Random Quotes - April 2015

NPE 2015 NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Three quotes from the Network for Public Education 2015 National Conference. See the videos at www.networkforpubliceducation.org.

From Jitu Brown, one of the directors of the Network for Public Education and the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance.

"They look at our students as instruments of profit" -- Jitu Brown

From Yong Zhao, Presidential Chair and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he is also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership.

We are in the U.S. one of the very, very few systems that allow everyone to "play in the system" for twelve years. That's something amazing. We do not select. We do not judge, and that preserves the diversity of talents. Once we privatize...once we allow people to select...you exclude people, normally too early. You don't know who they might become...any privatized entity has the right to reject. We are not running a country club. We're running a public education system...that is for the prosperity of the nation and the community and the individuals. -- Yong Zhao

From Lily Eskelsen Garcia, President of the National Education Association.

"What is wrong with the world where testing has become so absurd and so harmful to children that parents are protecting their children from a test [by opting out]...The solution has to be changing the world so we do not have toxic testing..." -- Lily Eskelsen Garcia

The Resistance Meets on Weekends

Peter Greene covered the Network for Public Education 2015 National Conference (as did many other bloggers...see here, here, here, here and here, for example) in an article about how many who support public education are busy with the actual work of education, while "reformers" are full time, anti-public education, privatizers.

At the close of the NPE conference, Diane Ravitch called on pubic education supporters to engage parents and grandparents, students (especially high school students) and retired educators...in other words, folks who can't be fired for standing up for public education.

From Peter Greene, Curmudgucation.

...the irony here is that while [educators] are amateurs in the field of shaping, twisting, and spinning policy, ["reformers"] are the amateurs in the actual field of education. They may have the tools, the money, the hired manpower, and the paths of power on their side, but we are the one who know the territory.

ATLANTA CHEATING SCANDAL

Demonizing Teachers, Privatizing Schools: The Big Lies and Big Plans Behind the Atlanta School Cheating Scandal

More about the Atlanta trial which sent public educators to jail.

From Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report

The one-percenters need us to believe public education in our communities is some new kind of sewer infested with incompetent teachers who are cheating children and the public every week they draw paychecks. The long, long crisis of public education has been designed, engineered and provoked by powerful bipartisan forces to justify their long game, which is the privatization of public education. That's the Big Plan.

Jon Stewart: Cheating teachers go to jail. Cheating Wall Streeters don’t. What’s up with that?

Jon Stewart, who is leaving The Daily Show late this summer, will be missed. Valerie Strauss analyzed his review of the Atlanta cheating scandal. The entire segment of The Daily Show follows.

From Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet

Jon Stewart on Wednesday night made the inevitable comparison between the former teachers and administrators in Atlanta who were sentenced for cheating on standardized tests — a few for as much as seven years — with Wall Street denizens who in 2008 connived in a way that nearly brought down the country’s financial system. Only one was sentenced to 12 months in jail.

The Daily Show

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

POVERTY

Indiana superintendents rail against proposed school funding changes

Under the guise of "equalizing school funding" the Indiana legislature is threatening to reduce funding for large, high poverty urban areas and increase funding for low poverty suburban areas.

From Wendy Robinson, Superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools, quoted in Chalkbeat.

“The state is trying to act as if I don’t need different resources for that high school in the high-poverty area,” Robinson said. “The standards I set for the students I receive is the same. We treat our kids in poverty like it’s their fault. … That’s the fallacy of the (state funding) formula.”

TESTING

The One about Bullying, Threats and Arne Duncan...

The justification for annual testing is "parents need to know how their students are doing." Most teachers could provide the same information during any week of the school year, more quickly, and with more accuracy.

The real justification for annual testing, and test prep, and every other expense accompanying annual testing, is money...plain and simple.

From Mitchell Robinson, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Chair of Music Education at Michigan State University, quoted in Badass Teachers Association.

...no teacher needs yearly standardized tests to know if their students are "making progress or growth." Just as parents don't need these tests to know if their children are growing. The people that teach and love these children are well aware of what they are learning, what challenges and successes they are encountering, and what strategies will work best to help them continue to grow and learn. Let's not pretend that a once-per-year multiple choice test will somehow magically provide some special sauce that will reveal what kids know and are able to do.

Report: Big education firms spend millions lobbying for pro-testing policies

How much of our national treasure, some of which used to go to helping students, is now going to testing companies? Imagine how much they're making in profits if they can afford to spend in excess of $20 million in lobbying...

From Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet

..four companies — Pearson Education, ETS (Educational Testing Service), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and McGraw-Hill— collectively spent more than $20 million lobbying in states and on Capitol Hill from 2009 to 2014.

Computerized Testing Problems: 2013 -2015

When you give a test before students are ready they often do poorly on it. The same is true when you give a test before the test is ready. The technical failures of the "new" computer based tests has added to the failure of the tests themselves. The testing companies still get their billions, though. FairTest has a list...

From FairTest.org.

The ongoing litany of computer exam administration failures reinforces the conclusion that the technologies rushed into the marketplace by political mandates and the companies paid to implement them are not ready for prime time. It makes no sense to attach high-stakes consequences to such deeply flawed tools

PRIVATIZATION

At the Network for Public Education 2015 National Conference, one of the speakers commented that privatization is more than just an "education problem." It's occurring in various places in America's economy. The most recent post of Privatization Watch covers much more than just education. It includes articles about a Senate cafeteria worker, a growing movement to transfer federal land to state control in Western states, the military pension system, the privatization of the state-run charity hospital system in Louisiana, and various toll road privatizations (because toll road privatization worked so well in Indiana).

Today's Privatization Watch post includes a link to an Atlanta blog article about privatization of public education...

GA: Opinion: Why competitive model fails schools. No one should lose in education

From Maureen Downey, Atlanta-Journal Consititution (AJC.com)

The Texas Miracle used to design No Child Left Behind was a case of cooking the books; the Atlanta Miracle included systemic cheating to save jobs and schools from being closed and educators are now sentenced to serve time behind bars; the New Orleans Miracle continues to be an embarrassment with the retraction of research reports indicating success and criticisms about bad data; and in 2013 there was confirmed test cheating in 37 states and Washington D.C., but surely it is more widespread than that given the high-stakes of the very tests that have been criticized for their bias, invalidity, very high cost, and damaging effects on what schooling has become. Not everything is a competition, not everything should be designed as a competition, and education – especially – should not be treated as a competition where there are guaranteed winners and losers. No one should lose in education. [emphasis added]

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

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2015 Medley #11

Atlanta Cheating Scandal, Tomorrow's Teachers, Opt-Out, Priorities for America's Future

ATLANTA CHEATING

Jail for Black Educators, Millions for Bankers

The Biggest Outrage in Atlanta’s Crazy Teacher Cheating Case

No one should condone the cheating done by teachers and educators in Atlanta (or Las Vegas, New Jersey, Washington D.C., Chicago, NYC, Texas, Los Angeles, and elsewhere), but what punishment is appropriate to fit the crime?

The first thing I always think about when I hear about cheating on standardized tests is that there is an assumption that standardized tests measure student achievement, teacher competency, school effectiveness, and real learning. They don't. Standardized tests most accurately measure student/family economic status and neighborhood income. Tests are being overused and misused and therein lies the real crime.

That being said, it's still unethical for educators to manipulate tests in order to protect their jobs, increase their bonuses, or any other reason. Teachers who do so should be removed from the classroom immediately with a loss of their credentials.

Yet it's important to remember that many teachers around the nation now find themselves in no-win situations. They are required to raise test scores (most often made impossible by legislatures) or risk losing their jobs. Backed into a corner it's not a surprise that many otherwise honest, hardworking teachers cheat in order to keep feeding their families. It's easy for outsiders to say they shouldn't do it, but when faced with loss of job in a difficult market, people often make poor choices. Definitely they should be punished for those poor choices.

What would the appropriate punishment be? 20 years and a racketeering charge like drug dealers and mobsters? A slap on the wrist like the bankers who brought the world economy crashing down? 10 years like the average for first time armed robbery? The threats of harsh sentences for the Atlanta teachers is just another point of proof that American Justice, while she may be wearing a blindfold, can see money very clearly.

You don’t have to consider the Atlanta teachers innocent to know something has gone terribly awry in the country when filling in bubbles on Scan-Tron sheets can get you 20 years, but stealing people’s homes and defrauding pension funds can’t get you indicted. The only way you could see what the justice system has granted bankers as in any way commensurate with what it does to ordinary people is if you grade on a curve.

Atlanta Cheating Scandals and Eva Moskowitz Success Academies 2 Sides of the same Coin

You decide which is worse- Cheating or Child Abuse.

That we have come to this is telling testimony of the absurdity of annointing raising test scores as the nation's primary anti-poverty strategy and its path to restoring Global Economic Competitiveness

The Atlanta Cheaters

Peter Greene understands that the educators who cheated in Atlanta are just a few more in a long line of cheaters starting with the main cheat which is No Child Left Behind. The law was based on the so-called "Texas Miracle" -- which never actually happened. Greene doesn't discuss it here, but we can also include the cheat of "Renaissance 2010" from Chicago which gave rise to Race to the Top.

When you nationalize something that only worked because of cheating and tell educators to duplicate it (or else!), you'll get more cheating.

The fate of the Atlanta cheaters stands in stark contrast to the fate of teachers and administrators cheating across the US. Can I pull up a list and name them? No, nor would I. But I don't doubt for a fraction of a second that hundreds upon hundreds of schools in this country survived the insanely unattainable politically-set requirements of federal reform by cheating in ways big and small. This can't be a surprise-- school reform's first big exemplar was the Texas Miracle, which turned out to be nothing more than creative accounting and magic tracking. The federal government literally paraded a big fat lie in front of schools as if it were a model and then said, "Okay, now YOU do that, too!"

BUILDING TOMORROW'S TEACHING CRISIS TODAY

The Rewards of Teaching

"Reformers" don't get it. They don't understand the motivation to teach. If they did they wouldn't be foisting a "business model" on public education. Teachers don't walk into a classroom like a salesclerk walks into a retail store, or an hourly assembly line worker walks into a factory. Those folks may love their jobs, but being an educator is more like a novelist struggling with the development of a character...more like an artist mixing colors on a canvas...more like a doctor trying to diagnose a particularly puzzling illness.

Increased pay for educators is great...but so is administrative support, materials, and the opportunity to teach and analyze one's work.

When "reformers" think they can motivate teachers with more money, or threats...when "reformers" remove all the subtle, personal rewards of teaching and replace them with an obsessive focus on test scores, the incentive to teach is lost...and no amount of money or so-called merit pay will make up for it.

A great school to work in is one where there are the fewest possible obstacles between the teachers and the intrinsic rewards of teaching. And the intrinsic rewards of teaching are, most simply stated, using your skills, knowledge, judgment and efforts to help your students learn and grow, and getting to see the real life results of that growth.

The more obstacles stand between a teacher and the use of those personal skills, knowledge, judgment and effort, the less rewarding it is to work there.

Does Anyone in Education Reform Care if Teaching Is a Profession?

I find it hard to believe that today's education "reformers" really believe that teaching is a profession at all. If they did, the pressure to make certain only top students enter university-based teacher preparation and then to make sure those students have rigorous preparation would be coupled with similar efforts to raise the attractiveness of teaching as a lifelong career. Instead, reformers act as if they believe that teaching is something you do in your twenties when you are idealistic and want to "give something back" -- and then you move on to a "real career" in some other sector. If your charter school bosses like you, perhaps they will make you a school principal before you are 30, or they will set you on a path to become Commission of Education for the state of New York when you are only 36 years old. But mostly, they will thank you for a few years of service and see you off to your grown up life outside of education. After all, reformers' favorite schools -- "no excuses" charters -- manage to train their students into "little test taking machines" without very many career teachers, so why should reformers really value teachers who dedicate their entire adult lives to teaching? That people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are dedicated and developing professionals who wish to remain in the classroom must seem like an amusing and quaint anachronism to them.

THE WAR ON TEACHERS

Here is the New York State Teacher Evaluation Bill

Here's a perfect example...politics hurts children. The teachers union in New York didn't support the re-election of Governor Cuomo, so his response is to do as much damage to teachers' careers as he can. Does he understand that teachers' working conditions have an impact on students?

This is a bill that is written to oust teachers. It reeks of disrespect. It shows Governor Cuomo’s rage against the people who work with children in public schools every day. This bill is his payback to the teachers’ unions for not endorsing his re-election after he declared himself the lobbyist for charter students (3% of the state’s enrollment)...Enrollments in teacher education programs are collapsing, in New York and across the nation. Those who enter teaching today are either woefully uninformed of the politicians’ hostility towards them or are prepared to fight a long battle for their children and their profession. What kind of society makes war on its teachers?

STEP UP - OPT OUT - BREAK THE RULES

Principal: ‘There comes a time when rules must be broken…. That time is now.’

Republicans on the right and Democrats on the left have all bought into the privatization of public education. It's up to parents and educators to protect, support and rebuild America's public schools.

It has become increasingly clear that Congress does not have the will to move away from annual high-stakes testing. The bizarre notion that subjecting 9-year-olds to hours of high-stakes tests is a “civil right,” is embedded in the thinking of both parties. Conservatives no longer believe in the local, democratic control of our schools. Progressives refuse to address the effects of poverty, segregation and the destruction of the middle class on student learning. The unimaginative strategy to improve achievement is to make standardized tests longer and harder.

THE LOW PRIORITY OF EDUCATION IN AMERICA

What If Education Reform Got It All Wrong in the First Place?

We are a selfish, short-sighted, nation. Our priority is "mine, mine, mine" and our plan for the future is non-existent. Politicians talk about not leaving future generations in debt, and use that as an excuse to justify cutting programs which squander the hopes of those very future citizens. If we actually cared about the future of our nation, about the children who will be leading us in a few short years, we would change our priorities.

"...if money doesn’t matter, then why is it that people who have money send their kids to schools that have many, many more resources?” Gandara adds. “I think fundamentally the problem is that other developed nations have social systems that support families and children in a variety of ways: with childcare, with good health care, with recreational opportunities—with lots of things that support healthy development. We have dumped it all on the schools and said, ‘We’re really not going to provide any of these services. You deal with it, schools.’”

Times aren’t tough; why the hit to schools? by Connie Boesen, a member of the Des Moines, Iowa School Board

Fewer opportunities, larger classes, fewer teachers, ever larger student debt, higher child poverty...is this our plan for the future? Is this how we plan to compete in a global economy?

If Iowa continues down this path of low funding for our schools, this is what we know: We will have fewer teachers, coaches and other adults that can connect with students. We will have fewer course offerings. We will have larger class sizes with less personal attention for each student. We will have fewer opportunities for students to connect with extracurricular activities and the fine arts that excite them to succeed in school.

We are elected to the school board just as the Legislature is elected with responsibilities, rules and timelines to follow. It is disappointing that we are now over a year late in establishing the school funding for the upcoming school year of 2015-2016. Education should not be a political issue but a moral issue of providing all children with great educational opportunities.

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Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

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Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

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Bennett: Commissioner of Cheating

"Back in the day" when we talked about cheating it was the students who were cheating...using crib sheets, copying homework, stealing test questions or plagiarizing research papers.

These days, however, cheating comes at all levels of the education world and the fault is the overuse and misuse of tests.

Campbell's law couldn't be more spot on...

The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

With the increase in high stakes testing starting after A Nation At Risk in 1983, the pressure to improve test scores -- by any means -- has increased. The attempt to increase student achievement has led to widespread cheating by students, of course, but also by teachers, administrators, departments of education, and politicians (of course).

The advice I got from my first principal and colleagues when I was a beginning teacher to...

...just teach the curriculum. The "test" will reflect how much the students know. You shouldn't "teach to the test..."

...is now just a memory of the appropriate use of tests -- although even then, there were significant problems. In today's world of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, teaching to the test is not only encouraged, but required.

So it comes as no surprise that joining the ranks of cheaters and alleged cheaters like Dr. Hall in Atlanta, Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C., and others in cities around the country like New York City, El Paso, Philadelphia, Columbus, Birmingham, Los Angeles, and lest we forget, Houston, the home of the Texas Miracle...is former Superintendent of Public Instruction of Indiana, Tony Bennett, now the Commissioner of Education for the state of Florida.

It seems that one of Bennett's favorites charter school operators -- and Republican campaign donors -- would not likely have been happy with a school grade less than an A in 2012, and with the help of his staff he set to work manipulating the numbers.

The AP reports

Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold "failing" schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.

In yet another lesson we should all heed about being careful what you put in an email, Bennett and his staff exchanged emails discussing the problem.

...the emails clearly show Bennett's staff was intensely focused on Christel House, whose founder has given more than $2.8 million to Republicans since 1998, including $130,000 to Bennett and thousands more to state legislative leaders.

Not only was Bennett trying to protect the feelings (and political contributions) of a major Republican donor, but he was also trying to cover up the faults in his poorly researched A-F grading system which he had dumped on the public schools in Indiana. Few understood the system -- apparently including members of Bennett's staff -- and the state is now trying to figure out what to do with Bennett's mess.

In order to fix the problem, Bennett had his staff manipulate the figures giving the wealthy donor/charter school operator an A. Bennett, it must be said, denies that the reason for the change was the poor grade for the charter. He claims that the system was faulty and had to be tweaked. [This of course, gives us the opportunity to reply that if that's the case, "WE TOLD YOU SO!"]

It's my understanding that changing grades for money or personal gain, which is what this seems to be, would be unethical, in most places illegal, and certainly cheating. Would it be cheating for a teacher to change a student's grades if the parents offered him money? Would it be cheating for a principal to insist that a teacher change a student's grades if a parent offered to buy the school a new PA System...or Computer lab...or football stadium?

Cheating is reprehensible. It's tragic that those people entrusted with the education of America's children, who ought to hold themselves to a high ethical standard for the students to emulate, should be the ones to model such inappropriate behavior. Cheating betrays the trust of students, parents, and the community. I understand that people will do things under pressure to protect themselves which they wouldn't do under other circumstances. I understand that people's livelihoods are at stake. I understand what fear of a job loss would feel like to a family with medical bills, mortgage payments and children to feed and clothe. I understand that real life makes self-preservation necessary sometimes...at the expense of one's dignity and honesty. I also understand that I was lucky enough to never have been forced into making those choices.

But it's still wrong.

Is Bennett's alleged cheating any less than Rhee's...or Hall's...or the educators who allegedly cheated to increase their students' scores? Shouldn't he be held to the same standard of accountability that he demands for teachers and schools?

It's time to end this test-and-punish, close-and-privatize nightmare and focus our attention on improving neighborhood public schools.

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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 #7

Teachers, Charters, Parent Trigger, 
Cheating, Vouchers

THE ROLE OF TEACHERS

Gerald Gerald Conti’s retirement letter and here.

Veteran teachers are leaving the profession in high numbers. The average years of experience of the American teacher has dropped precipitously in the last few years. One of the stated goals of the "reform" movement is to do away with seniority. Driving out veteran teachers by making the profession unpalatable is a way to make that goal a reality.

My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom.

Yet Another Education Reform Scam

Silent teachers...

And one of the most remarkable things is that the campaign for education "reform" — which must needs include the ongoing political and social villainization of public school teachers, without which the "reform" movement cannot succeed — has managed to bully teachers into silence about obvious ethical catastrophes like the one that allegedly occurred in Atlanta. The "reformers," and the avaricious politicians who have their own reasons for breaking the political power of the public school unions, have convinced the world that any criticisms of their methods is merely the caterwauling of overpaid featherbedders in the Music departments.

Cheating

Standardized Exam Cheating In 37 States And D.C.; New Report Shows Widespread Test Score Corruption

When the test becomes the goal then cheating is the result.

The solution to the school test cheating problem is not simply stepped up enforcement. Instead, testing misuses must end because they cheat the public out of accurate data about public school quality at the same time they cheat many students out of a high-quality education.

The cheating explosion is one of the many reasons resistance to high-stakes testing is sweeping the nation...

VOUCHERS

Dear Indiana Politician

One of the founders of the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education has written a personal and heart-felt letter in support of public funds for public schools and against using tax money for vouchers. Will the Indiana General Assembly listen or have they already made up their minds?

...the educational reform (and all that it encompasses) rages across our country out of control without many, if any, educational experts weighing in. Those educational experts valued by teachers are dismissed by those making legislation in favor of individuals with business savvy and big bucks but no expertise—no experience—in the classroom. Why would educators be left out of the decision-making process?

FWCS Resolution Against Voucher Expansion

Kudos to the Fort Wayne Community Schools School Board for passing this resolution against the state's voucher expansion plans.

• students can receive vouchers upon leaving schools with high achievement
• current system diverts funds necessary to support the public schools
• expanded to include students who have never been in the public schools
• increases taxpayer funding for parochial and private schools by an estimated $21 million while FWCS continues to suffer the effects from a $10 million cut

Fighting school voucher program

Another Indiana school board resolves that vouchers would hurt the students of the state...

“For a student who enters the Lake Central system in seventh grade, we would receive $4,700 per year. If that student enrolls in a private or parochial school, that school receives $5,500,” [Superintendent] Veracco said.

The School Board's resolution cites...a $21 million economic impact in the area. It asks the Indiana General Assembly to put HB 1003 on hold and to establish a study committee to evaluate the impact before any further changes are made to the voucher program.

Wait, Vouchers Can Fund Muslim Schools?

In some places legislators are having trouble with their own voucher plans since they can't pick and choose which religious organization's schools get the vouchers.

Notice that there was no complaint at all from these same legislators over diverting money to private Christian schools. They’re perfectly find [sic] with tax money going to support Christian schools. But Muslim schools? That’s an outrage! Who could possibly support such a thing? More importantly, how can they pass a law that prevents that from happening while ensuring the flow of funds to Christian schools? They can’t. And you know what prevents it? That damn constitution they claim so loudly to revere.

PARENT TRIGGER

Public Schools, Private Agendas: Parent Revolution

The parent trigger laws do not give parents more choice. The group Parent Revolution is not a broad based parent support or advocacy group. It was founded by a charter school operator in order to improve his business.

“My kids are not going to go there,” she says. “They’re taking away all the teachers my kids have been around for years. They took over our school, and I don’t think it’s fair. They’re not for the kids.”

CHARTERS*

Ohio

Charters Don't Deserve State Windfall

For two decades, the money has been following Ohio’s children out of the doors of our public schoolhouses and through the doors of charter schools. Despite losing over $6 billion to charters during the past 15 years, traditional public schools continue to vastly outperform their charter-school counterparts.

ECOT Charter School continues siphoning money from Ohio’s top-rated school districts

Charters like ECOT (Ohio’s largest by a mile) are not the saving grace of education in Ohio — they are siphoning students and money away from the best school districts in the state, causing unnecessary strife and lowering statewide student achievement.

California

Charter school operators guilty of misusing funds

"You can't spend the charter school funds for anything you want. It has to be money spent on the kids and the schools."

PUBLIC EDUCATION

School Segregation Leads To More Violent Crime, Study Finds

The privatization movement is leading to a re-segregating of America's schools. In 2007 the Supreme Court essentially took down the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

In a 5-4 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday, the Supreme Court told local school districts that they cannot take even modest steps to overcome residential segregation and ensure that schools within their diverse cities themselves remain racially mixed unless they can prove that such classifications are narrowly tailored to achieve specific educational benefits.

With the re-segregation of schools comes this report...

Modern inner-city schools are often underfunded, while dropout rates are high and violence is common. Police officers routinely intervene to discipline students for minor infractions, exposing minority kids early to the criminal justice system. Greater allocation of resources may not be enough to halt the cycle of racially-skewed poverty and crime as long as racial and class segregation continues, according to an analysis by Columbia Business School professor Ray Fisman.

The Public Purpose of Public Education

As the U.S. Department of Education has introduced competitive grant programs, it has frozen formula programs from the civil rights era that awarded funds according to the specific needs of the children to be served. Title I is an important example of a formula program frozen in recent federal budgets and being slowly transformed into competitive programs. Title I was created in 1965 in the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act to provide federal aid for schools serving children in poverty. Although the Title I formula program is small relative to state and local funding, it has been one of the federal government’s primary tools for equalizing educational opportunity as a civil right for every child. “There are those who would make the case for a Race to the Top for those who can run,” declares the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “Instead ‘lift from the bottom’ is the moral imperative because it includes everybody. We should be fighting for one set of rules—a common foundation beneath which no child falls.”

The Service of Democratic Education

Not much has changed since Linda Darling-Hammond wrote this in 2011. We're still blaming the teachers and the schools, closing schools instead of supporting them, ignoring poverty, and shuffling poor children around so the privatizers can take our tax money as profits.

And the new scientific managers cleverly construct systems that solve the problem of the poor by blaming the teachers and schools that seek to serve them, calling the deepening levels of severe poverty an “excuse,” rewarding schools that keep out and push out the highest-need students, and threatening those who work with new immigrant students still learning English and the growing number of those who are homeless, without healthcare or food security. Are there lower scores in under-resourced schools with high-need students? Fire the teachers and the principals. Close the schools. Don’t look for supports for their families and communities, equitable funding for public schools or investments in professional learning. Don’t worry about the fact that the next schools are—as researchers have documented—likely to do no better. This is the equivalent of deciding that if the banks are failing, we should fire the tellers. (And whatever you do, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.)

PRIORITIES

The U.S. Collects Less In Taxes Than All But Two Industrialized Countries

We're a selfish lot. We, as a nation, don't really care about each other or our children very much...other than the lip service we pay during elections. The "common wisdom" is that we're over-taxed. Unfortunately that's just a lie. We're among the least taxed people on earth...and we have the lack of social safety nets to show it. Poor medical care and our incredibly high child poverty rate lead to a crisis in learning for our most vulnerable children...and we, as a nation, are unwilling to pay more. The "community" of America doesn't exist. The attitude has become "what's mine is mine and you can't have it."

The premise of the argument from Republicans is that Americans already face an extraordinarily heavy tax burden. Citizens for Tax Justice, however, compared levels of taxation in 2010 in the other industrialized countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and found that the U.S. not only collects far less in tax revenues than the average OECD country, but that it also collects less in taxes as a share of its economy than all but two other OECD nations...

Lead poisoning toll revised to 1 in 38 young kids

An estimated 535,000 young children in the United States have harmful levels of lead in their bodies, putting them at risk of lost intelligence, attention disorders and other life-long health problems, according to a new estimate released Thursday by federal health officials.

The new number shows lead poisoning affects 1 in 38 children ages 1 to 5, according to the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"To the extent that Americans think this is a problem of the past, clearly this is evidence there is still a problem," said Rebecca Morley, executive director of the National Center for Healthy Housing, a non-profit lead-poisoning-prevention advocacy group.

The warping of public education

The well-being of our young people is just not a high priority in the United States. The social safety-net is inadequate, poverty is rampant, economic segregation via private and so-called "choice" is growing.

We have to undo the damage that has turned public education into a crisis. That means dumping the pretend science of high-stakes testing and valuing rather than criminalizing students of color; it also means moving from punishment- to healing-based systems of maintaining order, taking police and armed security guards out of the hallways and learning to value and respect young people more than we value metal detectors and surveillance cameras.

*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.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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2013 Medley #2

Equity in Public Education, Testing,
Evaluations, Data, Those Who Can...Teach.

EQUITABLE PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR EVERYONE

Katie Osgood: Choice or Equity -- You Can't Have Both

Katie Osgood asks the questions and gives the answers which must be given for education to become equitable in the US. The "reformers" aren't interested in equitable education. They want the private sector to take it over...for money...on principle...for whatever reason. We can't allow them to succeed in privatizing public education.

[reformated from original to highlight questions and answers]

• [I]s it possible to fight for a system that leaves no children behind, which promotes equity and equal opportunity for ALL?
• Can we commit to spending the MOST resources on the neediest children to address safety and learning issues?
• Can we commit to addressing the underlying poverty which creates so many of the behavior, learning, and safety issues in schools?
• Can we commit to ensuring that no matter where you live, you will have a well-kept, EQUITABLY-resourced (more resources for needier schools), properly staffed school, complete with access to libraries and librarians, up-to-date technology, social workers, counselors, and foreign language, arts, and music?

...This vision of schooling is what the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike to create. It is indeed possible to achieve this seemingly utopian model of education. The CTU has discovered numerous ways to create the schools all children deserve.

• We can increase funding.
• We can fight to ensure the funding we currently have is directed towards the neediest children, NOT wasted on testing, data systems, complicated, flawed, and unnecessary new evaluation systems, and the agendas of the politically connected.
• We can fight poverty.
• We can call attention to the very real effects of poverty on our students' lives.

But it will not happen without a struggle.

TESTING

Systemic issues prevent teaching success, not individual teachers

Teachers are singled out as being responsible for school "failure." Pundits, politicians and policy makers need to accept responsibility for the conditions which lead to student failure.

The publicity given to the latest Gates Foundation report on teacher evaluation [“Gates: Test scores not enough for teacher reviews,” seattletimes.com, Jan. 9] adds strength to the common view that there is something very wrong with American teachers. There is, for example, no pressing concern about how we should evaluate nurses, carpenters, doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, butchers, newspaper reporters, etc.

Every profession has some inferior practitioners, but the available evidence says that American teachers as a group are excellent. When we control for the effects of poverty, our international test scores are very good, ranking at or near the top of world.

The Great Stuff In Public Schools That Tests Can't Measure

Honesty, pride in accomplishment, desire to improve -- "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." This is a must read...

Do you reformy types still want to try to convince me that our public education system is a failure? A system that produces outstanding, upright, decent young people like this?

Do you really think any stupid bubble test put out by some corporate education provider can capture the true learning that happened that day in New Jersey? That some stupid question about pineapples and rabbits is more important than the character these beautiful young people and their teachers showed this day?

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.

You people who constantly bemoan and mock the "achievement" of our children need to step aside in shame. These kids - and their teachers - are far better people than you will ever be.

[emphasis in original]


Time for Michelle Rhee to probe test tampering

Michelle Rhee needs to be held accountable for the cheating which went on in the DC Public Schools under her so-called leadership.

Last week, she released a statement concluding there was “no evidence of widespread cheating” on D.C. tests from 2008 to 2010. Her proof? A series of superficial investigations, the parameters controlled by D.C. school brass, that never called on the expertise of psychometricians, never dug into the data, and lacked any reasonable explanations of how such erasures could have been made by anyone but adults.

A Standardized Testing Revolt

Over the past year, there's been a steady and ongoing revolt in Texas. Not about secession or guns or the many other fringe topics that the state is usually associated with. This battle has been waged primarily by parents and teachers, and the demand is relatively simple—cut back on testing our kids. There's been similar sentiments simmering in states across the country, but in Texas a new set of tests, put in place last year, sparked the outcry. Now, the push that began in school board and PTA meetings has finally reached the halls of power...

...Texas’ shift on testing could well have national repercussions. After all, it did more than any other state to bring the country into an era of Number 2 pencils and filling in bubbles. It might also be the state that leads us out.

Seattle Public Schools: Support Garfield High School teachers refusing to administer the MAP!

Teachers in one Seattle high school have said enough is enough. High stakes tests do not improve achievement.

• Seattle Public School staff has notified us that the test is not a valid test at the high school level. For these students, the margin of error is greater than the expected gain. We object to spending time, money, and staffing on an assessment even SPS agrees is not valid...

• We are not allowed to see the contents of the test, but an analysis of the alignment between the Common Core and MAP shows little overlap. We object to our students being tested on content we are not expected to teach...

• Even the NWEA itself, the parent company to MAP, has advised districts to carefully restrict the use of the test and its results. NWEA also cautions to ensure 100% random selection of students enrolled in any course if the test is used for evaluation and to take into consideration statistical error in designing evaluation policies. NWEA says that problems become “particularly profound at the high school level.” None of these or other criteria urged by NWEA has been met. We object to being evaluated by a test whose author suggests extreme caution in its use and warns against valid legal action if the test is used in personnel decisions...

Related: The Impact of the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Program on Student Reading Achievement

The results of the study indicate that the MAP program was implemented with moderate fidelity but that MAP teachers were not more likely than control group teachers to have applied differentiated instructional practices in their classes. Overall, the MAP program did not have a statistically significant impact on students’ reading achievement in either grade 4 or grade 5.

EVALUATIONS

Kasich Pulls a Fast One

Governor John Kasich of Ohio is in the same class as Wisconsin's, Florida's, Michigan's, and other governor's throughout the country. Their goal is to privatize the public sector. Kasich and Ohio has joined the growing list of states using invalid and unreliable methods to evaluate teachers.

HB 555 radically changes the method of calculating evaluations for about 1/3 of Ohio’s teachers. If a teacher’s schedule is comprised only of courses or subjects for which the value-added progress dimension is applicable – then only their value-add score can now be used as part of the 50% of an evaluation based on student growth. Gone is the ability to use multiple measures of student growth...the rules of the game [have] changed at the 11th hour...the growing list of research that demonstrates the very real and serious problems with heavy reliance on value-add, and the need to offset these problems by using multiple measures of student growth.

AIR: VAM Not Ready for Prime Time

John Kasich et al, should read this report from the American Institutes for Research. You'll find the entire report HERE.

"We cannot at this time encourage anyone to use VAM in a high stakes endeavor. If one has to use VAM, then we suggest a two-step process to initially use statistical models to identify outliers (e.g., low-performing teachers) and then to verify these results with additional data. Using independent information that can confirm or disconfirm is helpful in many contexts. The value of this use of evaluative change results could be explored in further research efforts….”

DATA OBSESSION

Datapalooza at the U. S. Department of Education

Check out the list of speakers at the "Datapalooza" --  not one practicing teacher among them. Duncan's blog said, "...imagine an easy-to-read virtual dashboard for parents to track the academic performance of their children." Academic performance is, of course, standardized test scores.

It turns out this U. S. Department of Education was following in the footsteps of a White House-sponsored Health Datapalooza and Energy Datapalooza. I'm waiting for the White House extravagant party where a plethora of concerned citizens talk about the dangers of the overweening government worship of data.

THOSE WHO CAN...TEACH

Our Nation's Goofy Education Debate

Teachers know more about teaching than pundits, politicians and policy makers. Yet the laws and rules of public education are being made in board rooms and business offices.

You mean we shouldn't just accept everything that comes from the Gates Foundation?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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How very sad. And how incredibly accurate.

Check out the latest cheating scandal in California.

State strips 23 schools of API rankings for cheating

The API is a scale by which schools are officially measured in California. Top rankings are celebrated and contribute to high property values. Low scores can label schools as failures and trigger penalties. The number of schools with invalidated test scores remains relatively small: about two dozen each of the last three years in a state with more than 10,000 schools. Some teachers may have thought they were within bounds when in fact they weren't.

Teachers in LA know that their results will be used to pillory them in the news media. The LA Times has no qualms against publishing teacher rankings based on test scores.

A question I keep asking over and over again...who is going to be left teaching when we have destroyed public education and public school teachers? Fewer and fewer it seems...the self-fulfilling prophecy is coming true. Beat up teachers and public schools enough and fewer young people will  decide to spend their careers helping the next generation learn. Why put yourself on the line for the bludgeoning that public school teachers get daily when you could get more money, have better job security, and likely do more good somewhere else?

Indiana teacher colleges see drop in applications; legislature blamed

A Journal and Courier survey found enrollment at Purdue’s College of Education has fallen 23 percent over the past five years, while Ball State’s Teachers College has seen a 32 percent decrease in applications since 2008. Indiana University’s School of Education has seen a 20 percent drop in applications since 2008, and enrollment there is down 11 percent from last year.

My guess is that this is happening all over the country. Fewer new teachers, coupled with the fact that more and more teachers are leaving the profession than ever before, there's going to be a shortage...especially in areas where students are difficult to teach...special education and high poverty areas.

The decline in applications stems in large part from a wave of education changes that emerged from the 2011 Legislature. Their goal is to increase teacher and school accountability, but many teachers feel they’ve come under fire unfairly and are being blamed for failing schools. The political rhetoric that has polarized both sides of the education overhaul arguments hasn’t helped.

“Our biggest critics are the ones who are making the most sweeping statements about failing schools, and they’re the very same ones saying what we need to do to improve schools in this country is attract the best and brightest,” said IU Dean of Education Gerardo Gonzales. “I don’t think they understand the decisions they’re making are having the reverse effect.”

Diane Ravitch posted a letter from a teacher in North Carolina who quit (and I posted more information about teachers leaving the profession). It's interesting to read the growing number of comments from teachers all over the country who are expressing understanding and empathy with the teacher who quit. My comment is first...

I retired early because I was tired of the constant focus on the test…and the redirection of funds for public education towards test prep. With 35 years and a masters degree I was too expensive to keep. My school system cut the positions of reading specialists (mine) and offered an incentive for retirement to people at the top of the scale. I left teaching four years before I had planned…the incentives, plus the focus on testing instead of education was enough to drive me out.

A year later my school closed…the cuts in education funding by the state of Indiana, plus mismanagement by the administration has ended with the closure of several schools in our district. Children have been shuffled around to other places…and will be again with the next round of closings

Here are some more...there are dozens!

Wow! What a sad commentary on teaching today. So many of us are on autopilot and in survival mode.

Teachers are used and abused, and it’s a disgrace that it’s legal.

This is why I left my classroom in NC 10 years ago!!! Sounds like nothing has changed!!

It sounds exactly like the public school in NE Pa.

I am exhausted and it isn’t even November. There is a breaking point for all of us and for the entire system. They are destroying our public school system.

I am in North Carolina. 6th year teacher, and so tired, always tired, I just want to teach my students.

I am a 5th year teacher and I totally agree with you. I am responsible for delivering all subjects and with the New Common Core implementation across the board, talk about exhausted.

This letter puts into words the frustration, sadness, and growing emotional and physical anxiety that I am feeling every day.

How sad. How very sad. And how incredibly accurate.

...teachers are overworked, underpaid, micromanaged, made to feel less than a licensed professional, etc. We get it.

This letter expresses exactly how I feel this year with my teaching. Two years ago things were bad, last year they were awful, this year they are beyond horrible.

I am feeling the same as the teachers above.

I have written this letter in my head so many times, but somehow I keep coming back for one more year.

Thank you for putting the collective pain, sadness, frustration, and helpless feelings many teachers have today into words. I’ve been a public high school teacher in Minneapolis Public Schools for over 25 years, and this is the worst year ever. We work so hard, and this assassination of our profession and our schools by our own government is shameful.

I am also a teacher who left the field in disgust.

I most relate to the feeling of being complicit in a system that is doing more harm than good to both students and teachers. Yes, I may make a difference in the lives of some of my students, but there’s a price to pay. Any teacher who cares and is trying to deal with this system is paying dearly indeed!

I agree with everything u said!! it is so sad, but true-what will it take to save the teachers who really do care and love teaching….

I don’t know of a single teacher here who is happy.

I taught in Indiana public elementary schools for 10 years. I have Associates, Bachelors and Masters degrees and just a few months ago I gave it all up....I was grouchy, stressed out and hard to be around....I quit! I don’t miss it and I’ve never looked back.

Well said, VERY well said…That is why I, an innovative elementary principal, took early retirement. Sick of having non-educators or jocks tell me what they know about teaching reading to young children or how to make math exciting. What they know I learned in the FIRST of my four degrees and I could put that information in my center desk drawer and not use it in the 21st Century.

I imagine a lot of teachers wish they could write similar letters. It’s a shame that our country has let the educational system crumble to ruins. Teachers need our support. They need to be given the tools they need to properly educate our children. Our teachers need to be appreciated and valued for their efforts and paid fair wages for their time. The children are our future and it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that our children learn, grow and blossom into educated, compassionate, well rounded, responsible, productive members of our society.

The pain I feel knowing that I will be forced to quit teaching because politicians have destroyed our educational system is devastating. I do not know how long I will be able to hang on.

I know too many educators who want to retire just to get away from the madness of testing in our schools. “Teachers’ working conditions are children’s learning conditions.”

You might also be interested in:

Teachers who quit

Teachers know what students need, but they're being forced to do things they know are pedagogically wrong in order to keep their jobs.

Who will teach the children?

...the opportunities for the personal rewards that keep most teachers in the classroom are being stolen by the crunch of curriculum cramming and teaching to tests. The joy and freedom of teaching simply no longer exist.

Who Will Staff Tomorrow's Schools?

It has become harder and harder to teach. With the testing insanity growing to include pay based on test scores, teachers are going to avoid teaching hard to educate children. The gaps between rich and poor will grow.

Who Will Staff Tomorrow's Schools? Part 2

A shrinking job market, poor advancement, dependence on student test scores for evaluations, lowered status, lack of professional decision making opportunities, and lack of public support are all making the prospect of a career in education less appealing. The best and the brightest will, for the most part, look elsewhere for career opportunities. The teachers who remain will be overburdened with large class sizes, and hard-to-teach students. The constant attack on public education, public school teachers and their unions, has had a self-fulfilling effect on the profession.

Help Wanted

How will we get the best and the brightest when we, as a nation, tell our children that being a teacher is not worthy of decent working conditions? Which best and brightest scientist will give up a job in the private sector for the frustrations and the disrespect that accompany teaching chemistry or physics to teenagers? Which best and brightest journalist will give up the success and stability of a steady job at a magazine or newspaper for the day to day struggle of trying to teach 8 year olds to read and write...knowing that their job depends on the ability of the children to parrot back the right answers on a multiple choice test? Who is going to choose special education when their job depends on student test scores? Who is going to choose to teach in high poverty areas where their job depends on how children who are hungry, or tired, or living on the street do on a test?

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

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?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Test Pressure and its Impact in the Classroom

WTHR, Indianapolis' NBC affiliate sent out an non scientific survey to teachers earlier this month. In it they asked about the pressures that standardized testing has put on their students, themselves, their classrooms and their ability to teach.

The survey was released just days after news of a cheating scandal at North Central High School in Indianapolis hit the news.

According to the survey many (10%) of the 2000 teachers who responded to the survey knew of students who have cheated...and a similar number (11%) knew about other teachers who have cheated.

No one condones cheating on the tests, but the fact remains that when the pressure to succeed overwhelms the available resources people will game the system and figure out ways to succeed, even if those ways are unethical. Campbell's Law states that

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

Donald Campbell, an experimental social science reseacher, also said,

...achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.

It's clear, under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, that test scores have become the goal of the teaching process. The fact that standardized tests are now so important has made the tests themselves less valid.

In an article about the survey, WTHR mentioned the additional key findings.

• 81% of teachers said they feel pressure related to their students' achievement on standardized tests.
• 80% of teachers said pressure related to standardized tests has a negative impact on the learning environment in their classroom.
• 78% of teachers said pressure related to standardized tests has a negative impact on their ability to teach effectively.

Pressure related to student achievement is not always bad. Teachers should be pressured to help their students achieve. That's the point of schools and public education, after all. However, when pressure overwhelms reality then things need to change. The fact that so many teachers feel that the pressure has a negative impact on their classrooms and on their ability to teach is significant. The tests are making it harder to teach and that's backwards. As a society, we need to do everything we can to make it easier for teachers to teach and for students to learn, not the opposite. In the video accompanying the story, Theresa Meredith, Vice President of the Indiana State Teachers Association said,

I think when you push for competition in a school setting, when we're all supposed to be heading toward the same goal, we're all supposed to be working to help our students achieve as much as they possibly can...when you change that dynamic and you put so much pressure on schools and you force them to compete, literally compete, against each other, teachers feel tremendous pressure.

The education reformers are convinced (and have been for decades) that competition is what's needed to improve our public schools. The fact that it doesn't work doesn't seem to matter to them. It hasn't worked in Milwaukee, where a voucher system has been "in competition" with the public schools for two decades. It hasn't worked in thousands of charter schools around the country whose scores and results are no better than regular, neighborhood public schools (see HERE, HERE and HERE). Competition yields winners and losers and, when it comes to public education, we shouldn't accept any loss.

Diane Ravitch, in The Death and Life of the Great American School System, wrote,

Our schools will not improve if we entrust them to the magical powers of the market. Markets have winners and losers...Our goal must be to establish school systems that foster academic excellence in every school and every neighborhood.

Every child must be given the opportunity to develop to the highest level of their ability and motivation. That is, after all, why we have a public school system.

In a telling comment about the survey, Stephanie Sample, The Indiana DOE Communcations director said,

Do you really think parents care if their kids' teachers are feeling pressure? I don't. I think most parents just want them to teach.

Of course Indiana parents want their children's teachers to "teach." Sample's condescending comment seems to ignore the fact that the atmosphere of the classroom has an impact on student learning. I think most parents would, indeed, care if their child's teachers felt that pressure from the state had a negative impact on their classroom.

And that's just what the results of the survey show. When asked where the pressure comes from the teachers responded in this manner...

Does that pressure come from (check all that apply)

• Yourself 57.1%
• Your school administrators 74.7%
• Your school board 34.6%
• The State Department of Education 93.4%
• Parents 17.6%

This is the pressure that 80% of respondents said had a negative impact on the learning environment of their classroom and 78% said interfered with their ability to teach effectively....so yes, Ms. Sample, I think parents would care about the pressure teachers feel. What are you and the Indiana Department of Education doing to help improve the atmosphere in the public schools of Indiana?

The unspoken implication in Ms. Sample's comment is that teachers don't care about parents...and by extension their children. She might think differently if she and the Indiana Department of Education collaborated with and worked together with the state's teachers instead of against them in the current push to privatize education in Indiana and the US.

Click here to see the complete results of the survey.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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