2011 Medley #11

Yet Another Committee About Education with no Teachers, Bill Gates, Miracle Schools, Assess Corporate America, Poverty, Preserving Public Education, Do Teachers Do Too Much? 

Who is missing from this lineup to evaluate Race to the Top?
By Valerie Strauss

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce just convened a group of prominent people in the education world to take a comprehensive look at the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative and its impact on school reform around the country...

Educators -- teachers, principals -- are missing from the group. Strauss asks...

But why ask them anything about school reform? What could people who work with kids every day know about what works and what doesn’t in reforming schools?

Nothing New about Teaching from Bill Gates
by Walt Gardner

One of the perks of being a billionaire is that anything you submit to a newspaper is definitely going to be published. No one has been more successful in this respect than Bill Gates opining about education. His latest essay, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal, was nothing more than a rehash of what others have proposed as a way of improving educational quality ("Grading the Teachers," Oct. 22). Yet Gates believes that he has broken new ground.

If You Believe in Miracles, Don't Read This
by Diane Ravitch

Yes, poor kids can learn and excel. But whether or not children are poor, education is a slow, incremental process. While it is true that a student may have a remarkable change in attitude and motivation and demonstrate large test-score gains in a short period of time, it is rare indeed when an entire school or district experiences a dramatic increase in test scores. Any huge change in scores for a school or a district in a short period of time ought to provoke skepticism and a demand for evidence, not a willing suspension of disbelief.

Teachers Want Corporate America Assessed
by Judy Rabin

The message was loud and clear -- it is time for educators to turn the table on the corporations and politicians and begin evaluating, measuring and assessing their performance. Here are some well-known statistics: 25 million people are out of work or underemployed, 50 million people have no access to health insurance and one in five children in the U.S. is living in poverty and four of every ten black children living in poverty. Everyone but the wealthy are corporate America's collateral damage

Why school reform can’t ignore poverty’s toll
by Valerie Strauss

The bottom line is that pushing school reforms that are obsessed with standardized test scores and do nothing to address the emotional, physical and social needs of needy children are bound to fail.

Why public education must be preserved

We owe it to future generations to preserve the ideals which have served our nation since its beginning. Our public schools have produced presidents, statesmen, scientists, sports and entertainment figures. We can’t let outside forces result in public education becoming a system of haves and have-nots. We must make sure that we remember what our Founding Fathers saw: that public education is essential to our country’s common good.

Do Teachers Do Too Much?

As soon as the phrase “for the students” or something similar to it gets tossed around, many teachers instantly bend...“You need to understand that your entire schedule has been rearranged because it’s what’s best for the students. Yes, I understand you’re now teaching three different subjects in six different rooms, but like I just said, it’s what’s best for students. End of discussion.”

One Child Every Five Hours

The Shame of a Nation is not just the title of Jonathan Kozol's 2005 book about the Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. It's the very real epidemic of child abuse that's taking place right now in the United States.

Think Progress...

A disturbing new report reveals that child abuse in the United States has reached “epidemic” levels, with one child dying every five hours from abuse or neglect. A recent congressional report estimates that some 2,500 children were killed as a result of maltreatment in 2009, and America has the worst child abuse record in the industrialized world.

The report, called America's child death shame, comes from the BBC.

Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada's and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year. Why is that?

Downward spiral

Part of the answer is that teen pregnancy, high-school dropout, violent crime, imprisonment, and poverty - factors associated with abuse and neglect - are generally much higher in the US.

Further, other rich nations have social policies that provide child care, universal health insurance, pre-school, parental leave and visiting nurses to virtually all in need.

In the US, when children are born into young families not prepared to receive them, local social safety nets may be frayed, or non-existent. As a result, they are unable to compensate for the household stress the child must endure.

In the most severe situations, there is a predictable downward spiral and a child dies. Some 75% of these children are under four, while nearly half are under one.

We pay the price for our stubborn refusal to provide for our citizens...with the lives of approximately 2000 children a year.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan get attention on the news. The number of dead soldiers elicits an outcry of compassion and frustration...as it should.

Where is the similar outrage for the deaths of thousands of children at the hands of the adults who are supposed to care for them?

A national strategy, led by our national government, needs to be developed and implemented. For a start, the Congress should adopt legislation that would create a National Commission to End Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities.

And no children's programmes should be on the chopping block, federal or state. Children did not crash the US economy. It is both shortsighted economic policy and morally wrong to make them pay the price for fixing it.

But instead as the US economy lags, child poverty soars, and states cut billions in children's services, we are further straining America's already weak safety net.

Inevitably, it means more children will die. The easy answer is to blame parents and already burdened child protection workers. But easy answers don't solve complex problems.

And with millions of children injured and thousands killed, this problem is large indeed, and it deserves a large response.

You should watch it all -- HERE and read about it HERE.

Oregon Crisis in Class Size

...from Parents Across America.

Class size crisis in Oregon: classes of forty or more

Focusing on Teachers

Teacher quality is the focus of the new, corporate "reformers." Outside influences on student achievement (poverty, native language, etc) are glossed over as "excuses" to defend poor teachers. "Bad teachers" teaching in "failing schools" are the problem.

Kelly Wu, a high school student from California, defends her teachers.

In the United States, teaching has one of the highest turnover rates for any profession, meaning that more teachers quit every year compared to other professions. This, according to the Alliance of Excellent Education, is costing our state governments an average of $4.5 billion yearly. The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future reports that every year, 16 percent of all teachers quit, compared to the national average of 2.7 percent per profession.

We've asked over and over again why anyone would choose to become a teacher given the low status, mediocre pay, difficult work and extreme stress caused by the corporate war against teachers and teachers' unions.

Those of us who have taught or are teaching, know why. We do it because we love children and love teaching. A quick perusal of OCCUPY EDUCATION: Reclaiming Our Voice in Education will give non-educators a pretty good idea of why teachers go into teaching. However, there is no denying that a huge number of people who become educators don't make it past their 5th year. The current anti-teacher atmosphere has a lot to do with the high turnover rate...that, and the difficulty of the job.

It's also costly to replace teachers. The new "Reformers" who want to get rid of veteran teachers and replace them with new teachers are doing so, not for the purpose of improving education, but to cash in on lower paid teachers. Unfortunately, it costs money to replace teachers.

E. D. Kain at Forbes Magazine, writes,

Estimates put the costs of teacher attrition at $7.3 billion a year. I find it hard to believe that policies geared toward keeping teachers around for only a few years would be good for students, teachers, or public schools. Already 46% of new teachers leave the profession within five years, and now reformers want to make it even less appealing for teachers to make teaching a career. This makes no sense. Whatever money is saved on benefits and higher veteran salaries is lost in recruitment, training, and other expenses associated with high turnover. Turnover is highest at the neediest schools.

It's not good for students, teachers or public schools. Schools need dedicated professionals with varied years of experience. Veterans help new teachers acclimate and are valuable as mentors and advisors. Young teachers infuse the profession with energy and creativity.

One of the reasons teachers unions are anathema to "reformers" is because they provide teachers with due process. Firing "bad teachers" is the main reform coming from the Michelle Rhees of the world. Defining "bad teachers" by way of student test scores makes the process simple. The only problem is that it's inadequate. It punishes the teachers who work with the neediest students.

Kain talks about firing "bad teachers:"

Bad teachers can be weeded out...before gaining tenure. School officials need to use this time window appropriately.

...tenure is to protect teachers from arbitrarily being fired. Teachers need protection from over-zealous bosses and ideological politicians. This is the same thinking behind seniority rules, which protect more expensive teachers (i.e. veterans) from being laid off due to budget cuts...If you take away pensions, job security, tenure, the ability to unionize, and basically all the other perks of teaching, what you’re left with is a very difficult job with no job security, mediocre benefits, and relatively low pay. This is not how you attract good people to a profession, or how you guarantee a good education experience for your children. Paying starting teachers more but making their long-term prospects in the career less certain is also wrong-headed. High turnover is not desirable for any business, teaching included.

The direction that the corporate "reformers" have taken America's public schools over the last decade is the wrong one. We need to break this status quo and get down to the business of supporting the neediest students socially as well as academically. Destroying teachers unions, firing teachers, and defunding public schools doesn't help anyone.