Why Diane Ravitch is Marching on July 30

From the Bridging Differences Blog at Education Week.

Dear Deborah,

I will be marching with the Save Our Schools coalition of teachers and parents on July 30 in Washington, D.C. I know you will be, too. I hope we are joined by many thousands of concerned citizens who want to save our schools from the bad ideas and bad policies now harming them.

I am marching to protest the status quo of high-stakes testing, attacks on the education profession, and creeping privatization.

I want to protest the federal government's punitive ideas about school reform, specifically, No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top. Neither of these programs has any validation in research or practice or evidence. The nation's teachers and parents know that NCLB has been a policy disaster. Race to the Top incorporates the same failed ideas. Why doesn't Congress know?

I want to protest the wave of school closings caused by these cruel federal policies. Public schools are a public trust, not shoe stores. If they are struggling, they should be improved, not killed.

I want to protest the way that these federal programs have caused states and districts to waste billions of dollars on testing, test preparation, data collection, and an army of high-priced consultants.

I want to protest reliance on high-stakes testing, which has narrowed the curriculum, encouraged gaming the system, and promoted cheating.

I want to express my concern about the effects of 12 years of multiple-choice, standardized testing on children's cognitive development, and my fear that this reliance on bubble-testing discourages imagination, creativity, and divergent thinking.

I want to express my opposition to an educational system devoted to constant measurement, ranking, and rating of children, which validates the belief that some of our children are winners, while at least half are losers.

I want to speak out against federal policies that promote privatization of public education.

I want to protest federal efforts to encourage entrepreneurs to make money from education, instead of promoting open-source technology, free to all schools.

I want to protest the federal government's failure to develop long-term plans to improve the recruitment, preparation, and support of the teaching profession.

I want to protest the ill-founded belief that teachers should be evaluated by their students' test scores, which is a direct result of the Race to the Top.

I want to express my disgust at the constant barrage of attacks on teachers, principals, and public education.

I want to urge Congress and the Obama administration to recognize that federal funding should support equity and benefit the nation's neediest students. That was the rationale for passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and it should be the rationale for federal funding today.

I want to urge Congress and the Obama administration to acknowledge that school reform cannot be imposed by legislative fiat, but must be led by those who are most knowledgeable about the needs of children and schools: educators, parents, and local communities.

I want to urge Congress and the Obama administration to recognize the constraints of the Constitution and federalism and to stop using the relatively small financial contribution of the federal government to micromanage the nation's schools.

I want to urge Congress and the Obama administration to acknowledge that our nation's public schools have played an essential role in making our nation great. After many historic struggles, their doors are open to all, regardless of race, economic condition, national origin, disability, or language. We must keep their doors open to all and preserve this democratic institution for future generations.

I want to urge Congress and the Obama administration to recognize that our public schools are succeeding, not declining. Since the beginning of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the 1970s, our students have made slow but steady gains in reading and mathematics. Improvement has been especially notable for African-American students. Progress was greatest, ironically, before the implementation of NCLB.

I call on Congress and the Obama administration to cease spreading false claims of educational decline. Since the first international test in 1964, we have never led the world in test scores, and we have often been in the bottom quartile on those tests. Yet, as President Obama said in his State of the Union Address in January, we have the world's greatest economy, the world's most productive workers, the most inventors, the most patents, the most successful businesses, and the best universities in the world. And all of these great achievements were created by people who are mainly products of our nation's public schools.

I urge Congress and the Obama administration to support programs that help children arrive in school ready to learn: assuring that every pregnant woman has appropriate medical care and nutrition; that children have high-quality early-childhood education; and that parents know they have the support they need to help their children grow up healthy and ready to learn.

I am marching because I want every child to attend a school where they can learn not only basic skills, but history, geography, civics, the sciences, and world languages, and have ample opportunity to engage in the arts.

I am marching to support the dignity of the education profession and to express my thanks to the millions of teachers, principals, and other educators who are in the schools every day, doing their best to educate our nation's children.

I hope the march will revive the morale of our nation's educators. I hope it will remind the American people that the future of our nation depends on our willingness to protect and improve our public schools, the schools attended by nearly 90 percent of our nation's children.

Diane

Alice and Her Father

Yesterday's post was about reading aloud to your children. I wrote that I had read aloud to my classes during the years I taught.

From my first teaching day in Kindergarten at Coesse Elementary School in rural Whitley County Indiana, to the last day I taught in a general education classroom (also Kindergarten) at Harlan Elementary School I tried not to miss even one day of reading aloud to students.

Reading aloud defined my teaching career. It directed me to focus on reading...and eventually to become a reading specialist.

More importantly, though, was that reading aloud was part of my home life, too. As parents we read to all three of our children each day...just like I did as a teacher. There's no other activity that I did as a parent that I remember as well...perhaps because it happened daily...or perhaps because it was such a wonderful feeling to cuddle up with a child and explore new places and characters in picture books and novels.

Meg has her own memories to tell about reading to our children...who were lucky enough to have two readers to introduce them to literature. For me, though, the memories of reading aloud to my children is central to my memories of fathering young children.

I read to our two oldest children, Kate and Sam, every day till they were about 8 or 9, using Jim Trelease's bibliography as a guide for choosing titles. Our youngest daughter, Ellen, however, got to hear a bit more. Since there wasn't another child waiting in the wings we just kept reading...and went on for another couple of years, I think. I don't remember dates or ages...it's good, I think that I spent so much time reading to them that I can't remember when it ended. I do remember that we ended with Tolkein...

Yesterday afternoon, after I had posted the entry about reading aloud I received an email from Ellen with the following subject:

A Dad and Daughter's 9-Year Reading Streak Finally Comes To An End

The email contained a link to an article which began...

Father and daughter Jim Brozina and Alice Ozma didn't intend to read together every night for nine years; it just happened. When Ozma was in fourth grade, her parents split up and she found herself spending more time with her father. Brozina was a children's librarian and chose to bond with his daughter by reading with her every night for 100 nights.

At the end of 100 nights, they kept going, until Brozina went off to college. More than 3,000 nights later.

Alice Ozma wrote a book, The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared, about her experiences being read to by her father. There's a link to Alice's web site, her blog, and a story on NPR from last weekend.

Take some time and read about Alice and her father...then, if you still have children at home, take some time and read to them. Start your own "streak" and read to them every day for the next 3000 days...

Below are the Twelve Benefits of Reading Books Out Loud to Children of all Ages from SixWise.com. We should move number 7 to the top and highlight it to include:

...closer family ties

...parental/child bonding

...lifelong memories of time spent together

The Twelve Benefits of Reading Books Out Loud to Children of all Ages

1. Build a lifelong interest in reading. "Getting kids actively involved in the process of reading, and having them interact with adults, is key to a lifelong interest in reading," said BeAnn Younker, principal at Battle Ground Middle School in Indiana.
2. Children whose parents read to them tend to become better readers and perform better in school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
3. Reading to kids helps them with language and speech development.
4. It expands kids' vocabulary and teaches children how to pronounce new words.
5. Reading to toddlers prepares them for school, during which they will need to listen to what is being said to them (similar to what they do while being read to).
6. Reading to older kids helps them understand grammar and correct sentence structure.
7. Kids and parents can use reading time as bonding time. It's an excellent opportunity for one-on-one communication, and it gives kids the attention they crave.
8. Being read to builds children's attention spans and helps them hone their listening skills.
9. Curiosity, creativity and imagination are all developed while being read to.
10. Being read to helps kids learn how to express themselves clearly and confidently.
11. Kids learn appropriate behavior when they're read to, and are exposed to new situations, making them more prepared when they encounter these situations in real life.
12. When read to, children are able to experience the rhythm and melody of language even before they can understand the spoken or printed word.

A Father's Day Reminder: Read Aloud to Your Children

I started teaching elementary school in 1976 and from my very first day as a teacher I read aloud to my students. I had caught the read aloud bug from Lowell Madden, one of my Education School Professors and had it reinforced by Jim Trelease, whose Read Aloud Handbook is a treasure of information for anyone who is interested in reading aloud to children.

From my first teaching day in Kindergarten at Coesse Elementary School in rural Whitley County Indiana, to the last day I taught in a general education classroom (also Kindergarten) at Harlan Elementary School I tried not to miss even one day of reading aloud to students. I read picture books, short novels and longer novels...I read at every grade I taught, Kindergarten through sixth grade. If there was a day during which I had to skip something I tried the best I could NOT to skip readaloud time. I'm sure there must have been a few days here and there in which I didn't read aloud to my class during my years of teaching in general education classrooms...but I can't remember any of them.

I read aloud to all my classes because I'm convinced that reading aloud is one of the best tools we have to help children learn to read. Reading is, arguably, the single most important skill a child learns in school.

Schools are organized around reading. It's the main focus of the early grades. Content in the higher grades is most often presented through text. In addition, children who are connected to the internet and mobile communications are inundated with text all day long. Gary Burton, the superintendent of Wayland Public Schools (MA) wrote in an article titled, Most Important Skill Child Needs to Learn...

For the past 500 years, no other skill even comes close to ensuring an individual’s success as this one very basic, very academic, and very essential lifelong skill. 

Jim Trelease, in The Read Aloud Handbook reminded us that

In 1985, the commission [on Reading, organized by the National Academy of Education and the National Institute of Education and funded under the U.S. Department of Education] issued its report, Becoming a Nation of Readers. Among its primary findings, two simple declarations rang loud and clear:

“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” [Emphasis added]

The commission found conclusive evidence to support reading aloud not only in the home but also in the classroom: “It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades.” 

In its wording—“the single most important activity”—the experts were saying reading aloud was more important than worksheets, homework, assessments, book reports, and flashcards. One of the cheapest, simplest, and oldest tools of teaching was being promoted as a better teaching tool than anything else in the home or classroom. What exactly is so powerful about something so simple you don’t even need a high school diploma in order to do it and how exactly does a person get better at reading? It boils down to a simple, two-part formula:

• The more you read, the better you get at it; the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.
• The more you read, the more you know; and the more you know, the smarter you grow.

Reading aloud to children is an activity that entertains...it strengthens personal bonds, it informs and explains...but, according to Trelease, when you read aloud to a child you also:

• Condition the child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure
• Create background knowledge
• Build vocabulary
• Provide a reading role model

Reading aloud is more beneficial than standardized tests or worksheets. It is more important than homework or flashcards. It is the single most important thing a parent can do to help their children become better readers. It is the single most important thing teachers can do to help their children become better readers.

Reading aloud brings you closer to your child...every day.

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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2011 Medley #4: Privatize, Poverty, Evaluations, Good Teachers

Duncan to America's Public Schools: Give Us What We Want Or You're Dead

cm, this is what I'm talking about...

The ticking (time bomb) mentioned in this is the fact that NCLB requires that all children be "average" by 2014. To prevent that, Duncan, the US DOE, greedy corporate "reformers", and states around the country are privatizing public education.

This is the deal being offered now by the Gates and Broad Foundations through their "dummied-down" stooge, Arne Duncan. Give your permission, public educators, for unlimited growth of segregated corporate welfare charter schools, sign up for evaluating your teachers to be deprofessionalized and evaluated by student test scores, pay the billionaire tech boys to stock you up with data systems for constant surveillance, monitoring and year-round testing, and dump your curriculum and instruction for the Bill Gates's national plan, and sure--Arne will come right down into your basement and make the ticking stop. Otherwise? Well, Arne knows how much you love your children and your job and your house.

Poverty=failure

References included

Studies show that American students from well-funded schools who come from middle-class families outscore students in nearly all other countries on international tests. Our average scores are less than spectacular because the US has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries (over 20%; in contrast, high-scoring Finland has less than 4%).

Poverty means inadequate nutrition, inadequate health care, exposure to environmental toxins, and little access to books, all of which are strongly associated with lower school performance. If all of our children had the same advantages middle class children have, our test scores would be at the top of the world.

New Report Offers Withering Critique of MA Plan to Evaluate Teachers Based on MCAS Scores

Evaluating teachers using tests scores will cost waste more money and use a scientifically invalid measurement for grading teachers.

• It will require districts to use MCAS test scores to judge educators.

• It will require districts to evaluate every teacher in every grade and subject with two “assessments” each academic year, forcing districts to make or purchase dozens of new tests at a time of budget cutbacks and teacher layoffs.

• It relies on pseudo-scientific “growth” or “value-added” measures that are unable to adequately distinguish good teachers from bad, according to a report from the National Research Council and studies by independent experts.

• It will increase pressure to teach to low-level tests and drive good teachers away from working where they are most needed; and

• It will damage the learning environment by forcing teachers to “compete” for high-scoring students instead of cooperating to improve learning for all.

Joel Klein vs. those status quo apologists

There is, however, no evidence that the gains observed in New York City outpaced what was observed over the same time-frame in other urban school districts that were not led by the current wave of reformers.

In other words, NAEP scores in reading and math rose just as much in districts led by “apologists for the failed status quo” as they did in the district with the greatest concentration of “reform talent” in the nation. Head-to-head with Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, the District of Columbia, Houston, Los Angeles and San Diego, in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math, New York City gained more on NAEP between 2003 and 2009 11% of the time; gained less on NAEP 28% of the time; and was statistically indistinguishable from the comparison city 61% of the time. This is not strong evidence that the package of reforms promoted by this new cadre of school leaders in New York City resulted in better outcomes for children than the reforms pursued in other districts.

The 12 qualities great teachers share

If you're a teacher you MUST read this. I hope it will make you feel good about what you do. Notice that "teaching to the test" and "data crunching" are not included on this excellent list.

So what makes a great teacher?

1) Passion for teaching...
2) Love of kids…
3) Love of their subject...
4) Understanding of the role of a school in a child’s life...
5) A willingness to change...
6) A work ethic that doesn’t quit...
7) A willingness to reflect...
8) Organization…
9) Understanding that being a “great teacher” is a constant struggle to always improve…
10) Enough ego to survive the hard days...
11) Enough humility to remember it’s not about you...
12) A willingness to work collaboratively...

Jazz, Basketball, and Teacher Decision-making

One of the most interesting articles I've read in a long time...what happens in a teacher's brain when he/she is teaching? How often do teachers have to change their behavior by making quick decisions about instruction? Think about how "scripted teaching" limits opportunities...

In short, teaching because it is a “opportunistic”–neither teacher nor students can say with confidence what exactly will happen next–requires “spontaneity and immediacy” (Jackson, p. 166, 152).

Effective teachers, then, like top jazz musicians and basketball rebounders improvise–decide on the spot–as they deal with both the routine and unexpected in the art of teaching.

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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