Happy Blogoversary to Me!

Today is the 6th Blogoversary of this blog.

Here are a dozen passages from the last 12 months with which I've given voice to the concerns I have about privatization, the de-professionalization of teaching and the destruction of public education.

There's also a 13th passage written by someone else...an expression of the frustration felt by teachers all over the country.

A Public Trust
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011

Parents have the right to demand that schools meet the needs of their children. Municipalities, however, have the obligation to improve the schools. The trend encouraged by the US DOE, which began with No Child Left Behind and continues unabated with Race to the Top, is to throw schools filled with struggling students away, not fix them. They close schools that are in difficulty, ship the students to other schools, open charter schools, and/or fire teachers and principals. None of those "solutions" deal with the core issues of failing schools. None have any research basis whatsoever. The vast majority of charter* schools don't perform better than the vast majority of regular public schools.

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It's No Stealth Campaign: Privatization is the Goal
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2011

The Friedmanesque obsession with privatizing everything in sight has already brought us high unemployment...and the highest national poverty levels in a generation. Do we want the same people who brought us the banking/Wall Street fiasco telling us what to do with our public schools?

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Lessons Learned: Kimberly's Story...continued
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2012

As educators we try to help our students grow, not just academically, but emotionally and personally. The most important moments in a student's school life are generally not when he or she gets an A in a course or on a test. Just like in "real life" the most important moments in school come when children are challenged. Developing a positive response to those challenges is more important than any test or grade.

The ability to face challenges is perhaps the most important skill we learn in life. Developing the courage to face obstacles can mean the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one. Courage is not the absence of fear...it doesn't mean you're not afraid. Courage means you face what life offers you despite the fear which threatens to immobilize you.

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2012 Medley #2: Obama on education in State of the Union address
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2012

If "teachers matter" why doesn't the President honor teachers by appointing a teacher as the Secretary of Education? He appointed a doctor as Surgeon General...an attorney as Attorney General...isn't the Department of Education important enough to warrant a professional as it's head?

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Retention in Grade as Child Abuse
SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2012

Until the United States is willing to provide the resources needed to educate all our children there will be those who fail and those who fall through the cracks. Since those children are, according to the research on retention, minorities, poor, and the hardest to educate, they get ignored by all those who don’t work with them specifically. Politicians like to pretend they don't exist...or that it's their own fault. They get the fewest resources, the least experienced teachers, and the most “teaching to the test.” Despite lip service from politicians, our nation’s children, unfortunately, aren’t a national priority.

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Democrats Sell out the Public Schools in Indiana
SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 2012

More testing...more teaching to the test...more basing teacher evaluations on test scores...more money for private schools...more corporate control over public money...more charter schools -- these are not reforms. These are gifts of our tax money to privatizers. They are tools for the removal of public oversight from public education. They are tools for the destruction of the single most important democratizing institution in our society -- the public schools.

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Desire to Learn or Need to Achieve?
MONDAY, JULY 30, 2012

The competitive, data driven madness of the current "race to the top" mentality of education, is robbing today's students of the joy of learning. Children are born with the desire to learn. They are natural wonderers...explorers...analysts. Our society's obsessive focus on "data" crushes the wonder and destroys the internal thirst for understanding. The desire to learn is replaced with the need to achieve.

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Facts About the Parent Trigger
MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012

The parent trigger is not about parental rights...or parental power. The parent trigger is a way for edupreneurs to take over public schools and reap a profit at public expense. It's not for the parents. It's not for the students...The parent trigger bills don't give parents more control. They give parents less control. They allow 51% of current school parents to give away the public school to a charter operator. What happens in two years if 51% of the parents want to take the school back for the public schools? The parent trigger bills don't allow for that. Once the schools have been converted they're stuck with what they get. No parental rights. No public oversight.

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Where are all the "bad" schools?
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2012

American students in schools with low poverty are among the highest achievers in the world. Are there schools which are failing or which need improvement? Of course. The schools most in need are in the same locations where government is failing...where politicians are failing...where our society is failing...

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Ravitch, Rhee and Rankings
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012

The American obsession with rankings and "being number one" has damaged public education. We have never been number one in academic tests yet we've managed to lead the world economically and scientifically (among other things) over the last half century. How is that possible?

Do we blame doctors and hospitals because the United States ranks 37th internationally in health care (behind such places as Luxembourg, Columbia, and Singapore) or 34th in infant mortality rates (which puts us behind Iceland, Slovenia and Cuba)?

We don't have a nation-wide problem with failing schools. What we have is a problem with the failure of our leaders to address the issues facing schools with high levels of poverty. It's time to end the privatization of public education and focus on supporting public schools.

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Reformers' Excuses
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Poverty is not destiny, but in the America of 2012 it's harder to move up the economic ladder than it's ever been. Saying poverty is not destiny is fine...but using it as an excuse to ignore the high levels of poverty in the country and to ignore poverty as a factor in school achievement is wrong...The so-called failure of American education is, in truth, the failure of America. What other nation would accept a poverty rate of almost a quarter of its children?

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 3
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

The teachers are demanding books on the first day of class...manageable class sizes...a well rounded curriculum including the arts...libraries for every school (would Emanuel choose to send his children to a school without a library?) and social workers to help children deal with the violence and the poverty in their lives. The fight is as much about children's working conditions as it is about the teachers' working conditions.

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Teacher Appreciation Week - A Slap in the Face
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012
by Corinne Driscoll from Syracuse NY

On every occasion possible, they talk about incompetent and ineffective teachers as if they are the norm instead of the rare exception. They create policies that tie teachers' hands, making it more and more difficult for them to be effective. They cut budgets, eliminate classroom positions, overload classrooms, remove supports, choose ineffective and downright useless instructional tools, set up barriers to providing academic assistance, and then very quickly stand up and point fingers at teachers, blaming them for every failure of American society, and washing their own hands of any blame.

*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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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 5

There's talk that the strike will end Friday...and hopefully the kids will be back in school on Monday. I don't know what the CTU had to give up...but...

I hope that they didn't give up fighting against using test scores to evaluate schools and teachers. We know that the tests are not valid for those purposes. The voices of the testing experts in Chicago, Georgia and all over the country have repeated over and over again that it's a misuse of the tests. My fear is that the facts won't matter and the privatizers are so eager to line their pockets with public money they don't care what they do. It doesn't matter who they hurt...children, teachers, principals...they just want the money.

I hope they didn't give up fighting for adequate educational services for their students. The 1% aren't satisfied with schools that have large class sizes, no libraries, lack of art, music and physical education. The rest of us shouldn't be satisfied with that either. All children, no matter what their parents' income, should be guaranteed a public school complete with the arts, books, and plenty of room to run and grow. Our nation's future adults deserve to have a chance...all of them.

I hope they didn't give up fighting for adequate social services for their students. How can we accept the levels of poverty in this country? What other nation would allow a fourth of all their children to live in poverty? We need to provide the services they need to survive.

I hope they didn't give up demanding reasonable class sizes. The average class size in private schools is 18...all children deserve that. We have become a nation of selfish misers, only thinking about our own...only thinking about today. Children, especially poor children and children who are not native English speakers, need more help...not less. I've taught classes of 37 and 38...there's no way to reach all the children. Someone is bound to get lost. The fewer students per class, especially in the younger grades, the better chance a child has.

I know they had to give up some things...I've been at the negotiations table...I know you have to give up some things you really don't want to give up...

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools

3. In CPS, 86% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The relationship between poverty and academics is well documented, but CPS pays little attention to ameliorating poverty’s effects. Poverty is rising in the city, and the percentage of students who are lunch-eligible does not capture the fact that many who were poor before are now even poorer. While CPS has a well-developed program to identify schools to be put on probation, closed, consolidated or turned-around, it does not have an equally robust program for supporting schools in trouble...

...Family income and wealth play a major role in students’ educational development. CTU recognizes that CPS cannot tackle all the housing, health, transportation, and employment inequities that intersect school issues and shape student’s performance in schools. However, as CPS students are 86% low-income and 87% African American or Latino, CPS has a moral and ethical responsibility to put school-level policies in place to mitigate racial and economic inequities.

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CTU chief: Deal likely today but classes may not resume until Monday

Thank you Chicago teachers for telling the world what America's teachers already know -- that our children are being cheated by "reformers" who don't know anything about education. Thank you for standing up and making someone listen.

Fran Feeley, 44, a librarian at Inter-American Magnet School, said he had "mixed-feelings" about the news. While Feeley doesn't want the strike to carry on, he said certain issues need to be addressed.

"I don't accept the idea that charter schools and vouchers and testing kids eight weeks a year is going to solve the problems facing the public schools," he said...

Christopher Barker said he too is ready to be back in the classroom. “I feel like everything has slid a week back,” he said.

Barker, who teaches math and humanities at George Manierre Elementary School, said he needs to finish evaluating his new students, call parents and build his student library.

One of the first things on the agenda, however, will be talking to his students about what the strike meant. “Is there anywhere that you go in life when you do have to speak up for yourself when there’s a perceived injustice?”

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A Chicago Teacher Writes: The Joy of Finally Fighting Back
By Anthony Cody on September 13, 2012 11:06 AM

Guest post by Katie Osgood.

There is jubilation on the streets of Chicago.

When the teachers of Chicago rise up, they are not defending politics or ideology, they are speaking for actual human beings. They are crying out for the child who could not get appropriate special education services due to lack of staff. They are speaking for the many kids being punished, held back, treated like failures by the cruel standardized tests. They are saying "no" to the truly outrageous class sizes which prevent too many of their most fragile students from getting that individualized attention they deserve. They are begging the district to hire more of the support staff like social workers, nurses, and counselors their students desperately need. They are exposing a system that views students who struggle as liabilities and schools as places of cutthroat competition.

Chicago's teachers are saying "no more". I thank them, and the parents and students, for their sacrifice. The joy of people power is infectious. I hope it spreads.

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I Ruined Everything (& Why It Was More Work Than You Thought) @INTERNETTAXTROLLS

The media doesn't really tell the story...comments on blogs and news articles reflect the hate and anger that people direct towards teachers. It's born of a jealousy...perhaps because teachers love their work...perhaps because teachers have organizations to help them.

This is not a new article, but it's an answer to all those haters.

So do it. Reduce my pension. Make me poor, since I don't qualify for Social Security. Make my medicine unaffordable. Make my raise contingent upon proof that my art lessons somehow improved state math scores. Continue firing at my feet to see how long you can make me dance. It still won't change the fact that life did not work out as you planned and you're now a bitter little turd. AND I will STILL...love my job, because I am rocking this for all the right reasons. After you take every tool and incentive and support away from me, and millions like me, you won't suddenly have anything great that you don't already have. And then you will be terribly disappointed to find out that this isn't a scam after all. Whether decorated or destroyed, inside every school we run on something you can't legislate, isolate, measure or destroy. Much to your inarticulate all caps despair.

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Letter from CTU President Karen Lewis: ‘Students Suffer in Low-Performing Charter Schools’

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is so cash-strapped that it plans to close and consolidate under-utilized schools, with rumors that it could be upwards of 120 schools this coming year. Many people would consider this to be fiscally prudent. Mayor Emanuel is of course going to blame the soon-to-be agreed upon new union contract.

What the public does not understand, however, even though both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times have been writing about it for months, is that CPS is also simultaneously planning to open 60 new charter schools in the next few years. That decision was made last year under the “Gates Compact” in which CPS went into an agreement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase charter schools in Chicago.

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Standardized test scores are worst way to evaluate teachers

The way that CPS plans to use test scores in teacher evaluation, referred to as value-added, is so incredibly flawed that almost no one with a knowledge base in this area thinks it’s a good idea.

The National Research Council wrote a letter to the Obama administration warning against including value-added in Race to the Top federal grant program because of a lack of research support. The Educational Testing Service, an organization that stands to benefit tremendously from any expansion of testing, issued a report concluding that value-added is improper test use.

These are the people who know the statistics, and none of them thinks the models work.

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Unions Are Necessary to Rebuilding Our Middle Class

Last year the middle class received the smallest share of the nation’s income since these data were first reported, according to U.S. Census Bureau numbers released today. The middle 60 percent of households received only 45.7 percent of the nation’s income in 2011, down from the historical peak of 53.2 percent in 1968.

The declining share of income received by the nation’s middle class has been driven by stagnant incomes for middle-class earners coupled with rapidly rising incomes for the highest earners...And then there is another often overlooked dynamic: the decline of labor unions.

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Melting the Rubber Stamp: Chicago’s Unelected Board of Education

The seven members of Chicago’s Board of Education, along with CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, are, in theory, responsible for the governance of the city’s schools. In reality, they are only accountable to the man that appointed them—Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

As anyone who has ever witnessed a board hearing knows, members like Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker and former Northwestern President Henry Bienen, when they bother to show up at all, nod indifferently to public testimony, toy with their smart phones, and reliably vote in the interests of their boss. This past winter, after the board voted unanimously to close or turnaround 17 schools, frustrated parents burst into tears, and community members chanted “Rubber Stamp!” until CPS security escorted them out of the room.

Unwilling to accept such belligerent disregard for community input, education organizers and activists have launched a campaign for an elected, representative school board. Communities Organized for Democracy in Education (CODE), a coalition of education groups, circulated petitions this summer to put the question to Chicagoans in an advisory referendum: should the Board of Education be elected instead of appointed by the mayor?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 4

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools

This is what the Chicago Teachers are fighting for. It still takes my breath away to hear that there are more than 150 elementary schools in Chicago without a library. [I remember my elementary school when I was growing up in Chicago. Our principal, Benjamin Elkin, was a children's author. Do you think he would have allowed his school to be without a library?]

Read the CTU's whole booklet.

2. Educate The Whole Child. Invest to ensure that all schools have recess and physical education equipment, healthy food offerings, and classes in art, theater, dance, and music in every school. Offer world languages and a variety of subject choices. Provide every school with a library and assign the commensurate number of librarians to staff them.

At the private and selective-enrollment University of Chicago Laboratory School, elementary students have classes in art, music, physical education and world languages several times a week, as well as language arts, social studies, mathematics and science daily. At private and selective-enrollment Francis Parker School, students from 3rd to 12th grade participate in a program called “Morning Ex” (for “Exercise”) three times a week. This program provides students the opportunity to plan and carry out a variety of activities, including teach-ins, sharing of class projects, dramatic performances, outside speakers, and other enriching activities.

In CPS, on the other hand, many elementary students have limited access to physical education, arts education (music, drama, art, dance, choir, band, etc.), library/media instruction, science laboratories, or computer science. Few CPS schools provide world language classes and 160 CPS elementary schools do not even have libraries. Although access to libraries and books can mitigate the impact of poverty on achievement, CPS denies this vital resource to some of its students who need it most.

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Stand Against Rahm! The Chicago Teachers' Strike Is the Next Chapter in the Fight Against Plutocracy

Those of you who hate teachers and teachers unions: If your boss told you to add 2 more hours to your work day without an increase in pay would you just quietly accept it? What if you already volunteered extra hours every day, on weekends and during vacations?

Overwhelmingly, Chicago’s teachers support lengthening the day, which is the shortest of any major district in the country. Just not the way Rahm wanted to ram it down their throats: 20 percent more work; 2 percent more pay.

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Their Fight is Our Fight

At my school, I looked at the calendar for the year, and there are about 15 days where students are being tested on standardized tests. These tests are not designed to help the students. Many of these tests are designed because of No Child Left Behind to measure the school. And now, because of Race to the Top and these new reforms, now these tests are being used to measure teacher performance. So what does that mean? It means that rather than planning rich-inquiry, interesting lessons for our students, we have to focus on very specific tested standards in a very narrow way...

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Chicago Reminds Us Why we have Unions

Teachers in Chicago have done their homework. They did not just decide to strike this month. They have laid the groundwork, in a way that should be studied by others around the country. They have made it clear what they are fighting for, and done tremendous work with parents and in the community to build support. While the media has been critical of the union, public support remains strong, with 47% of voters in support, and only 39% in opposition.

This support was hard-won. Teachers in Chicago have been working for several years to build an understanding of what the schools there need. They have presented their OWN vision of reform. In February of this year, they released this report, The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve.

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Unions aren’t the enemy, and teachers shouldn’t back down, either

If organized labor is at the heart of the problem, though, why are outcomes in different areas of the country no different whether teachers are unionized or not?

...And let’s not forget why we have teachers unions in the first place: It’s because in the not-so-great old days, mostly female teachers had no recourse when they were fired for no good reason, or were otherwise treated unfairly.

...Teachers in Chicago have decided they won’t back down at an inconvenient time for the president, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. If we really wanted to improve schools, we’d do what education powerhouse Finland does — fund schools equally, value teachers more, and administer standardized testing almost never.

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The Worst Teacher in Chicago

It's the money.

A veteran teacher was "no good" when she was in the public schools at the top of the salary scale...she got fired (so much for the myth that you can't fire teachers). She was rehired at slightly more than half her salary by a local charter school...where she was hailed as "an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field."

Is it improvement that "reformers" want? or is it union-busting and profits?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 3

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools

The first item in the Chicago Teachers Union report is about class size. Research has shown that class size is especially important in the early grades.

1. Recognize That Class Size Matters. Drastically reduce class size. We currently have one of the largest class sizes in the state. This greatly inhibits the ability of our students to learn and thrive.

Outside of Chicago and within private schools, class size is monitored and small classes are prioritized. For example, in the Matteson School District southwest of Chicago, the average class sizes per grade for elementary and high school are between 16 and 23, with most classes below 20. Compared to CPS, 15% more students meet or exceed Illinois standards in Matteson. At Chicago’s well-regarded Francis Parker School, class sizes reflect the national private school average of 18 students, but high school classes are often smaller. If smaller classes are good for private and suburban students, why are they not a priority for our children?

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Got a red shirt?
Brian Jones is one of the teachers prominent in The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.

Does this mean we now have a national movement of teachers united in a collective struggle to defend and improve public education? Not quite. Where teachers already have large organizations — their unions — they rely on them to defend their interests. The problem is that those unions have, by and large, conceded much of the ideological terrain to the billionaire privatizers.

Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, says he wants a longer school day, for example. The CTU has responded, effectively: “No, we want a BETTER school day!” The CTU...demands that funding be restored to the arts, sciences, physical education, counseling, and smaller class sizes. Their research document, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve is a must read.

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Messages of Solidarity: We Stand with the CTU

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Chicago’s school shadow

Evaluations tied to student test performance, class size, job security and more are at the heart of the Chicago dispute and at the center of a national education debate. Are teachers professionals who know the needs of their students and deserve the respect and compensation afforded to professionals? Or are they public workers who can be easily replaced?

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Randi Weingarten: Treat teachers as equal partners

The issues that teachers are fighting for go to the heart of improving Chicago's public schools. Chicago has had 15 years of mayoral control, and it hasn't helped improve our schools. Today, 42% of neighborhood elementary schools are not funded for a full-time art or music teacher; 160 Chicago elementary schools don't have libraries. Teachers report classes of more than 43 students and not even enough chairs for them all. And teachers often lack textbooks and other materials up to six weeks after the start of school.

Chicago teachers are calling for a better day, not just a longer day, by investing in art, music and libraries. They are calling for smaller class sizes, investments in neighborhood schools and health care, social workers, meal services and additional services for students.

They want to focus on teaching and learning, and have legitimately objected to the district's fixation on high-stakes testing that is narrowing the curriculum and being used to sanction teachers. And they are calling for a fair evaluation process and additional professional development to help all teachers improve.

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Chicago Teachers Push Back Against Neoliberal Education Reform

I can sense a pattern in these articles. They're all talking about what's really important...the education of the children. Here it is again...social services, libraries, a well rounded curriculum...

...educators are fired up to fight for wraparound services for students, with more school social workers, counselors and psychologists; a holistic educational environment where all students have access to school libraries, world languages, art, music, physical education; and the preservation of the tenure system—because good teachers are made through experience in the classroom.

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National Schools Debate Is on Display in Chicago

...and then we come to the New York Times. It's true that, as the Times says, the teacher evaluation system in Chicago is one of the focuses of the strike. There are questions which need to be answered. Do standardized tests reflect what the students have learned or do they reflect where the students live, the amount of income their parents bring home, the violence outside the students' windows at home, whether or not the students even have a home, or the lack of health care in the students' lives? Are those same standardized tests appropriate tools with which to measure a teacher's ability to teach?

The article frames this as a "traditional labor fight over pay, benefits and working conditions." That's correct to a point. Both sides have said that they are close on pay disputes. Benefits are still an issue. It's the demands about working conditions, however, which are not at all "traditional." The teachers are demanding books on the first day of class...manageable class sizes...a well rounded curriculum including the arts...libraries for every school (would Emanuel choose to send his children to a school without a library?) and social workers to help children deal with the violence and the poverty in their lives. The fight is as much about children's working conditions as it is about the teachers' working conditions.

What started here as a traditional labor fight over pay, benefits and working conditions has exploded into a dramatic illustration of the national debate over how public school districts should rate teachers.

At stake are profound policy questions about how teachers should be granted tenure, promoted or fired, as well as the place standardized tests will have in the lives of elementary and high school students.

One of the main sticking points in the negotiations here between the teachers union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a new teacher evaluation system that gives significant and increasing weight to student performance on standardized tests. Personnel decisions would be based on those evaluations.

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Report calls for more teacher training, limiting use of test scores

This article is not directly about the CTU strike, however it speaks to the issue of how much weight should be given to standardized tests This task force rejected using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

The state needs to focus on recruiting, educating and retaining teachers if it wants to improve student academic performance, a state task force has concluded. Recent budget cuts, however, have pushed the state in the opposite direction, according to the task force's report, which was released Monday.

The advisory task force, which was brought together by state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, also rejected making any link between students' standardized test scores and teachers' performance evaluations.

The report said,

...leading research organizations have counseled against the use of VAM for high-stakes decisions about teachers. The National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment concluded that: “VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness ... should not be used to make operational decisions because such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable.”

It didn't say use test scores for 30% of a teacher's evaluation...or 40%...or 50%. It said that tests should not be used for teacher evaluation. Period.

The entire report can be read HERE

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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