Still Test-Crazy After All These Years

We were cleaning out some old books and found this cartoon stuck in one of them. It's from April 21, 2000. The title is If Mozart and Michelangelo Were Washington Students Today. [What's more amazing is that I found it online here.]

The message is no different today than it was 12 years ago...except now, with the over-focus on nonfiction of the Common (rotten-to-the) Core Standards, we should probably add a picture of Will Shakespeare in the corner writing on his parchment...

This is appropriate for the entire nation, not just the state of Washington, and just as important today as it was in 2000. We're still following the same foolish test-crazy path.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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What About the Students with "Pre-Existing Conditions?"

A Fox News medical contributor complained that doctors will resent being forced to cover people who don't take care of their health...people who are neglectful of their health or live unhealthy lifestyles. Dr. Marc Siegel said,

They are forcing me to cover all pre-existing conditions, which sounds great. Let’s take care of everybody’s pre-existing condition. You lie on the couch for 30 years, you never exercise, you gain weight, you eat all the wrong foods, you get diabetes and now you have Obamacare. But the fact is, doctors don’t have to play ball with it. If they are not paid enough they won’t play ball with it.

Doctors that don't have any other choice, that are new in the game, or haven't made the amount of money they need, or aren't well known, those doctors will be accepting Obamacare. The others will be accepting cash. That's a two tiered system...

Dr. Siegel seems to be saying that doctors will reject being forced to take certain patients...and patients who have enough money will be able to pay cash and will get good service, while others might not.

I wonder how that would sound if we swap doctors for educators and medicine for education. Let's rewrite Dr. Siegel's comments from a teacher's point of view...

They are forcing me to teach students of all backgrounds, which sounds great. Let's teach everyone's children. The children with no literacy in the home, whose parents don't (or can't) work with them, who are dropped in front of a TV for hours each day...and now you have public education.

Teachers who don't have any other choice, who are new, or who haven't got the seniority...those teachers will have to work with students who are the most difficult to educate, who need the most help. That's a two tiered system.

"...and now you have public education." Exactly! That's what public education is...every child is accepted. It doesn't matter what their background is, or who their parents are. It doesn't matter if they have had numerous literacy experiences during their infancy, toddlerhood and early childhood. Public education accepts everyone.

The two tiered system Dr. Siegel refers to is expanding in the education sector. Public funding for public education is being cut. Increasingly public funding is being diverted to corporate charters and to vouchers for private schools.

The education debate has been redefined. The community aspect of public education is being lost and public education is no longer a place where children learn to be good citizens. The democratic advantage of a publicly funded educated citizenry is no longer valued and we have, as a nation, become selfish. The selling of the public education system, which is proceeding at an alarming rate, reflects the competition of our "me-centered" society. "This is what I want...if you want something get your own." With fully funded public education we were "in this together." Now, it's "every man for himself."

Race to the Top is the educational opposite of the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't provide resources to those who need it most. Instead, it rewards selected states who agree to the DOE's educationally and statistically unsound practices like the misuse of testing and increased corporate charters despite research which shows that most charters are no better than most neighborhood public schools.

The privatization of American public education creates a two tiered system. Those who have the resources can provide a sound education for their children. As Mitt Romney said, American students should "get as much education as they can afford."

What about the students with "pre-existing conditions?" What about students with special needs, emotional and academic problems? What about the students who don't have a lot of money or haven't had a lot of experiences? What about the students whose parents are immigrants and don't speak English? What about students who don't have enough food or are homeless?

"As much education as they can afford" leaves a lot of students behind.

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By the way, you can hear for yourself what Dr. Siegel had to say, here.

Think Progress responded,

In reality, only a small minority of doctors in higher-income areas refuse to accept insurance. Most providers participate in Medicare and Medicaid and will continue to do so under the Affordable Care Act.

The law increases incentive payments for primary care physicians in Medicare, general surgeons in rural and underserved areas, and some mental health services. Primary care physicians in Medicaid will also receive a payment bump in 2013 and 2014. ACA also invests in preventive care and wellness initiative to encourage people to lead healthier life styles.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Don't Throw Your Hands Up and Walk Away

Mark Naison, Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University (also read HERE and HERE) recently posted this on Facebook:

There is a growing consensus among both political parties that our public schools must be reformed; there is no such consensus on reducing poverty, ending draconian drug laws, dismantling the prison industrial complex, raising the minimum wage or ending "stop and frisk" policing. There is no evidence that the school reform measures being proposed will have any impact in reducing racial and economic inequality or removing the police state atmosphere in working class and poor communities. It is a diversion, a distraction, or a smokescreen for profiteering and consolidation of privilege-take your pick.

One has to wonder how much could be accomplished if Gates, Broad, Walton, Duncan, et al focused their attention on ending the highest rate of child poverty in the developed world. Unfortunately, there's no profit to be made from ending poverty, improving people's lives, or saving public institutions.

Instead of thinking up ways to test kindergartners maybe the "reformers" could find ways to increase the number of students for whom a developmental early childhood education program is available.

Instead of closing public schools in city after city maybe the "reformers" could help public schools improve by providing resources instead of redirecting resources to privatizers.

Instead of shuffling students from one closing school to another thus further reducing their achievement and increasing the drop out rate, maybe the "reformers" could help provide stability to neighborhood schools with support for after school programs, day care, jobs, and community improvements.

Instead of blaming schools and teachers for "failing" maybe the "reformers" could focus on improving the social conditions which lead to failure.

The truth is, we don't have "failing schools." We have a "failing society."

How should we improve public education? Elizabeth Walters, a public school teacher in Louisiana suggests this...

It seems self-evident that one of the best ways to to improve public education would be to allocate more resources for public schools–to improve technology, to expand professional-development opportunities for teachers, to buy classroom supplies, up-to-date textbooks and all the other materials that come with a good education. Perhaps one of the best ways to improve public education would be to loosen the strictures that tie student and school evaluations to test preparation and instead to allow teachers to instruct students in the sort of project-based units supported by educational research and the sort of critical-thinking skills that cannot be measured by filling in bubbles–the sort of academic freedom that is praised in charter schools but restricted in traditional public schools.

Perhaps most importantly, one of the best ways to improve public education would be to work to alleviate those factors beyond teachers’ control that affect students’ ability to learn...unemployment, poverty, violence, crime rates, family instability, childhood hunger, access to health care.

That would be a good start.

In 2007 Candidate Barak Obama told us not to "label a school as failing one day and then throw your hands up and walk away from it the next." Why are we still walking away from America's public schools?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Coming Soon to a City Near You -- Part II*

City after city and, in the case of Louisiana, even states, are losing their public school system to privatization -- through corporate charters and vouchers. New Orleans (where Arne Duncan claimed that Katrina was the best thing that happened to education) and all of Louisiana, as well as Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago...and now...

Memphis

Memphis District to Lose $212 Million to Charter Schools by 2016

The story unfolding in Memphis around the consolidation of Memphis and Shelby County Schools gets more and more interesting. Today one of the Gates front men, Gary Shorb, published a plea in the Commercial-Appeal for all sides to come together to embrace what is essentially a resegregation merger plan written by the Gates Foundation and their political arm-twisting outfit, Stand On For Children (SFC). SFC has successfully led the anti-teacher, anti-child, and anti-parent fight for corporate education reform in Colorado, Ilinois, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. It is most interesting and the ultimate irony that the County Commission, which supports the "merger" plan, is now accusing outlying Shelby County towns of racism for planning to bail out on this corporate-sponsored apartheid plan for Memphis.

There are obvious conflicts of interest here...yet no one seems to notice or care. There is also the fact that the public school system is being removed from public control.

Theft of Public Education in Memphis
By 2016, a mere four years from now, enrollment in charter schools will increase from 4% to 19%. This will happen not because parents or students have asked to be assigned to charters but because the planners want it to happen (one guess as to who devised the plan).

This will result in a handover of $212 million of public funds to privately managed charter schools.

That is, $212 million will be removed from the budget of the public schools and transferred to charter schools whose governance is private and not subject to local, democratic control.

Cleveland

...and add Cleveland to the list, too. Cleveland is already home to America's oldest voucher plan in which millions of dollars each year are given to private schools. Research has shown that the achievement of the students in the privately run, but publicly funded schools is no better than the public schools.

Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich

The new law overrides the union's contract and discards previous board-union agreements governing teacher pay and layoffs, does away with tenure, lengthens the school day and year without accompanying compensation, evaluates and pays teachers based largely on student test scores, and pushes the biggest move yet towards privately managed charter schools along the lines of the Philadelphia model. The new law is also an affront to parents, requiring them to attend meetings under penalty of law. It will take badly-needed funds away from neighborhood public schools and line the pockets of politically connected consultants.

This is not a case of so-called "failing" public schools being improved by corporate intervention or of privately run schools doing a better job with the influx of public funds. This is simply a giveaway of the public schools by corporate and conservative interests. It's privatization of public schools for the sake of profit. America needs it's public schools...and we need them under public control and scrutiny, not run by the same people who gave us our current economy. If schools are broken, invest in them and fix them. Don't give them away.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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*Coming Soon to a City Near You, Part I dealt with the publication of teacher evaluations.