoted Superintendent Kuhn quite a few times on this blog and included YouTube videos. He's an important voice for public education in America...not just Texas.

Superintendent Kuhn presented this speech on March 5 to the Association of Texas Professional Educators, an independent association of educators (i.e. affiliated with neither NEA nor AFT).

The great American experiment of free public schools, open to all children and overseen by locally-elected citizens—this bold vision is being challenged by an army of wealthy and interested parties who are dead set on dismantling the public education system and trading it for a voucher system...

John Kuhn at the Save Texas Schools Rally in 2011

Be sure to read John Kuhn's Alamo Letter.

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Tell Duncan He's Wrong!

Arne Duncan and the Obama Department of Education have redirected their attack on public schools to post-secondary schools of education. Duncan has proposed that colleges be judged based on the test scores of their graduates' students and the ability of their graduates to get hired. There is simply no research which indicates that this is an accurate measure of the success of a school of education. Simple common sense says that there are other factors which come into play...most notably, the socio-economic status of the children teachers teach. Poverty is the number one factor in student test scores, not their teachers' SAT scores or school of education.

Of course, it's important for teachers to be competent at what they do. Good training is vital, and why Duncan is going after schools of education instead of Teach for America is a topic for another post (think $$$).

In the meantime, using VAM to measure the effectiveness of schools of education is no more appropriate as using VAM to measure the effectiveness of classroom teachers. It is simply invalid.

Student achievement test scores should be used for tracking student achievement and determining the instructional needs of students. That is what achievement tests were designed for...and that's what they should be used for. Anyone who has ever learned anything about standardized tests ought to know that tests should be used only for that which they have been designed. Period.

You have a chance to tell Secretary Duncan how wrong he is.

Anthony Cody, a blogger, public education activist, author, teacher, and founding member of the Network for Public Education, writes...

We have a short window -- just until Jan. 2, to submit public comments for consideration by the Department of Ed in response to their proposed new regulations affecting teacher education.

These regulations are aimed at wiping out "ideological resistance" to high stakes tests.

The proposal states that the new regulations will evaluate teacher education programs based on the following criteria:

• Employment outcomes: New teacher placement and three-year retention rates in high-need schools and in all schools.

• New teacher and employer feedback: Surveys on the effectiveness of preparation.

• Student learning outcomes: Impact of new teachers as measured by student growth, teacher evaluation, or both.

• Assurance of specialized accreditation or evidence that a program produces high-quality candidates.

Please let the US DOE know that VAM is inappropriate for evaluating teachers, schools, school systems, and post secondary teacher training schools. Anthony Cody has all the information in his post, Duncan Brings the Sham of VAM to Teacher Education.

There is a window of opportunity to comment on this proposal. Everyone associated with teacher education ought to comment. Professors – this is a perfect opportunity to acquaint your students with the policies that will impact their careers in the years to come. Student teachers, challenge your professors to take a stand. Comments should be sent to this address: OIRA_DOCKET@omb.eop.gov by January 2, 2015.

[UPDATE: The window for making comments on this web site is February 2, 2015, not January 2.]

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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REPA III - Deprofessionalizing Education

ON BEING A PROFESSIONAL

This weekend Anthony Cody posted the following video on his new blog site...

The three minute talk by Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Howard University, Denisha Jones, speaks right to the heart of the matter of allowing (or encouraging) people to walk into public school classrooms unprepared.

Dr. Jones (Ph.D in Curriculum and Instruction from Indiana University) focuses her comments on the 5-week TFA (Teach For Awhile?) training program which places minimally trained college graduates in public school classrooms. In its early years, TFA aimed to fill unfilled positions in low income neighborhood schools. Now it's also being used to replace laid off teachers with cheap temps in school districts around the nation.

On the other hand, REPA III, which was adopted last week by the Indiana State Board or Education, doesn't even require 5 weeks of pedagogical training before you can be hired to teach in one of Indiana's high schools. You have to be well trained or experienced in your subject area, but developing the skills needed to transfer knowledge and develop understanding to the students in your classroom is apparently not necessary. If an unlucky high school does hire you to teach, only then do you have to start your training in pedagogy. You can "learn how to teach" from...

...school-based professional development, college or university-based course work or professional development, an entity that is not an institution of higher education, or a professional education organization

This pedagogical training must start within the first month you enter the classroom. The seven members of the State Board of Education who voted for REPA III apparently believe that you can 1) make it through the first month in a high school classroom without any knowledge of how teaching actually works or 2) learn how to teach instantly once you are exposed to "pedagogy training." [Note how the language in REPA III allows you to get your "training" from virtually anyone...like Pearson, perhaps]

THOSE FABULOUS FINNS

Allowing untrained "experts" to teach on the REPA III plan is simply the logical next step in the privatization of public education and the deprofessionalization of teachers in Indiana and across the nation.

In contrast, Finland has improved its schools and national education, not by testing every child yearly and using tests to punish students, teachers and schools, or by reducing funding for education resulting in lower or frozen teacher salaries. It hasn't removed collective bargaining rights for teachers, or taken away teachers' due process rights. What Finland has done, among other things, is to elevate the profession of teaching to such a high level that the "best and the brightest" want to pursue careers in education. The Finns have improved teacher training by increasing, rather than decreasing the requirements needed before one can step in front of a classroom. They require educators to understand their subject area, of course, but they also require them to be well trained in pedagogy. They give their teachers plenty of time to collaborate and plan lessons so their students need less in-school time than their American counterparts. They pay their teachers well, and even pay them during their training.

What does all this investment in teacher training and professional development yield?

Academically, Finland is one of the highest performing nations in the world.

WE'RE NOT #1

We hear so much about how American schools are failing because our students don't score high enough on international tests and how we should learn from those successful countries so that our students will be able to "compete in the global marketplace."

Then we turn around and underfund our schools, overwork our teachers, blame public education for the failure of policy makers to deal with issues surrounding poverty and sell off the education of our children to private and charter schools with little or no public oversight.

The final step in making our public schools as much unlike successful nations' schools as possible, is to demoralize teachers and deprofessionalize the field of education. Instead of increasing requirements for becoming a teacher, we decrease them. Instead of doing what we need to do to attract the "best and the brightest" to our public school classrooms we make a career in the field of education so difficult and so filled with mind-numbing test-obsessed insanity that fewer and fewer students are going into teaching and older, experienced career teachers are leaving the field in greater and greater numbers.

REPA III requires training in some "related field." Would any of the seven REPA III supporters on the Indiana State Board of Education want to be treated for an illness by say, an anatomy professor who never attended medical or nursing school, but who promised to learn how to practice medicine within a month? Would any of them go to a former police officer for legal help, for example, if the officer decided that s/he wanted to practice law and would start on her/his law degree during the first month of handling their case?

Do any of them send their own children to schools with untrained teachers?

Dr. Jones said,

...this is what makes one a professional. They have completed a course of education deemed appropriate by the leaders in their field, and they have demonstrated a readiness to enter the profession. [emphasis added]

The seven pro-REPA III members of the Indiana State Board of Education are not leaders in the field of education despite some of their credentials. They have demonstrated that they are unqualified to have anything to do with public education.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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Anthony Cody: "It's Poverty Not Bad Teachers"

On June 4, I wrote,

The point is, of course, that the link between achievement and poverty is not in doubt. We know better. The "new data" linking lower achievement with poverty just supports the "old data" linking lower achievement with poverty.

IT'S POVERTY

Now, Anthony Cody, author of EdWeek's Living in Dialogue Blog adds his voice (click the title to read the entire article. You should!).

Poverty is what’s crippling public education in the US—not bad teachers

...reformers [have] advocate[d] that we:

• Test students more often...
• Eliminate barriers to firing the “bad teachers”...
• Create new evaluation plans that give significant weight to “value added” measures...

...new data shows that in the three large urban school districts where these reforms have been given full rein, the results are actually worse than in comparable districts that have not gone this route.

Some of the key findings...

• Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in “reform” cities than in other urban districts.
• Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.
• School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts money.

Most importantly:

• The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance.

Here are some other people saying the same thing...

• Parents, Poverty and Achieving in School, by Jerry Bracey, August 2007
• Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success by David C. Berliner, March 2009
• Education and Poverty: Confronting the Evidence by Helen F. Ladd, November 2011.
• Stephen Krashen could eat Arne Duncan for breakfast (Video has been removed, but excerpts are included), June 2011
• The problem is poverty: Evidence from Gerald Bracey, Gerald Bracey and Stephen Krashen, October 2010
• New data shows school “reformers” are full of it by David Sirota, June 2013.

WHERE'S THE ACCOUNTABILITY

...for the politicians and policy makers who have allowed so many of our children to grow up in poverty?

...for the Bush team who saddled us with NCLB based on the falsely named Texas Miracle?

...for the Obama team who saddled us with Race to the Top based on Arne Duncan's failed Renaissance 2000?

...for the Bloomberg team in New York City and the Emanuel team in Chicago? Close schools, fire teachers, shuffle children around no matter what it does to them?

...for all the "reformers" who are privatizing education and starving the nation's public schools?

NOTABLE QUOTES

From Susan Ohanian

"We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished." -— Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

"There are two major factors preventing teachers from being even more effective: (1) The high level of child poverty in the U.S., 23.1 percent, second among high-income countries; children who are hungry, have poor health care and little access to books will not do well in school regardless of teacher quality. (2) The unreasonable demands of the Common Core: a tight, inflexible curriculum that crushes creativity, designed by elitists with little idea of what goes on in classrooms, and a massive amount of testing, more than we have ever seen on this planet." -— Stephen Krashen, Seattle Times, Jan. 11, 2013

"16.4 million children living in poverty in this country. Solution: Blame the schools and take away teacher benefits and bargaining rights." -— Susan Ohanian, Twitter, Sept. 14, 2011

"The relationship between poverty and all kinds of academic achievement is one of the best-established and most replicated results in all of educational research. People keep "rediscovering it" and politicians keep ignoring it, or tell people to 'stop whining' (Rod Paige)." —- Stephen Krashen, e-mail, Aug. 10, 2011

"Let's blame
(1) teachers
(2) schools of education
(3) the decline of the US
(4) lack of a national education program
(5) parents.
But not
the real culprit:
POVERTY."
-— Stephen Krashen, March 22, 2011

I mean this with all respect. I'm on my knees here, and there's a knife in my back, and the prints on it kinda match yours. I think you don't get it...It's not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs. It's pure, raw poverty. We don't teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities..." —- Paul Karrer, Education Week, Feb. 2, 2011

"Thousands of studies have linked poverty to academic achievement. The relationship is every bit as strong as the connection between cigarettes and cancer." —- David Berliner, Our Impoverished View of Ed. Reform, Aug. 2005

"For many critics, teachers have become the villains in the wealthy elite's panic over educational accomplishment and foreign competition. But teachers don't cause financial meltdowns, home foreclosures, climate change, or hurricanes. And they don't invade countries or outsource jobs. Teachers don't cause mind-numbing conditions of poverty that limit children's ability to learn. However, teachers are the ones asked to cope with the poisonous effects of poverty. Why? Because most of society doesn't give a damn." —- Richard Gibboney, in Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality by Bracey

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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What Does it Mean to be an Educator?

Yesterday Anthony Cody blogged about the drama unfolding in New Mexico where teachers are expressing a desire to have an educator as state Education Secretary. The quote below from Cody's piece, New Mexico Education Secretary's Hearings Bring More Light to Corruption in Education Reform, is from Larry Langley, the head of New Mexico's Business Roundtable.

"Please understand that to be a highly qualified educator doesn't require you to be in front of a classroom," Langley said. "Every one of us in this room, I hope, are some kind of qualified educator. I've certainly learned things from the chair of this committee. I have learned things from the ranking member of this committee, and from many others. You have been my educators, and you have been qualified educators."

[UPDATE: Diane Ravitch has some information about Hanna Skandera, the acting secretary of education in New Mexico. You can read it HERE.]

Now, being a former teacher is no guarantee that one will be a good state education leader. Many of us in Indiana (and now Florida) recognize that former Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, who was a career teacher, was not a friend to public education. The same is true on the Federal level. Rod Paige, who was Bush II's first Secretary of Education was a high school Health and PE teacher for a few years. It was under Paige's watch, you remember, that No Child Left Behind became the law of the land. Paige is also famous for calling the NEA a "terrorist organization."

So, while I think it's important that a state (and federal) education chief be an experienced educator, experience alone is no guarantee that a trained educator will be able to resist the call of politics and work for the benefit of the students under their care. That being said, it's insulting to have the public school chief of the state or federal administration making policy for public schools when the newest graduate of an accredited education school (note: this does not include TFA) is more experienced in the field.

According to Langley, above, anyone who's taught something to anyone is an educator. The person who taught me how to use the cash register at Carl Fischer of Chicago when I started working there in 1970 was, by that definition, an educator. Does that mean that since I have bandaged a child's cut finger I'm a doctor? I've removed a splinter using tweezers...does that make me a surgeon? Obviously not...and teaching someone how to be a politician or run a cash register does not make one an educator.

What does it mean to be an educator?

Why is being a "teacher" something that many people consider easy work? Why is education something that you don't need experience in or background in before you are allowed to make policy for students, teachers and schools? Why do lawmakers in Indiana think that almost anyone can be an educator?

Most Americans have gone or are currently going to school. Teachers are everywhere...and have influenced nearly all of us. Most people, even poor students such as I was, can name a teacher or two who had a positive influence on their lives. Furthermore, most teachers are very good at what they do. They make the job of teaching look easy. It looks easy...so therefore, the conventional wisdom goes, anyone can do it. We're all, as Langley says, "educators."

Here's an example.

Q: Why does Arne Duncan (I'll use Duncan as an example because, as Secretary of Education he's the nation's "top educator." The same holds true for any non-educator who thinks they know-it-all about education) think he's qualified to make policy for teachers and public schools?

A: He had good teachers when he was growing up. He went to well resourced schools with well-trained teachers. He learned his lessons, from identifying letters of the alphabet to learning how to "find x" to learning how to write a term paper for his 400 level Sociology class at Harvard. He watched his teachers as they skillfully led him to understanding and knowledge. It's likely however, that he didn't see the amount of work they put into their daily lessons or the preparation they needed to deal with the problems children bring to their classrooms every day.

Teaching is not easy, at any level. Teaching a classroom of students is hard, demanding, sometimes grueling, work. It is not, as a parent of one of my students once said to me, "simply a question of telling them" what they need to know. Arne Duncan was never trained in pedagogy, child development, psychology, curriculum development and design or any of the other things a teacher must know in order to be a teacher. Imparting knowledge is just one aspect of teaching...and I would maintain that it's not the most important.

Duncan doesn't realize (and neither, obviously, does Langley) that it takes knowledge and skill to be a teacher because his memories of being in a classroom are immature memories. Does he really have any idea what his first grade teacher did to help him learn to read? Does he understand how his fifth grade teacher helped him memorize the Gettysburg Address? Does he really understand how his high school History teacher inspired him? Does he know all the work his English teacher did to prepare a lesson on Shakespeare?

No. He doesn't. He was a child...and he viewed his teachers through a child's eyes. To use eduspeak, he didn't have the "background knowledge" necessary to understand the amount of effort it took to educate him. He still doesn't and neither do most other "reformers" who are making education policy in America, today.

Teachers need to speak out. What does it mean to be an educator?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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October 17 Campaign for Our Public Schools

Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody, have teamed up with a plan to flood the White House email with letters in support of -- and against the privatization of -- public education. While President Obama's reelection is in no way guaranteed, he is, of the two main party candidates, the one who is most likely to listen. Sample letters and suggestions are on Diane Ravitch's blog.

There is no guarantee that the President will listen, but it can't hurt to let him know that there are many people who are unhappy with the corporate privatization of America's public education system.

For more information about participating, see Instructions for the October 17 Campaign for Our Public Schools. The letters will be sent on October 17th.

I sent my letter today. It follows...

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Dear President Obama,

I am a product of the Chicago Public Schools. I attended a public university and went on to a career in education during which I taught for 35 years in America's public schools. My wife of 42 years is still teaching in our public schools. My children attended public schools. My grandchildren attend public schools. I am very concerned about the current lack of support for public schools in the United States.

In the summer of 2007 a candidate for president of the United States told a group of teachers,

"Don't label a school as failing one day and then throw your hands up and walk away from it the next. Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test...You didn't devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do."

That candidate, of course, was you.

In 2008 I voted for you because I had hope that finally we had a leader who would put children before profits and return some sanity to America's public schools. It was my hope that you would restore standardized testing to its appropriate place in educational assessment and that you would push back against the national tide of privatization.

To say that I have been disappointed would be an understatement.

The 2012 Democratic Party platform says,

"The Democratic Party understands the importance of turning around struggling public schools. We will continue to strengthen all our schools and work to expand public school options for low-income youth, including magnet schools, charter schools, teacher-led schools, and career academies.

"...includes raising standards for the programs that prepare our teachers, recognizing and rewarding good teaching...We also believe in carefully crafted evaluation systems that give struggling teachers a chance to succeed..."

During your first term "turning around struggling public schools" has meant firing staffs, and/or selling off public educational institutions to private companies and expanding charter schools. "Carefully crafted evaluation systems" has meant evaluating teachers based on test scores. Neither of those "reforms" has any basis in research. Charters perform no better, on average, than public schools and VAM evaluation processes have been found to be invalid. The American Educational Research Association and the National Academy of Education issued a joint paper saying that such evaluation methods are inaccurate and unstable. Teachers get high ratings if they teach the easiest students, and low ratings if they teach the most challenging students.

Race to the Top encourages more teaching to the test, not less.

There is a conflict between your words and your actions. On the one hand you have frequently stated that teaching to the test is the wrong direction for schools and students, yet Race to the Top requires tying evaluations and pay for teachers and principals to test scores. In addition, the Department of Education, under Secretary Duncan, is planning to expand the number of subjects tested and to increase how often the tests are given. Is this the way to reduce the need to teach to the test?

By continuing to elevate standardized tests as the most important piece of data in a school or school system you guarantee that the curriculum will follow the test, not vice versa, and guarantee that teaching to the test will not just continue, but increase.

Furthermore, high stakes testing places excessive pressure on schools attended by our most neediest students. It's poverty, not poor teaching which leads to lower achievement. Pressuring the schools these students attend to increase test scores forces teachers to focus on those test scores, instead of a rich, well-rounded curriculum.

Race to the Top requires states to increase privatization of public schools.

The public school system in the United States has served us well and should not be scrapped for a system of private and for-profit charter schools.

Studies have shown that charter schools do not perform better than public schools. When comparing similar populations of children for profit charters have the same successes and failures that regular public schools have. There's no reason to increase the number of charter schools. Doing so just reduces the number of schools and school systems run by locally elected school boards and turns them over to corporate boards of directors whose bottom line is profit, not children.

I urge you to redirect the department of education away from the failed effort to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students.

I urge you to change Race to the Top and to stop encouraging municipalities to close schools and fire staffs because of low scores. Low scores are a reflection of high poverty, not an indicator of bad schools or bad teachers. Insist that schools enrolling large numbers of poor and minority students get the resources they need to succeed.

Please, President Obama, recognize that your policies are demoralizing teachers. Many are leaving the profession. Young people are deciding not to become teachers. Your policies are ruining a noble profession and causing widespread damage to public schools, public school teachers and public school students.

Thank you,

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Won't Back Down - Infomercial

Yesterday, in 2012 Medley #18, I had a section about Won't Back Down, the movie which claims to be "based on something true." Of course, we know that it's actually based on nothing but the dreams of the corporate charter industry.

There hasn't been a parent trigger-based transfer of a school from public control to corporate charter control. There shouldn't be either, because, as much as "reformers" may want you to believe it, parents don't own public schools. The public owns public schools and a group of citizens, no matter how involved they are in a public institution, shouldn't have the right to sell that institution to a private enterprise. A little league group, for example, can't sell the public park in which they play simply because they use the park. I believe parents should be closely involved in their children's education, but that's not what the parent trigger laws provide for.

In yesterday's blog post I referenced a few locations which dealt with the new movie, Won't Back Down.

• Why do Teachers Unions Hate America? (hint: they don't!)
• "Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal
• Educate Maggie from the New Yorkers for Great Public Schools and their Youtube video, "EDUCATING MAGGIE" | The Real Parents #WontBackDown Against #ALEC | ***UPDATE***

There's more, though. As the movie begins to settle in as this week's main topic on the edublogosphere, more and more information and commentary is being produced.

REACTION

This morning, for example, Anthony Cody posted Reaction to "Won't Back Down" Shows Critics Have Learned Something which compares the reaction to Won't Back Down to the reaction to Waiting for Superman.

Reviewers were mostly favorable towards "Waiting For Superman." The web site Rotten Tomatoes aggregates reviews, and also collects feedback from ordinary folks who have seen the movies. "Waiting For Superman" got an overall rating of 89%, with an audience score that was 84% positive.

Flash forward two years, and witness the release this month of "Won't Back Down," another movie heavily financed and promoted by education "reformers," with a similar message that teacher unions are obstacles to school improvement. This time the reaction has been decidedly different. The Rotten Tomatoes site indicates a reviewer score of only 35% so far, in spite of efforts by staffers at Students First to boost the score.

Both movies are "reformer" propaganda focusing on the evils of teachers unions, the failure of public education and the need to fire "bad teachers." Waiting for Superman was a documentary which failed in this task, so the moneybags funding "education reform" decided a heart-pumping, good vs. evil, moms-beat-the-system, fictional movie might work better.

Many reviewers are taking issue with the use of an emotionally loaded story to push a particular political agenda, one which demonizes teacher unions and promotes charter* schools. But the movie is provoking some deeper discussions as well. Many reviewers are pointing out the source of funding for the film, and the strong political agenda that comes with it.

The Chamber of Commerce is seeking to gain access to the $500 billion spent on education each year for profit-making corporations. They characterize our system of democratically controlled, community-based public education as some sort of "government monopoly," in order to undermine support for public schools and build support for free-market alternatives.

Cody is not 100% correct when he defines public education as being a "democratically controlled, community-based" system. That's partly true, of course, but in some places, New York City and Chicago, for example, public education is controlled by the mayor who appoints the school board. I suppose that mayors, being elected (at least for the time being) officials, could be described as "democratically controlled," but school boards in such places are controlled by cronyism and political contributions. His point however, is well taken. Public education is not a government monopoly any more than public libraries are...or police departments...or fire departments. Such public institutions are services provided by the government under public control. There might be some extreme anti-government-types who would like to see all public services moved to private, corporate hands, but for most people, the thought of "charter" police and fire departments is out of the question.

INFOMERCIALS

In School reform’s propaganda flick, on Salon.com, Alexander Zaitchik writes,

[The film's production company], Walden Media, is linked at the highest levels to the real-world adult alliance of corporate and far-right ideological interest groups that constitutes the so-called education reform movement, more accurately described as the education privatization movement.

It is also

an educational content company with a commercial interest in expanding private-sector access to American K-12 education, or what Rupert Murdoch, Walden’s distribution partner on “Won’t Back Down,” lip-lickingly calls “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”

In other words, Won't Back Down is a feature film length advertisement for the corporate takeover of public education. It's an infomercial, if you will, using highly paid actors and featuring "facts" adjusted by the corporate interests for public consumption. There's nothing wrong with infomercials, of course, but TV networks generally require a disclaimer, such as, "the following program is a paid advertisement." It would have been nice if Walden Media provided the same for its "infomercials" Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down.

Zaitchik is correct that Walden Media is run by "far-right ideological interest groups" but it's important to take note of the beginning of his sentence..."the real-world adult alliance of corporate and..." That alliance includes both of America's major political parties and most of it's major media outlets.

LINKS

Finally,

• The United Church of Christ's web site has an article entitled, Films that Attack Public Education. The site discusses the films, has links to supporters, financial sources, ALEC involvement, commentary and reviews. It's worth a look.
• Check out Bill Moyers Exposes the Stranglehold the Corporate & Right-Wing Alliance Has on Our Democracy. Moyers exposes ALEC.
• NPR, formerly a relatively unbiased news source, has fallen, too. The influx of money from the Walton and Gates foundations has led to things like Scott Simon's interview of Arne Duncan about the Chicago Teachers strike. Well informed readers know that money was among the least important items under contention and in fact, the strike started even after the money issues had been agreed upon. Simon, however, focused only on teachers pay. Nothing about lack of art or music education. Nothing about lack of libraries and world language teachers. Nothing about schools as sweatshops with leaky roofs. The truth gets lost during political campaigns.
• The nation's teachers unions are falling into line as well -- notice Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA, following Arne Duncan around on a bus tour touting President Obama's education platform, seemingly without regard to the damage that Race to the Top has done to America's public schools.

*References to charters generally imply corporate, for-profit charter schools. Quotes from other writers reflect their opinions only. See It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Shocking News -- Teacher Morale Lowest it's been in Decades

It's official. The job satisfaction of American teachers has dropped to the lowest point in decades. (Hint: A Nation at Risk was published in 1983.) According to the 2012 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, about a third of our public school teachers are considering a job change.

Does this surprise anyone who is familiar with what's been happening to public schools since A Nation at Risk?

Dennis Van Roekel, NEA President who has been buddying up to the public school killers in the US DOE,

described this finding as “shocking” and said it was clear evidence that ill-conceived economic policies are having devastating consequences on teachers and students across the country.

He's right, of course, but shocking? Only if you haven't been paying attention. I'm guessing that DVR's comment is more a political statement than actual shock. He knows full well that the corporate reformers and the religious right have been working to privatize public education for decades...the latter for conservative religious reasons, the former out of greed. They've joined together to kill the profession of teaching by removing collective bargaining and teachers' job security -- by taking away their professionalism and autonomy. They have made the job of teaching so stressful that only the most selfless, dedicated teachers, or the most self-destructive, would continue to beat their heads against the corporate wall day after day. They have targeted teachers...in Wisconsin, even after teachers agreed to the State's unreasonable demands...in New York, where public employees were attacked and when the smoke cleared only the teachers were the ones who paid the price...and in Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere. Governors and legislators who get their instructions from the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation, Bill Gates or ALEC, focus their sights on public schools with increased funding to charters and private schools, while increased "accountability" and decreased funding go to public schools.

Yet it seems that only teachers are accountable. In NYC and Los Angeles, the daily newspapers have listed the teachers and their students' test scores. All the talk from Arne Duncan, the US DOE and President Obama about "not teaching to the test" is just so much hot air. Race to the Top forces states to require teaching to the test or lose funding. Teachers know that they must teach to the test of lose their jobs. The irony is that teachers are being held accountable for teaching what they are being forced to teach. Anthony Cody had this to say in March Madness Begins in Our Schools: It's Test Prep Time...

Sarah Puglisi asks a very potent question:

If a very bad curriculum is mandated script style and it produces poor state test results, say in the adoption of an awful math program and then the insistence of following it lock step, why would the teacher be slammed in value-added measuring in her evaluation when in fact she's following "orders"?

This uncovers the real trouble. While it is supposed to "hold teachers accountable" for results, this system actually DESTROYS genuine accountability, by taking responsibility and agency away from teachers. This system is bound to fail, but meanwhile, our students are being robbed.

Teachers are being forced to teach a certain way and then punished when it doesn't work. With no say in what or how to teach is it any wonder that teacher morale is low? Walt Gardner explains in Killing Teacher Morale Is Easy

Teachers (and their unions) have been made scapegoats for all the ills afflicting public schools. The unrelenting criticism makes them feel unappreciated. It's important to remember that teachers do not choose the profession for fame, fortune or power. They do so because they want to help young people reach their full potential.

It's hard to come away with anything encouraging from the MetLife Survey. I say that after careful consideration because the conditions that are responsible for teacher dissatisfaction today will only get worse in the years ahead. With approximately 2.2 million teachers expected to retire in the next decade, efforts to recruit top talent to the classroom will be a daunting challenge. This will be especially so because 200,000 or more new teachers in math and science alone will be needed. Who will want to make teaching in a public school a career?

(Let's see a show of hands -- Who decided to become a teacher because it was an easy way to get rich?)

Where is the accountability for those who are responsible for 22% of American children living in poverty? Where is the accountability for those who have drained the funding for public education (and, indeed, for the rest of the economy)? Where is the accountability for those who lie about the success of our students and the quality of our teachers?

Lily Eskelsen, NEA's Vice President, reports on the survey, too...

Survey findings reinforce what educators have been saying for years, NEA Vice-president Lily Eskelsen said. Positive working conditions enhance the quality of teaching and learning in all schools. Those conditions come when teachers are given resources, support and opportunities to collaborate and grow.

“We must work to address issues around job satisfaction and turnover rates in high needs schools,” Eskelsen said. “In what other profession are novices assigned the most challenging work, often without adequate resources and support, and expected to flourish?

She added that to have effective teachers in every classroom, there must be adequate induction, mentoring, teacher teams, and professional development.

Yes, teacher morale is lower than it's been in decades.

• if you had no job security
• if your job evaluations depended on factors beyond your control
• if you were demonized daily by the media and politicians
• if your professional expertise was ignored because you weren't a billionaire
• if your private personnel information (valid or invalid) were published in the newspaper
• and if you still had to put in your 50 hours a week just to keep your head above water...

...how would you feel?

~~~

Duncan's Problems

The US Department of Education under Secretary Arne Duncan, has a new public relations program to "improve the teaching profession". Anthony Cody at his blog, Living in Dialogue, has brought us a report on the program.

For the past two years, the Department of Education policies have been roundly criticized by teachers. The latest response from Arne Duncan is a big public relations push bearing the title RESPECT -- Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative Teaching.

In his speech launching the project last week, Secretary Duncan laid out what he feels are the problems afflicting the teaching profession.

The Department has solutions to each of these problems - but they often have pursued policies that actually make things worse. Here are the problems, and the solutions the Department of Ed has offered -- many of which are mandatory if states wish to qualify for Race to the Top or escape the ravages of NCLB...

Problems 1 and 2, according to Duncan are focused on teacher training. Too many teachers are unprepared when they get to the classroom. The Ed Secretary's solution is to...

Evaluate schools of education based on the test scores of the teachers they graduate...All schools of education will feel significant pressure to prepare their teachers to focus on test scores.

and...

Continue to support programs such as Teach For America, which places novice teachers in the most challenging classrooms with only five weeks of training.

It's clear that in Duncan's mind "Recognizing Educational Success" means focusing on test scores. "Professional Excellence" means teaching to the test.

The list continues with problems and solutions offered by the US DOE which only make the problems worse.

Problem: Teachers don't have enough time to be successful...and they're under pressure to raise test scores.

The US DOE promotes evaluations based on test scores and closing of "failing" schools or conversion to charters.

Problem: Principals don't know how to attract and keep high quality teachers.

The US DOE requires states to dictate to principals how teachers must be evaluated.

Problem: High performing nations have high requirements for those wanting to become educators. In the US we "allow anyone to teach" and they are often poorly trained.

The US DOE promotes Teach for America, where poorly trained college graduates are often given preferential treatment in hiring over degreed teacher candidates.

Problem: "Here in the U.S., evaluation is too often tied only to test scores, which makes no sense whatsoever."

The US DOE

has required that states mandate the use of test scores in teacher evaluations as a condition of NCLB waivers.

In case after case, the solutions are exacerbated by the hypocrisy and/or incompetence of the US Department of Education.

In anticipation of the response by "reformers" that he is just complaining with no real suggestions for solutions, Cody presents a report he helped write a year and a half ago called, A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: New Report Takes on Evaluation

So much of our school reform dialogue has been poisoned by the assumption that unions (and teachers, by extension) are implacable foes of accountability in any form. What we learned through this process is that most of us already hold ourselves to high levels of accountability, and would encourage evaluation systems that provide us with good feedback and opportunities for growth. This report gives vivid details showing how this might look.

Here's one more problem and solution...

Problem: The US DOE is acting against the interests of public schools and public education.

Solution: Appoint a Secretary of Education who actually knows something about public education and convince the President that all children deserve a school where students are offered...

...a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders.

...a school which seeks to be a place...

that nurtures a genuine love of learning and teaches students "to let their lives speak."

Instead of squandering our resources on more and more tests which destroy the love of learning, we should strive to make schools as good as the school that the President chooses for his own children.

~~~

ALEC's War on Teachers

If Diane Ravitch gave us The Most Important Speech on Education in Years, then Anthony Cody might just have written The Most Important Blog Entry on Education in Years.

In ALEC Reports on the War on Teachers Anthony Cody gives us a good look at what is happening to the teaching profession. The war being waged on teachers by corporate leaders, billionaires, and politicians (Republicans and Democrats) is being lost. The amount of money being invested in crushing public school teachers is enormous. The job of public school teachers is being redefined. Public Education is being redefined.

As state after state rewrites their education laws in line with the mandates from Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver process, the teaching profession is being redefined. Teachers will now pay the price - be declared successes or failures, depending on the rise or fall of their students' test scores. Under NCLB it was schools that were declared failures. In states being granted waivers to NCLB, it is teachers who will be subjected to this ignominy. Of course we will still be required to label the bottom 5% of our schools as failures, but if the Department of Education has its way, soon every single teacher in the profession will be at risk for the label.

NCLB brought us the guarantee that every school in the country beginning with those serving students in poverty, would be branded a failure. Race to the Top guarantees the death of public education itself. The Obama administration is pushing their pro charter agenda to the delight of the anti-public school politicians. Those anti-public school politicians, who took over state legislatures and state executive houses in the last election, are slashing funding for public education and increasing funding for charter schools and, through voucher schemes, private schools. To guarantee the complete demise of public education, states are passing laws as fast and as hard as they can to destroy the labor movement, beginning with teachers unions, in the United States.

And no state, it seems, is doing as much to further their agenda than Indiana.

The greatest success story cited in this report is Indiana, where the corporate reform "alliance" succeeded in passing comprehensive "reforms."

Gov. Daniels detailed the reforms to the American Enterprise Institute audience, describing how Indiana lawmakers limited collective bargaining to wages and benefits. Indiana law ended the illogical practice of LIFO (Last In, First Out) in layoffs, mandating a determination of merit-- based in part on student test-score gains--rather than simply seniority be used as the basis for making layoffs.

The report describes many other reforms enacted by the Indiana legislature, including expansion of vouchers, charter schools, "virtual schools," and a parent trigger so that parents can petition to convert neighborhood schools into charters.

But it was the introduction to the report, written by Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, that brought this into focus for me. He writes:

Prior to this session, 99 percent of Indiana's teachers were annually rated "Effective." If that rating were actually true, 99 percent--not just one-third--of our students would be passing national tests. From this point on, because of the diligence and fortitude of our reform-minded legislators, teachers will be promoted and retained based on performance rather than seniority. Teacher evaluations, which will be locally formulated, will rely on student improvement. Successful educators will be rewarded, while those whose students lag behind will be asked to find work elsewhere. Additionally, schools will now be graded on an A-F scale and they, too, will be held accountable for student advancement; and the state will not hesitate to intervene in those schools that fail repeatedly.

According to this logic, the individual teacher's accountability for student performance is absolute. Governor Daniels apparently believes there ought to be a one to one correspondence between student achievement and teacher effectiveness. This is rather incredible, but there you have it. Most systems base between 25% and 50% of the teacher's evaluation on test scores...

Rational thought didn't have any say in the concept of 100% of students being proficient in Reading and Math by 2014 in No Child Left Behind, and rational thought doesn't seem to be present in Mitch Daniels contention that teachers ought to be 100% responsible for the increase in student test scores. Poverty and a child's home life, of course, doesn't matter.

In addition, as if posing for the poster child for the old saying of Mark Twain's that there are "lies, damn lies, and statistics," Daniels claims that only a third of Indiana students passed national tests. He's referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and what he calls "passing" is scoring at the proficient level (State summaries of scores can be found here).

The late Gerald Bracey explained years ago why scoring Proficient on the NAEP was a poor way of judging...well...proficiency. Read here, here and here.

In any case, using test scores to rank teachers has been denounced by those knowledgeable in the field of testing.

As a letter from the National Research Council's Board on Testing and Assessment stated in a letter to the US Department of Education:

"VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness ... should not used to make operational decisions because such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable."

Is anyone listening? Teachers, it's time to wake up!

Of course this is all taking place against a backdrop of rising class sizes and cuts to support services such as school libraries and health programs. But teachers alone are held accountable for the results of their students, on the narrowest of measures. How many more teachers will we lose as these policies spread? How far will this corporate reform war on our profession go? At the end of the day, this will hurt the most vulnerable students the most, as it will speed up the revolving door of their teachers and create a dynamic in which teachers with options will try not to teach in the schools and classes where poor students and English Language learners predominate.

It seems that ALEC considers itself engaged in a battle of epic proportions, yet many teachers are too busy working to even realize that their profession is being redefined in state after state.

~~~

Support ASCD's Petition for a President's Council on the Whole Child.

If you think a child’s worth is more than a test score, sign the petition to create a President’s Council on the Whole Child.

Click the button below...

NEA and TFA Update: Other Voices

I wrote about the joint op-ed by NEA President Dennis Van Roekel and TFA CEO Wendy Kopp on December 26, 2011 and again on January 5, 2012. Today, others have also commented about Van Roekel's collaboration with Wendy Kopp and the refusal of Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Matt Damon to allow themselves to be nominated for the NEA's Friend of Education Award.

from the Huffington Post
Matt Damon, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Decline Education Award Nomination Over USA Today Op-Ed

The NEA and TFA have had a historically strained relationship as the NEA, the country's largest teachers union, has long opposed TFA and its practices. In July, the group collectively accused TFA of placing its corps members in areas where there are no teacher shortages, robbing educators of jobs in communities where those positions are already hard to come by. They said some TFA contracts could be used to "bust unions," Education Week reported.

The teachers' group has also criticized TFA's general concept: Recent college graduates are trained over the summer to teach two years in some of the country's most challenging classrooms -- in hopes of helping close a still-wide achievement gap. But because TFA corps members are only committed to two years of teaching, many leave teaching after the experience. By contrast, the NEA and American Federation of Teachers believe that seasoned veteran educators and quality training are key to boosting test scores, graduation rates and improving American education overall.

Van Roekel has taken some heat since the op-ed's publication. Education blogger Anthony Cody wrote on Education Week that Roekel is sending mixed messages about teacher preparation, pointing out that the NEA president writes in his USA Today piece that "not all teachers are getting the high-quality preparation they need to excel with students in the classroom."

~~~

from Living in Dialogue by Anthony Cody
NEA Stance on Teach For America Continues to Raise Questions

I do, however, wonder about the substance of his agreement with Ms Kopp regarding teacher recruitment and preparation. Specifically, does Mr. Van Roekel agree that it is a good idea to recruit people who have no desire or intention to become teachers for a two year commitment? Research has revealed that 57% of the people who enter Teach For America do not intend to become teachers, and lo and behold, three years after they start, 75% of them are gone. [Be aware that TFA fudges these numbers by tracking the number who remain "in education," which includes the many TFAers who become staff members or work in other parts of the non-profit and for-profit educational landscape.]

I wonder how it is possible to fight vigorously for a minimum one-year residency program and simultaneously praise someone whose recruitment model features a five week summer training course, and targets people who do not even wish to become teachers?

~~~

from Fred Klonsky's Blog
Van Roekel’s date with Kopp and Duncan not going over too well.

When the 10,000 delegates to last summer’s NEA RA passed a critical New Business Item about Teach For America and another one sharply critical of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, few of us thought that meant for IEA President Dennis Van Roekel to arrange a lunch date with both.

I guess he did.

And it’s not going so well for Dennis...Some might say that DVR’s meet up with Duncan and Kopp went worse. The three appeared together at a meeting on teacher training (something Kopp’s TFA pays scant attention to). Duncan then spent most of the time gushing over Wendy, claiming nobody has done more to get great teachers into classrooms than she has.

~~~

from The Answer Sheet
Has the NEA warmed up to Teach for America?

The NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, which combined have more than 4 million members, have long opposed the 20-year-old Teach for America. TFA recruits newly minted college graduates who are not education majors and gives them five weeks of summer training before placing them in classrooms in high-poverty schools. Recruits are asked to commit to only two years of teaching. The unions have argued that the country’s neediest students need highly trained teachers committed to the profession.

Van Roekel appeared in late September with Kopp at an event along with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and more recently co-authored an op-ed with Kopp in USA Today about the best way to prepare teachers.Van Roekel issued a statement Thursday about the Carlsson-Paige letter that says:

“I respect Matt Damon and thank him for his support of public education. I believe NEA should talk to those who support public education, even if we don’t agree on everything, and work together to serve students. Wendy Kopp and I agree that students will benefit from stronger recruiting and teacher preparation. NEA isn’t going to quit fighting for students and our members, or for stronger teacher preparation. In fact, better teacher preparation is part of our 3-point plan on Leading the Profession that was released last month.”

It isn’t clear just how much Van Roekel has ruffled feathers in his union but some educators have written that they feel he has undercut efforts to expose Teach for America’s deficiencies and perhaps get it to change.

...I asked Van Roekel this week if he has warmed up to Teach for America.

He said “no” and still opposes the short training period given to TFA recruits. But he also said he has over time “learned some things” from the way that TFA operates and that “there are some things that I see a little differently.”

Looking Back

Here are a few of my favorite blog entries of 2011 from a few my favorite education bloggers (including two of my own). The most important one is the last one. If you missed it before, don't miss it this time. It's a must read for every American citizen who has an interest in public education (aka everyone).

••• From It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, October 19, 2011

I Think It's Called "Having A Chip On Your Shoulder"

Mrs. Mimi (now aka, Dr. Mimi) is the author of It's Not All Flowers and Sausages, a collection of her early blog posts. Mrs. Mimi is a teacher...a real one. She works with real live children in real live classrooms. You can tell.

I guess these days I just assume people are going to shit on teachers. I assume they are going to complain without pausing to recognize what is working. I assume they will be all critique and no constructive thought. I assume they're going to blame it all on the teacher.

••• From Parents Across America, December 31, 2011.

The worst and the best education events of 2011

The list from Parents Across America lists events from other sources, not their own blog.

Hundreds of millions of dollars from the Billionaire Boys Club of Gates, Broad, the Walton family, and the Koch brothers are funneled into creating and expanding numerous Astroturf organizations like Stand for Children, Students First, Teach Plus, 50Can, etc. all devoted towards spreading their tentacles into both political parties, to choke off democracy, demonize teachers, mandate more high-stakes testing, and privatize our public schools.

••• From An Urban Teacher's Education, December 31, 2011

Life Learnings: 2011

A teacher near Seattle, WA (formerly of New York City; Washington, DC; Renton, WA; and Knoxville, TN) writes about the challenges he faces daily in his classroom, as well as national issues. His reports on the SOS Conference in Washington DC from July were especially interesting. This excerpt is from his end of the year post. Click the link embedded below to read his "Day One" entry.

5) The importance of working together

In July (July 28, 2011) I went to the SOS Conference in Washington, DC. I met hundreds of amazing educators there, all rallying together to fight the stubbornness of corporate reform, and I learned the impact that people can have when they come together. My experience there in combination with what I've read over the past year about the Arab Spring and similar protests across the world has reminded me that for all the reasons so many have to complain about this world that we live in, I am happy to remember that it truly is the people who have the power, and that we really do have the government we deserve. Perhaps we might soon deserve something better...

••• From The Answer Sheet, December 12, 2011

A Superintendent Calls School Reformers’ Bluff

Every public school teacher in the United States should read and/or listen to John Kuhn. Thanks to Valerie Strauss and her valuable Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post.

By John Kuhn

Today some 22 percent of American children live in poverty. Are we going to pretend forever that it is acceptable to ignore the needs of children outside the schoolhouse and blame teachers and principals for everything that happens inside?

As soon as the data shows that the average black student has the same opportunity to live and learn and hope and dream in America as the average white student, and as soon as the data shows that the average poor kid drinks water just as clean and breathes air just as pure as the average rich kid, then educators like me will no longer cry foul when this society sends us children and says: Get them all over the same hurdle.

And so I as an educator now say to a nation exactly what it has said to me for years: No excuses! Just get results.

••• From Walt Gardners Reality Check, November 18, 2011

Teaching is no Longer Fun

For teachers who started their careers before the accountability movement gained traction, the transformation has been traumatic. No longer can they rely on their professional judgment in preparing lessons, nor are they likely to experience the satisfaction of having opened the eyes of their students to knowledge for its own sake. They now have to treat their lessons as part of an assembly line, where instruction is evaluated strictly on the basis of how much value it adds. The rationale is that the real world operates accordingly.

Reformers maintain that teaching and learning can't always be fun. They say that discipline is an indispensable part of the educational process. That is certainly true. But the way things are unfolding in classrooms across the country means that even if students perform adequately on standardized tests, we run the risk of forever turning them off to further learning in the same subjects. As I wrote before, you can teach a subject well but teach students to hate the subject in the process. When that happens, it's a Pyrrhic victory.

••• From Bridging Differences, October 27, 2011

There Are No Quick Fixes

The Bridging Differences Blog is written by Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch. I spent a lot of time this year quoting Dr. Ravitch (and did again at the end of this post), but one of the most important entries in their blog was this one from October by Deborah Meier. Make sure you take 10 minutes to watch the chalk talk by Daniel Pink.

By Deborah Meier

Why suddenly does the common-sense fact that teachers (and unions) fight for contracts that give them less onerous workloads, more job security, and more pay turn into a crime? Does Wall Street live by another code? (Educators and Wall Street'ers both need to watch Daniel Pink's chalk talk on motivation to consider his counter-intuitive findings—that rewards are counterproductive when it comes to honesty and doing good work.)

••• From Living In Dialogue, July 6, 2011

The Brooks/Ravitch Dialogue Expands

Anthony Cody is a powerful voice for public education. He was instrumental in organizing the SOS Conference in Washington DC last summer and has continued to speak out for public education in the United States. Here he comments about the single most important factor which the so-called corporate "reformers" refuse to discuss, the level of poverty afflicting our nation's children.

Witness the latest cheating scandal in Atlanta. We have leaders intent on proving that poverty is no obstacle to student success. After 24 years of teaching in Oakland, I can tell you that it is. Poverty and the social and environmental phenomena that are its companions: hunger, violence, PTSD, chemical pollution, lack of access high quality daycare in early years, lack of access to vision, dental and medical care, and lack of access to books. Addressing ANY of these would yield better results than the policies underway that attach ever higher stakes to standardized tests, and continually expand the variety and frequency of tests.

••• From Live Long and Prosper, March 4, 2011.

The Daily Show: Diane Ravitch - Teachers vs. Wall Street

Click HERE to see this entry. No one highlights the hypocrisy of the so-called "reformers" better than Jon Stewart of the Daily Show.

••• From Live Long and Prosper, December 11, 2011.

The Most Important Speech on Education in Years

This year, the OTL Summit featured Diane Ravitch as one of the keynote speakers. Dr. Ravitch's presentation was titled Whose children have been left behind? The Daily Kos calls it the "most important speech on education in years." I agree. It is important. The Daily Kos blogger (teacherken) wrote:

You can read the entire text here (pdf).
You should.
You should pass it on.

Ravitch wrote:

Surely the greatest nation in the world can mobilize the will to do what is right for the children. It won’t be easy, it won’t be cheap, and it won’t be fast. Doing the right thing never is. The only simple part is to recognize that what we are doing now is not working and will never work. What we need is a vision of a good education for every child. We should start now. Today.