2017 Medley #4

Privatization, DeVos,
Public Education: A Common Good,
Poverty, Inequity, Achievement Gaps,
Lead, Competition, Words Matter

PRIVATIZATION

The dangerous rise of privatization and corporate education reform

The passage below is from an excellent post about the "fundamental elements" of the privatization movement.

When we first started fighting the corporate "reformers" in Indiana we were told that, since public schools were "failing" (NOTE: they're not...see below, U.S. Public Schools: Success), "reform" was necessary in order to help students achieve at a higher level. Providing money to send children to private schools would help those students "stuck" in "failing" schools and give them the opportunity to achieve more.

Once it became clear that privatized schools (charters or private schools) weren't better at raising student achievement than real public schools, the achievement of children no longer was a legitimate argument for defunding and privatizing public education. Now, the Indiana "reformers" have switched their argument to "choice" for "choice's" sake. The money should follow the child and parents have complete control of public funds used to send their children to whatever school they choose. This means, of course, that tax money is spent with no public oversight and is no more rational than a citizen "choosing" to use tax money to fund a trip to the bookstore instead of supporting funding of the public library.

It's also true that in many cases, attendance at a particular privately run school is the school's choice rather than the parent's. "Is your child expensive to educate? Sorry we're not equipped to handle his needs." "Does your child need special education services? Sorry, we don't have the facilities to deal with her." "Are there unaddressed behavior problems getting in the way of your child's education? You'll have to take your child to another school until he can behave himself."

The point of school "reform" has never been about student achievement. It's about segregation and moving tax money into the hands of private corporations and religious organizations.

The charter school industry and their allies in the corporate education reform movement are making unprecedented gains in their effort to privatize public education in the United States.

With Betsy DeVos on the verge of becoming the United States Secretary of Education and President Donald Trump promising to divert $20 billion in federal funding from public schools to privatization through school choice programs, the movement to undermine public education must be deliriously excited about their prospects over the next four years.

Of course, the proponents of corporate education reform have been riding high for more than two decades thanks to the policies and politics of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom used their time in office to promote charter schools and the broader corporate reform agenda.

AS LONG AS WE'RE TALKING ABOUT DEVOS

Here’s How Much Betsy DeVos And Her Family Paid To Back GOP Senators Who Will Support Her

How much did Betsy DeVos spend to buy your senator's vote?

THE COMMON GOOD

Universal Public Education and the Common Good

Jan Resseger, in her blog, quotes Jonathan Kozol about public education...

“Slice it any way you want. Argue, as we must, that every family ought to have the right to make whatever choice they like in the interests of their child, no matter what damage it may do to other people’s children. As an individual decision, it’s absolutely human; but setting up this kind of competition, in which parents with the greatest social capital are encouraged to abandon their most vulnerable neighbors, is rotten social policy. What this represents is a state supported shriveling of civic virtue, a narrowing of moral obligation to the smallest possible parameters. It isn’t good for Massachusetts, and it’s not good for democracy.”

...and William Barber

In the United States, expanding opportunity for marginalized populations of students in our so-called universal education system has involved two centuries of political struggle —securing admittance and equal opportunity for girls, for American Indians, for African American children of former slaves, for immigrant students, and for disabled students—many of them formerly institutionalized. In the words of the Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina NAACP, “We’ve come too far to go back now.”

See also Vote 'no' on charter schools by Jonathan Kozol

POVERTY: NEEDED SUPPORT ABSENT

Priorities In a School System Where Nearly Half of Students Live in Poverty

Technology is an important part of public education, and children from high poverty backgrounds need the benefits of technology just as much as wealthy children, but they also need good teachers, small classes sizes, support services (nurses, social workers, etc), a well-rounded curriculum, quality facilities, well-stocked school libraries, and a host of other social and material benefits which the wealthy insist upon for their own children (See The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve).

We spend millions of dollars on education every year, but it's still not a priority. States are scrambling to find the money to support their schools, but the political winds are blowing in the "no more taxes" direction. We don't want to pay taxes to benefit someone else's children. Our current plan is to move towards privatization, thinking that some private corporation will pay for educating our children not realizing that the price for privatization is too high.

In its massive diversion of funds towards technology, the proposed Operating Budget of Baltimore County Public Schools does not address the great need of all students for more support staff, and subjects the existing School support staff to ever more crushing workloads.

INEQUITY

Stopping a Disastrous Cycle

To be involved in public education is to be aware of the disparities and inequities in the nation's schools. Instead of providing more resources where they are needed, American public schools too often provide fewer resources where more are needed. This is because the locations where more resources are needed are, by definition, those places where fewer resources exist. Until we change from a society which provides more for children of the wealthy than children of the poor, our "achievement gap" will remain.

There's a telling question in this Kappa Delta Pi article. "...why do we send our children into schools every day with...unsafe surroundings, lack of necessary materials and resources, and a staff without the specialities needed...?"

The answer, of course, is that we, as a nation, don't consider poor kids "ours." Poor kids are "theirs." "Ours" vs. "theirs" is why the US is one of three advanced nations to provide fewer resources to poor students than to wealthy students. Americans haven't learned yet that there is a cost for providing less for some students than others – a cost of continued poverty and the need for welfare, higher rates of incarceration, and more social stratification.

"Ours" vs. "theirs" is the basis for the entire privatization movement. It's reasonable for every parent to want what is best for their own child, but the "competition theory" which pits private and privately run schools against public schools guarantees that there will be winners and losers. The goal for Americans should be to emulate the Finns and make what is "best for my child" the same for all children. Eliminating "losers" by providing adequate resources won't hurt the "winners" and it will provide society with a larger pool of productive and participating citizens.

Imagine going into the hospital to have your tonsils removed and the operating room is filthy, the doctor is using decades-old instruments, and there are no nurses available to assist.

Most of us would turn around and run.

So, why do we send our children into schools every day with the same conditions—unsafe surroundings, lack of necessary materials and resources, and a staff without the specialties needed to address critical social-emotional issues that stand in the way of academic success?

Sadly, these students can’t turn around and run away, or at least not until they get older and drop out.

POVERTY: ACHIEVEMENT GAP

FACT – Hunger is a major contributing factor to the Education Achievement Gap.

Instead of focusing on ways to deprive public schools of the resources they need and transfer tax dollars to private corporations, our leaders' attention ought to be directed to ending the high rate of child poverty in the U.S.

The evidence is overwhelming that the lack of sufficient food undermines an individual’s ability to function and it has an especially devastating impact on children.

And hunger is a very real problem in this country, especially when it comes to a significant number of the nation’s children.

POVERTY: LEAD

House GOP quietly closes investigation into Flint water crisis

The governor's policies have poisoned thousands of children. The children of Flint – and thousands of other children around the country – are being thrown away because we can't afford to clean up our water and neighborhoods.

Here's a plan for Bill Gates, the Walton Family, Eli Broad or any other billionaire who wants to spend money on education...invest your money in cleaning up lead poisoning instead of privatizing public education...you'll get better results.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, senior Democrat on the oversight panel, said he wants Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to produce key Flint-related documents within 30 days. Cummings said Snyder and his administration have obstructed the committee’s investigation into the Flint crisis for a year, refusing to provide — or even search for — key documents.

Snyder’s intransigence has thwarted committee efforts to answer critical questions about what he knew as the crisis unfolded and why he didn’t act sooner to fix Flint’s water problem, Cummings said.

“Requiring Governor Snyder to finally comply with the committee’s request will allow us to complete our investigation and offer concrete findings and recommendations to help prevent a catastrophe like this from happening again,” Cummings wrote to Chaffetz. “In contrast, allowing Governor Snyder to flout the committee’s authority will deny the people of Flint the answers they deserve.”

U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS: SUCCESS

U.S. Public Schools Are NOT Failing. They’re Among the Best in the World

It's common knowledge that America's public schools are failing. Common knowledge is wrong.

As ever, far right politicians on both sides of the aisle, whether they be Democratic Neoliberals or Republican Tea Partiers, are using falsehoods about our public schools to sell an alternative. They say our public schools are beyond saving and that we need to privatize. They call it school choice but it’s really just an attempt to destroy the system that has so much going for it.

We should strengthen public education not undermine it. We should roll up our sleeves and fix the real problems we have, not invent fake ones.

COMPETITION

Competition vs. Quality

Peter Greene provides us with a beautiful metaphor for our national garden of children...

The goal of public education is excellence for everyone, but competition produces excellence for only a few, and sometimes not even that. It's a lousy metaphorical framework for education. Better, say, to talk about a garden on which we focus the full resources of the community to plant and water and tend living things to grow and mature without worrying about which one is tallest, sweetest or most vibrantly colored, or how we could best deprive one flower of water so that another can win a greenery contest. Education is not a race, and competition will not improve it.

WORDS MATTER

Five Strategies for Motivating the Student Who was Retained Last Year

I very much want to believe that the author of this article didn't mean for it to sound the way it did. I want to believe that she doesn't consider a child with special needs (identified or not) a burden. I want to believe that she doesn't consider children who struggle an onerous responsibility. I want to believe that she just made a poor choice of words when she said that a teacher is "saddled" with a child who is retained in grade.

Saddle, according to the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary, has as one of its meanings: to place under a burden or encumbrance.

No child, especially those who have special learning needs, should be made to feel like they are a burden to adults whose job it is to educate them.

For my comments on retention in grade as a method of remediation, see Retention.

Have you ever been saddled with a student who failed the previous year in your subject and found that they were either just as motivated or less motivated than the year before? Yeah. Me too. I took some time to research some strategies that will help us motivate those students who just didn’t make it the year before and got retained. These strategies are geared toward students who failed due to lack of work ethic, not lack of ability. That’s an article for another day!

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Random Quotes - December 2014

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

John Kuhn is a strong voice in the fight for public schools. He understands that public education is not just for parents and children who participate in the public school system...public education exists to enrich and preserve our nation, just like public parks, museums, roads, street lights, and water systems.




Bush: Nuanced and Wrong by Peter Greene

We all benefit from America's public schools. We should all contribute

School tax money is not a stipend paid to each individual child. It is an investment by the community in the community. I agree-- the feds should play a secondary, or even quaduciary role, in education. Particularly when federal ed policy is being dictated by the kind of anti-public-ed amateurs we've been subjected to for at least two administrations (and probably the next one, too). But local communities and, to a lesser extent, states should be hugely involved.

Choice and charters are, of course, all about cutting local control and community investment out of the picture. That is simply wrong, and bad for education as well. [emphasis added]

Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America by Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert has written the most important book of 2014.

Quoting a parent after the 2013 mass school closings in Chicago...

"...they're being scattered and displaced to other schools like they were pieces on a chessboard or in a Monopoly game. They're not Monopoly pieces. When all you see are numbers, when all you care about is data, then you won't understand that every child has different needs, speeds, and challenges. And you won't understand the importance of a school to a neighborhood and to the families in that neighborhood. It's just a building to you. You won't understand how we're anchored to these schools.

"It's cruel, you know. They like to tell people that they're offering us choice, but they're actually giving us ultimatums." [emphasis added]

Quoting Jessie Ramey (public education activist from Pennsylvania)...

It's not simply a case of greedy people. For an awful lot of them it's ideological. They're playing this game of education reform not because they're educators, not because they know anything about education, necessarily, but because they have an agenda. It might be political, or corporate, or anti-union, or they have an excessive belief in the wonders of technology, or they don't believe government can or should be running the schools. They have something to prove, and at the moment they're trying to prove it through education. They will all tell you that they genuinely care about the students. But when you look at what they're pushing, it's not good for kids. None of this corporate reform stuff has actually worked in practice and a lot of it is damaging, particularly for poor children and children of color.  [emphasis added]

and in summary...

Those who are genuinely interested in improving the quality of education for all American youngsters are faced with two fundamental questions: First, how long can school systems continue to pursue market-based reforms that have failed year after demoralizing year to improve the education of the nation's most disadvantaged children? And second, why should a small group of America's richest individuals, families, and foundations be allowed to exercise such overwhelming -- and often such toxic -- influence over the ways in which public school students are taught?

There is no reason why plutocratic school systems should be any more acceptable to a majority of Americans than plutocratic government in general.

No, America’s education system isn’t broken by John Staver (professor of Science Education and Chemistry in Purdue University’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction).

Today’s corporate education reformers use international test results to argue that American K-12 public schools are broken. Yet, research-based evidence calls into question such attacks on American public education. Analyses of students’ scores on two international assessments are not sufficient to provide thorough, sound, evidence-based insights about the status of American K-12 education. However, research has long identified a major problem for American K-12 education that remains at large. Its name is poverty. When will policy makers seriously engage and act to solve the problem of poverty? [emphasis added]

ELECTIONS

Record number of evil candidates elected. Teacher hating, school bashing, CCSS loving… by Ken Previti

Stop falling for the hold-your-nose, lesser-of-two-evils scam that is based in propaganda and corruption. Democrapublicans posing as whatever each brand used to be. Get active now!

Our children need you. Communities, teachers, and American public schools need you.

On Making Voting Harder by Lewis Black

Gerrymandered districts, voting restrictions, ID laws...

Elected officials shouldn't get to choose who gets to choose elected officials.

THE JOB OF TEACHING

Let's Talk About Teacher Retention, Not Tenure by Peter Greene

"Reformers" complain about "bad teachers" and then make the job of teaching less attractive by removing job benefits. Why complain about "bad teachers" and then lower the requirements needed to get a teachers' license? Why complain about "bad teachers" and then make it easier to hire 5 week trainees to replace veteran teachers? Why complain about "bad teachers" and then denigrate advanced degrees and experience?

It's not really about "bad teaching" at all, but rather about "busting the union" and running payrolls on the cheap.

...making teaching jobs crappier and less secure is not likely to get people to stick around.

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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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2013 in Quotes

This is the 151st and last post of 2013 for this blog. Here are some of my favorite quotes from it's pages during the past year. The quotes are my words, unless otherwise (and often) noted. Go to the links provided for the original context of the quotes.

JANUARY

2013 Medley #2

"I'll say it until the day I die: I am proud to be an American public school teacher. I am proud of the great kids of this country. I am proud to be a part of a system that produces such fine young men and women." -- Jersey Jazzman

FEBRUARY

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Feb.2013

If we privatize public schools now, then the public oversight will be lost and our descendents will have a hard time recovering it. Public schools don't belong to the parents of children attending them today. They belong to us all...everyone who has ever attended...everyone who has ever paid taxes...everyone who has ever been a part of the community.

Teachers' Low Job Satisfaction - Let the Bashing Continue

"The American teacher stands on the front lines of poverty and inequity that our fellow Americans refuse to acknowledge, on the front lines of the real social condition of our nation–not the advertised one–and we stand together. When we look over our shoulders, there’s no one there backing us up. The rest of the army is off pretending there is no fight to be had here, no excuses to be made, no hardships to decry, no supply lines to worry about, that things in American society are just hunky-dory outside of the fact that the teachers just don’t care enough..." -- John Kuhn, Superintendent of superintendent of Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District, Perrin, Texas

MARCH

A Superintendent's Voice

"...History will recognize that the epithets they applied to your schools said more about leaders who refused to confront child poverty than the teachers who tried valiantly to overcome it. History will recognize that teachers in these bleak years stood in desperate need of public policy help that never came. Advocacy for hurting children was ripped from our lips with a shush of "no excuses." These hateful labels should be hung around the necks of those who have allowed inequitable school funding to persist for decades, those who refuse to tend to the basic needs of our poorest children so that they may come to school ready to learn." -- John Kuhn

APRIL

Can You Buy Your Way to a Better Education?

"People agree with everything I say," Kozol continued. "They say, 'Yes, it is unfair they don't get as much per pupil as our children.' Then they say, 'Tell me one thing. Can you really solve this kind of problem by throwing money at it?' And I say, 'You mean, can you really buy your way to a better education? It seems to work for your children.'" -- Jonathan Kozol

MAY

Myths Taken as Reality

When something is repeated often enough it becomes "common knowledge" even if it's not completely true. "Reformers" and others who have the destruction of America's public education system as part of their agenda, repeat the myth that "American schools are failing" over and over again. They have done that so often that it's accepted as truth. Unfortunately, it's wrong.

Thank a Teacher

"Bail out the bankers and bankrupt the school teachers -- we will still teach...I will never follow the lead of those who exclude the kids who need education the most so that my precious scores will rise. I will never line up with those whose idea of reform is the subtle segregation of the poor and desperate. I want no part of the American caste system." -- John Kuhn

JUNE

This Just In: New Data Confirms Old Data

"When people have said 'poverty is no excuse,' my response has been, 'Yes, you're right. Poverty is not an excuse. It's a condition. It's like gravity. Gravity affects everything you do on the planet. So does poverty.'" -- Gerald Bracey

An Open Reply to President Obama

...even though you, Mr. President, have said that we have too much testing, your Race to the Top program requires teachers to be evaluated using student test scores. Standardized tests used to evaluate student achievement were not made to evaluated teaching and learning. I don't know if you learned anything about tests and measurements when you were in law school, but if you did you would know that tests should only be used for that for which they were developed. If you develop a test for use as a measure of student achievement, then that's what it should be used for...and only that.

JULY

Reading Aloud: Still the Most Important Part of Reading Instruction

"The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children...It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades." -- from Becoming a Nation of Readers, quoted in The Read Aloud Handbook, by Jim Trelease

The Schools America's Children Deserve

Money doesn't solve all the problems by itself. It must be spent wisely. One of the things about the "increase" in school funding in a lot of places, or the "huge amount of the state budget directed at public education" in some states is that the money is being spent on testing and test prep materials. The students don't get the full benefits of increased revenues...but the testing industry does.

Talking Education: Educate Yourself

Our teachers are drowning in a sea of standards and testing, scripted curricula and increasing class sizes, accusations and blame. Is it any wonder that many of them have neither the time nor the energy to fight back against the billions of dollars worth of insults and abuse hurled against them as a profession?

AUGUST

Make a Positive Impact on Students

Teachers touch the future by relating to their students. Our students will learn from us and remember us for the kind of people we are, not for the homework we assign, the lectures we give, or the standardized tests we administer. Content knowledge, pedagogy and assessment are important, of course, but in order to make a positive impact on students' lives, which is after all the main reason we are in this profession, teachers must build positive relationships with them.

Fighting Myths with Facts

Myth #4) Poverty is just an excuse.

False: Poverty matters.

"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

Test Scores: Punishing Teachers

The myth of the bad teacher resonates with the general public in part because nearly everyone has been to school and has seen teachers teach. Everyone remembers a "bad" teacher -- often defined as "a teacher my parents or I didn't like" (This is not to deny that "bad" teachers exist, but many, if not most, are weeded out in the first 5 years of their career where nearly 50% quit or are "counseled" out). The memories of their childhood and/or young adulthood in school leads people to believe that teaching is simply providing information and being nice to children. The problem with this is that the memories are distorted by the fact that they are childhood memories complete with the lack of judgment and experience that comes with childhood.

SEPTEMBER

Share the Responsibility

You can't make children learn just by raising or changing "standards," increasing test cut scores, belittling and de-professionalizing teachers, while at the same time ignoring out-of-school factors. Spending millions on test-prep, test administration, and test result analysis is not investing in education. No amount of testing, and union bashing is going to help students who come to school hungry, sick, cold, terrified, and/or homeless.

Retention: Punishing Children

The fact is that as a nation, we don't really care about student achievement. We care about test scores. If we really cared about student achievement we wouldn't be closing schools whose students are struggling. We wouldn't be evaluating teachers using test scores and punishing those teachers who work with the most difficult to educate students. We wouldn't be rewarding "successful" schools with more funding, and we wouldn't be replacing experienced educators with trainees.

OCTOBER

Duncan Shows His Ignorance - Again

Arne Duncan, remember, has no experience in educating children. His stint as CEO of Chicago Public Schools was focused on closing public schools and opening privately operated charters. Duncan's college degree is in Sociology, the study of human social behavior, not education. His college and previous professional experience is in basketball. His closest brush with actual teaching was watching his mother tutor students. He never taught in a public school. He never even attended a public school.

It's therefore understandable that he knows nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about the process of teaching and about what goes on in the classrooms of America's public schools. He apparently doesn't know that teachers are constantly evaluating their students. Standardized tests are, of course, not the only way that student evaluation occurs (and by this statement I am making an unfounded assumption that standardized tests do, indeed, evaluate student learning). Teachers give tests, quizzes and homework, lead discussions and observe student behavior and work...and in doing so, gain an understanding of a student's progress.

Growing Poverty Affects Schools

"Every dollar that fattens the educational industrial complex–not only the testing industry and the inexperienced, ill-trained Teach for America but the corporations now collecting hundreds of millions of dollars to tell schools what to do–is a dollar diverted from what should be done now to address directly the pressing needs of our nation’s most vulnerable children, whose numbers continue to escalate, demonstrating the utter futility and self-serving nature of what is currently and deceptively called 'reform.'” -- Diane Ravitch

NOVEMBER

2013 Medley #23

"The United States is one of few advanced nations where schools serving better-off children usually have more educational resources than those serving poor students, according to research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Among the 34 O.E.C.D. nations, only in the United States, Israel and Turkey do disadvantaged schools have lower teacher/student ratios than in those serving more privileged students." -- Eduardo Porter, New York Times

Ken Robinson Nails it!

"Education doesn't go on in the committee rooms of our legislative buildings. It happens in classrooms and schools. And the people who do it are the teachers and the students and if you remove their discretion it stops working..." -- Sir Ken Robinson

Yet Another National Shame

"I ask you, where is the label for the lawmaker whose policies fail to clean up the poorest neighborhoods? Why do we not demand that our leaders make 'Adequate Yearly Progress'? We have data about poverty, health care, crime, and drug abuse in every legislative district. We know that those factors directly impact our ability to teach kids. Why have we not established annual targets for our legislators to meet? Why do they not join us beneath these vinyl banners that read 'exemplary' in the suburbs and 'unacceptable' in the slums?" -- John Kuhn

DECEMBER

2013 Medley #27

Politicians, policy makers and pundits claim that it's the schools and teachers who are to blame for low achievement. They do this in order to redirect the blame away from themselves and the inadequate safety nets provided for people living in poverty, the loss of jobs, and the inability of our leaders to deal with the effects of poverty.

The facts that nearly 25% of the nation's children live in poverty and that approximately 50% of all school children are poor, are ignored when talking about academic achievement even though the correlation is clear.

President Bush II referred to the "soft bigotry of low expectations" when he was pushing for passage of No Child Left Behind. What we have now is the "hard bigotry of neglect and denial" towards our children who live in poverty.

2013 Medley #28

The failure of policy makers to deal with the side-effects of poverty (low birthweight of infants, drug and alcohol abuse, toxicity in cities, lack of health care, food insecurity, violence, lack of mental health services, mobility and absenteeism of children in school, lack of high quality preschools, lack of summer programs for children) is the number one problem affecting education in America.

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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!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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2013 Medley #21

Reign of Error, Educational Professionals, Research on -- Poverty, Closed Captioning, Dyslexia, Aging Teachers, Bedtimes and Behaviors.

A REVIEW OF REIGN OF ERROR

This Is Only a Test: ‘Reign of Error’

Diane Ravitch's new book is reviewed by Jonathan Kozol.

Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is. There are no failing schools...only a failing society which has selfishly allowed neighborhoods, communities and the public schools meant to serve them, to languish in poverty and inept governance.

If we are to cast about for international comparisons, Ravitch urges us — this is not a new suggestion but is, I think, a useful one — to take a good, hard look at Finland, which operates one of the most successful education systems in the world. Teachers there, after competing for admission to schools of education and then receiving a superb course of instruction, are “held in high regard” and “exercise broad autonomy.” They are not judged by students’ test scores, because “there are no scores.” The country has no charter schools and no “Teach for Finland.” But, as Ravitch reminds us, there is one other, crucial difference: “Less than 5 percent of children in Finland are growing up in poverty.” In the United States, 23 percent do.

Again and again, she returns to this: “Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation,” which make for a “toxic mix.” Public schooling in itself, she emphasizes, is “in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.” [emphasis added]

WHO WILL WANT TO TEACH?

One NC husband who’s happy his overburdened wife is leaving teaching

There's an epidemic. Good teachers are leaving public schools because of the forces of privatization. Is that, perhaps what the reformers want?

Is there a public school in America which doesn't have teachers crying at the end of the day? Has any other country ever badgered and belittled their teachers into giving up like we have? Teachers are disillusioned, demoralized and dispirited.

After nearly seven years of her passion for teaching turning to dread, she is free to live her life unburdened by the oppressive hands of incompetent legislators and school board members who wish to micromanage education without actually getting involved with the people in it.

As each passing year of new policies and tests fails to deliver the results they desire, rather than reform their thinking, these officials create new policies and new tests and pile them on top of the old ones. They, with the raising of a hand and a stroke of a signature, applaud themselves for their feigned ingenuity without thought or regard for those who will have to bear the burden of it.

More stories of teachers who are quitting:

A Teacher explains why she gave up a career she loved
Why Teachers are Quitting
Why Teachers Quit
Challenges in St. Louis Schools have some teachers quitting
And I walk away, or How I Finally Decided to Quit Teaching
Tag Archives: Quitting Teaching
Excellent teacher's quitting leaves readers dismayed
I'm Quitting Teaching: The Impossible Demands of an Unforgiving profession
Nearly 30% more HISD teachers quitting this year
Global Teacher Status Index


THE WAR AGAINST EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS

States don't want to pay teachers for earning masters' degrees

When people like Arne Duncan who has no education credentials qualifying him for his jobs in education (CEO of Chicago Public Schools and US Secretary of Education) are given positions of authority in the field, it's clear that credentials -- and actual education -- mean nothing to "reformers." As more and more politicians, pundits, policy makers, billionaires, former TFA novice teachers and tv talking heads declare themselves to be experts in education, real educators' voices become swallowed up by the cacophony of ignorance spewing from the nation's media and corporate board rooms.

The education experts in Indiana -- florists and attorneys, auctioneers and politicians -- have arranged things so that you can get a temporary teachers license with a masters degree in anything. After five years you need to have "some training" to keep teaching. However, with the new rules, you could become a principal after only 2 years.

Lawmakers who have no educational experience are saying that further education isn't necessary to improve education in America...apparently unaware of the irony of their position.

Lawmakers in North Carolina, led by Republican legislators, voted in July to get rid of the automatic pay increase for master’s degrees. Tennessee adopted a policy this summer that mandates districts adopt salary scales that put less emphasis on advanced degrees and more on factors such as teacher performance. And Newark, N.J., recently decided to pay teachers for master’s degrees only if they are linked to the district’s new math and reading standards.

The moves come a few years after Florida, Indiana and Louisiana adopted policies that require districts to put more weight on teacher performance and less on diplomas.

RESEARCH INFORMATION FOR EDUCATORS


Here are some articles of interest for teachers...

Brain Differences

EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids

Living in poverty does make a difference. Krashen has been talking about kids in poverty for years. Does it even matter to Americans that nearly 1/4 of our children are being shortchanged? Have we become so selfish that we don't care that 1/4 of our children live in poverty?

I got an email from a friend with a link to an anti-Obama video. One of the main themes was how American exceptionality and individualism made this country so wonderful. Well, it's not so wonderful for about a quarter of our children. Maybe it's time to move from the myth of American exceptionality and individuality to "We're all in this together."

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." - Ben Franklin.

"This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums."

Kishiyama, Knight and Boyce suspect that the brain differences can be eliminated by proper training. They are collaborating with UC Berkeley neuroscientists who use games to improve the prefrontal cortex function, and thus the reasoning ability, of school-age children.

"It's not a life sentence," Knight emphasized. "We think that with proper intervention and training, you could get improvement in both behavioral and physiological indices."

Closed Captions for Comprehension

Video Captions Improve Comprehension

Here's a simple trick that teachers and parents can use daily. Turn on the captioning when available.

"Not only were students talking about how much having the captions helped them as they took notes, their test scores went up," Collins said. "During the baseline year, there were a lot of Cs. In the second years, they went from Cs, Ds and Fs to As, Bs and Cs. It was really significant improvement."

That improvement didn't just manifest itself in grades. Class discussions also became livelier and more detailed, with students recalling specific information shown in the videos such as names of people and places.

"We're living in an age where our students are so distracted by technology that they sometimes forget where they should focus their attention when engaged with technology or media," he said. "Turning on captions seems to enable students to focus on specific information."

As Teachers Age...

Teachers More Likely to Have Progressive Speech, Language Disorders

This needs more study. Why do people who spend their lives using words to explain things lose their words as they age?

"Teachers are in daily communication," says Dr. Josephs. "It's a demanding occupation, and teachers may be more sensitive to the development of speech and language impairments."

e-Readers can help dyslexics

E-Readers Can Make Reading Easier for Those With Dyslexia

Don't buy iPads for everyone without exploring the need or the cost, but when an ereader is useful as a tool, it's worth investing in.

Is it the size of the text? the length of the sentences? or just the flexibility to make the text larger or smaller as needed? Maybe it's the backlit screen...or the ability to adjust the brightness.

Whatever the reason, it's possible that further study will result in the technology which will make my job (my volunteer job, now) as a reading specialist obsolete.

The team discovered that when e-readers are set up to display only a few words per line, some people with dyslexia can read more easily, quickly and with greater comprehension.

Time for Bed

Irregular Bedtimes Tied to Kids’ Behavioral Problems

Just in time for parent teacher conferences. This might be a good article to place on the table outside your classroom door as parents are sitting waiting for their conferences.

The study found a statistically significant link between bedtimes and behavior, according to the researchers.

Irregular bedtimes affected children’s behavior by disrupting circadian rhythms, leading to sleep deprivation that affects the developing brain, the scientists said.

As children progressed through early childhood without a regular bedtime, their behavioral scores — which included hyperactivity, conduct problems, problems with peers and emotional difficulties — worsened.

However, children who switched to a more regular bedtime showed clear improvements in their behavior.

~~~

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!

~~~

The Least Among Us

KOZOL

I just finished reading Jonathan Kozol's book Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America.

It was an emotional book as is most of Kozol's writing. Some critics of Kozol think that's a bad thing. I happen to think that it's important for us to feel the emotion borne of empathy for those children Kozol champions.

"Reformers" claim that he uses poverty as "an excuse" and that "poverty is not destiny." In Fire in the Ashes Kozol tells stories of high-poverty children who have overcome the obstacles...as well as those who have succumbed to them. However, anecdotal evidence isn't research, and the sad truth is that, in our current inequitable society, poverty is, most often, destiny. For the most part, those who are born in poverty, stay in poverty.

Poverty, income figures stay persistently unchanged in Census report

"In the biggest cities, it's almost impossible to get out of poverty," he added. "If we got one of our young men into a $15-an-hour job, that would be a windfall for him. But in Washington, you can't rent an apartment or take care of your kid on $15 an hour. In Kansas City, (with) a $10-an-hour job you can rent an apartment. There's more mobility."

Kozol's focus throughout his career has been on children in poverty and their families. Fire in the Ashes continues that focus. He also continues stories begun in previous books...telling what happened to some of the children he had written about over his half-century career.

Jonathan Kozol: Fire in the Ashes and the Children of the South Bronx

...teachers invited me to visit their schools and I got to know the children - I would see them at school, at their afterschool program, at their church. The children would invite me to meet their moms and their dads, their grandmothers, and we became deep friends. I wrote three books about them over the next ten years. A few years passed, and people started asking me, "What happened to those kids? Did you keep in touch with them? How many survived and how many didn't?" So, I thought it was time to write Fire in the Ashes in order to keep faith with those kids.

THE WAY OUT OF POVERTY

"Reformers" suggest (some more strongly than others) that a good education is the way out of poverty. In What Does Obama Really Believe In? Secretary of education Arne Duncan is quoted:

“What I fundamentally believe — and what the president believes,” Duncan told me, “is that the only way to end poverty is through education.”

I won't take the time to try to argue against that. Matt Bruenig has done a good job of that in Education and poverty, again -- you can read it there.

My belief, however, is that the combination of education, social safety nets, available jobs, and a focus on economic equity in the nation would reduce poverty. That is a simplistic response, I know, but it seems to work for other nations around the world -- nations with low child poverty rates, high achieving students and social safety nets. Surely, the world's strongest nation could make it work here.

Instead we have news like this...

Poverty in the United States remains high, median income stagnant

The Census report also found children continue to be the age group most affected by poverty in America, and the younger a child is, the more likely he or she is to be living in poverty. The percentage of children under 18 living in poverty remained near 2011 levels at 21.8 percent, with more than one in four children under age 5 living in poverty. While children are only 23.7 percent of the total population, they make up 34.6 percent of the people in poverty.

"If you look at the data for programs that help low-income people in general, the biggest people of category served is children," Tibbitts said. "Families with children disproportionately fall below poverty line. Children are expensive, and it takes a real commitment to raise kids."

The relationship between achievement and family income is well documented and we, as a nation, don't have the commitment to equity needed to help all our children. We're doing the best we can through our national selfishness to prevent poor children from getting a good education.

The Latest Act of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Last week, the House of Representatives voted to cut almost $4 billion, or 5 percent, from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as the food stamps program.

In order to cut back, the bill tightens eligibility rules and ends a state waiver that allows able-bodied workers to continue to receive assistance if they are unemployed for more than 3 months.

Members in favor of cutting spending argue that the economy is improving so we need to target aid to the neediest people and not allow Americans to use it as a “social safety net”.

Those against cutting spending say that because 1 in 7 Americans use the program, there is evidence that it is working at a time of high unemployment and great need.

47 million Americans currently qualify for food stamps, and according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, nearly 72 percent of SNAP recipients are families with children.

With one in five children living in poverty, House votes to cut SNAP food stamps

Today, (September 19,2013) the House voted on and passed the Nutrition Reform and Work Opportunity Act of 2013 (HR 3102). The legislation would cut nearly $40 billion in the next decade from federal food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The cuts come at a time when 21 million children rely on SNAP for food, and more than one in five children currently live in poverty.

SELFISHNESS ON A NATIONAL SCALE

Education alone can't solve America's huge child poverty dilemma and anyone who says that it can is misinformed, disingenuous, or flat-out lying. This is especially true when schools in high poverty neighborhoods are subject to less equitable funding, higher class sizes, rotting infrastructure, less experienced teachers and administrators, and fewer materials for teaching and learning.

The video below is directed at teaching non-English speakers, but it is appropriate to our discussion of poverty as well.

Dylan Garity - "Rigged Game" (NPS 2013)

"...after all, if these parents can't take care of their own children, why should we?"

Politicians and policy makers are eager to place the blame on public schools and public school teachers in order to avoid being held accountable for the problems they have been unable to solve.

We know that poverty contributes to lower achievement, yet we have allowed nearly a quarter of our children to live in poverty. We are a selfish people who don't understand that we are all diminished by the poverty and inequity in our midst. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

• "...the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members." ~ Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973), My Several Worlds [1954].
• "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• "A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization." ~ Samuel Johnson, Boswell: Life of Johnson
• "...the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped." ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
• "A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members." ~ Mahatma Ghandi
• "Any society, any nation, is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members -- the last, the least, the littlest." ~ Cardinal Roger Mahony, In a 1998 letter, Creating a Culture of Life
• "The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens." ~ James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.

~~~

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!

~~~

2013 Medley #18

Public Education, Bill Gates,
Grading Schools, Segregation, Reading

STOP WASTING MONEY

Deck Chairs on the Titanic Failure of American Education

We're doing the opposite of what our children need and deserve.

Stress inhibits learning, so we design stressful expectations; dopamine (from pleasurable activities) enhances learning, so we remove joy from schools; homework has very limited usefulness with negative returns after an hour or so (for elementary age kids), so we demand more hours of work; the importance of exercise in brain development is inarguable, so we eliminate recess and gym; the arts are central to human understanding, but we don't have time.

I have been accused of complaining but not offering solutions, so here's a solution: Properly fund schools and allow good teachers to select the materials and pedagogy that serve the actual students in their care. The rest will take care of itself.

And we can take the billions we're wasting on NCLB, RTTT, Common Core and other nonsense and spend it to improve the lives of the shameful number of children who live in poverty in the "richest nation on Earth."

GRADING SCHOOLS

Will Indiana schools reject grades?

Fort Wayne school board and South Bend school board have both rejected the state's A-F grading system after the former state school chief Tony Bennett was caught manipulating school grades to benefit one of his supporter's charter school.

Let's hope that other Indiana school systems follow suit. A full scale A-F rejection by the state's school boards would send a strong message to the legislature.

But celebrating “A schools” suggests the grades were earned. If those schools deserved their As, does it mean other schools in the district deserved the D and F grades they received? Is that really the message that school officials want to send to students, teachers and the public?

Retired Indiana educator speaks out against A-F grading system

NEIFPE co-founder Phyllis Bush has written a letter describing the weakness of the A-F grading system for schools.

While our legislators assume that the reason a family would choose a school is because of a dubious letter grade, I would counter that people choose schools for a variety of reasons, the least of which is an arbitrary grade. Perhaps, many people choose their schools because they want their children to attend neighborhood schools within walking distance from home. Some choose schools because of programs like Montessori or New Tech or IB. Some choose schools because of music or arts programs. Some choose schools because they have talked to friends and neighbors and church members and found that a particular school seems like a good fit for their child. I have never heard anyone say that their kids are going to this or that school because of the State letter grade any more than I remember any kid ever coming back years later to walk down memory lane to remember some awesome test I gave.

SEGREGATION

Breaking News: School Segregation Study Strikes A Nerve

This article is about Texas, but it applies to the entire nation. Schools are more segregated today than ever...segregated by economic status, race and language.

Read Jonathan Kozol's The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2006)

Every educator knows that a child’s performance in school has more to do with what happens in their home than with their teachers. A child who doesn’t speak English at home or whose parents are not educated will not do as well on tests. A child who has to work to support their family has less time to study.

...In the past, schools and districts received ratings based on solely on how well the children scored on standardized tests. If a school or district failed to meet state expectations after three years, parents could pull their kids out and the state could shut the schools down.

That led to high turnover in struggling schools, where principals and teachers complained that they could only accomplish so much in a such a short period of time. Educators felt punished for agreeing to teach the state’s most difficult pupils.

[NOTE: For those interested in The Shame of the Nation here's an interesting blog in which four students read, discuss and analyze the book. Start with the oldest entry and work up.]


READING

How the ‘reading wars’ are being reignited

The NCTQ so-called "ratings" of teacher education programs was a farce. They never visited any schools choosing instead to simply look at syllabi and course titles.

They claimed to use scientific based criteria for evaluation, however, when it came to the "requirements" that NCTQ demanded for Reading instruction...

...NCTQ claims the panel was sorting based on the presence of a “scientific basis,” to each textbook, their ratings prove them wrong. For example, Marie Clay, the founder of Reading Recovery and godmother of emergent literacy, is listed eight times, and each time deemed either unacceptable or irrelevant to the study of early literacy. Reading Recovery is the only reading program that has received the highest rating for evidence of positive effects from the Institute for Education Science’s What Works Clearinghouse.

BILL GATES

'Teachers' Letters To Bill Gates' Website Reveals 7 Major Things Educators Want The Mogul To Know

Bill Gates needs to listen to teachers...they obviously know more about education than he does. If he wants to spend his money to improve education he ought to donate it for jobs and health care.

7. Schools should teach children things that can’t be tested, too.
6. One size does not fit all in education.
5. Teacher evaluations should not be heavily tied to test scores.
4. Not all reformers have it right.
3. Give education professionals a seat at the table.
2. No Child Left Behind was bad.
1. Implementing Common Core standards will not fix things.

EDUCATIONAL LEADERS WITHOUT EXPERIENCE

Christie mocks educators and the people of Camden. Who cares?

Governor Christie in New Jersey is like Mayor Emanuel in Chicago. Neither would accept for their own children the kind of education they demand for the poor...untrained teachers and administrators, large class sizes, lack of support personnel, lack of fine arts, inadequate resources...

Christie has appointed someone with minimal experience to lead the Camden NJ schools. He doesn't believe that experience in the field of education matters, at least not in schools where 'other' children attend.

On Monday morning, an obedient state school board will kick dirt in the faces of public school employees who cherished educational leadership as a profession. The tools of the rich will once again be used against the poor.

~~~

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!

~~~

2013 Medley #14

Testing, Politics, Public Education
Books, Common Core

TESTING

High-stakes tests: bad for students, teachers, and education in general.

The great advantage of public education is also it's great disadvantage...the public is (or should be) in control. Like democracy itself, public education should be run by the people. This means that it is subject to the errors and foibles of ordinary citizens and their choices. People deserve the government they choose -- assuming they have the right to choose -- and sometimes that government doesn't work for their best interests.

School boards, elected by the people, can institute unpopular changes. In the long run, however, public schools can reflect the will of the people who reelect board members or throw them out of office.

Mayoral appointed school boards or school boards installed in some other manner are not answerable to the public. Private and corporate run pubic schools are often not answerable to the people either. Students, parents and teachers, and the school program in general, is often determined by the whims of those in charge...whether it's "the Mayor" or the corporate CEO.

Current "reformers" want to privatize schools and take the control out of the hands of the voters. The voters are sometimes misinformed or easily swayed, but public education needs to remain public.

The following article from teacherbiz focuses on standardized testing and shows how the lack of public oversight can ultimately harm public education -- in this case, for the entire nation.

It’s unfortunate that reformers and profiteering corporations have such damaging influence in public schools.

POLITICS

Senate Education Bill Fails To Reverse "No Child Left Behind" Damage, Ignores Constituents

No Child Left Behind was a disaster from day one. Gerald Bracey published his first anti-no-child-left-behind article on January 28, 2001, before the law was signed by President Bush. Even then he could see that "NCLB would funnel large sums of public funds into the private sector..." He was right.

The bill, finally, is up for review. Fairtest has some fears about what's going to happen.

• This bill maintains NCLB’s testing requirements, which have failed to fulfill the law’s fundamental promises of higher overall achievement and smaller gaps between racial groups.
• Even more testing will be required because states seeking Title II funds will have to include student test scores in teacher evaluation.
• Focusing sanctions on the lowest-scoring schools will lift the worst punishments from most suburban communities while leaving low-income, minority neighborhoods at continued risk.

...[Monty] Neill concluded, “Instead of pursuing ‘more of the same’ failed policies, policy-makers need to listen to their constituents. It is time to replace high-stakes testing schemes with assessment systems that help improve educational quality and equity.”

PUBLIC EDUCATION

Nine Myths About Public Schools

Speaking of Gerald Bracey...here's an article he wrote in 2009. Not much has changed, has it?

Money doesn't matter. Tell this to wealthy districts. Money clearly affects changes in achievement although levels of achievement are more influenced by the variables just mentioned. Most studies are short term and look only at test scores, a very foolish mistake. Economists David Card and Alan Krueger also found investments in school show a payoff in terms of long-term earnings of graduates.

The Public Purpose of Public Education

...from earlier this year, Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness of the United Church of Christ, makes a strong case for supporting public education.

The politics of public education have turned so ugly that one wakes in the night with anxious questions. In a year when the platform of one Texas political party would ban the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” and “critical thinking,” have we turned against education itself? A decade after the death of Fred Rogers, have we stopped treasuring our children and wanting them to enjoy childhood while they grow? Have our political leaders, many of them one-percenters, so little experience with the public schools that are the quintessential institution of the 99 percent—both the children and their teachers—that our leaders fail to understand the schools’ complex needs?

BOOKS: WHAT I'M READING NOW

Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America

Critics claim that Kozol is inflammatory...that he's too emotional, but I have yet to see any of them spend their lives working among the children and families of the poor like he's done for nearly 50 years. Fire in the Ashes is a series of short stories about real people who live in unhealthy and horrible circumstances in one of the world's wealthiest nations.

I've asked before...how can we allow nearly 25% of our children to live in poverty? Kozol tries to be the conscience of the nation...if anyone will listen.

From the publisher's blurb...

...tells the stories of young men and women who have come of age in one of the most destitute communities of the United States. Some of them never do recover from the battering they undergo in their early years, but many more battle back with fierce and, often, jubilant determination to overcome the formidable obstacles they face. As we watch these glorious children grow into the fullness of a healthy and contributive maturity, they ignite a flame of hope, not only for themselves, but for our society.

From the book...

...I had never seen destitution like this in America before. Twenty years earlier, I had taught young children in the black community of Boston and had organized slum tenants there and lived within their neighborhood and had been in many homes where rats cohabited with children in their bedrooms. But sickness, squalor, and immiseration on the scale I was observing now were virtually unknown to me.

Almost every child that I came to know that winter in the Martinique was hungry. On repeated evenings when I went to interview a family I gave up asking questions when a boy or girl would eye the denim shoulder bag I used to carry, in which I often had an apple or some cookies or a box of raisins, and would give them what I had.

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

And, as long as we're on the sujbect of Kozol, this is his best book, in my opinion. It blows the cover off the argument that "you can't throw money" at education and get results. It covers our lack of commitment to Brown vs. Board of Education, as well as the obvious fact that America doesn't really care about its children. The low priority given to the nation's future, especially poor children of color, is a travesty.

From the publisher's blurb...

...pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some fifty years ago to all our youngest citizens.

From the book...

By the end of the 1980s, the high hopes that I had briefly sensed a decade earlier were hard to find. Many of the schools I visited during this period seemed every bit as grim as those I'd seen in Boston in the 1960s, sometimes a good deal worse. I visited a high school in East St. Louis, Illinois, where the lab stations in the science rooms had empty holes where pipes were attached. A history teacher who befriended me told me of rooms that were so cold in winter that the students had to wear their coats to class while kids in other classes sweltered in a suffocating heat that could not be turned down. A foul odor filled much of the building because of an overflow of sewage that had forced the city to shut down the school the year before.

COMMON CORE

Van Roekel asks "What do you want instead (of the common core)?" My response.

Stephen Krashen responds to Dennis van Roekal, current president of the nation's largest teachers union, and the latter's collaborations with the corporate enemies.

PREDICTION: You read it here first. When van Roekel finishes his term as NEA President and retires he will go to work for someone like Arne Duncan. The NEA needs to dump him ASAP, before he drags us all down into the mire of corporate education.

Instead of the CCSS, Krashen says,

The question assumes that something is seriously wrong with American schools and that schools need to be fixed. We are always working to improve teaching, but there is no crisis in teaching. The real crisis is poverty.

What I want instead is: (1) dump the CC$$ (for a quick summary of arguments, please see: http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2013/06/common-cores-claims-are-false.html (2) protect children from the impact of poverty by investing more in food programs, health care, and libraries. (3) pay for (2) by reducing testing. A lot.

~~~

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!

~~~