Make An Investment In Our Future

While Campbell Brown is leading the charge against the few "bad" teachers in the nation, which will make hiring and keeping qualified teachers more difficult...

While the U.S. Department of Education is pushing charter schools (among other things) which will remove public accountability from public schools...

While public schools are being closed, even against parental wishes (so-called "choice"), disrupting students and neighborhoods...

...poverty in the "world's richest nation" continues unchecked.

NATION

The Number Of Families Living On Virtually Nothing Has More Than Doubled Since The 1990s

The number of households who survive on $2 or less per person each day has increased by 159.1 percent since 1996, growing from about 636,000 to about 1.65 million by mid-2011, according to a new analysis from H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin in Stanford’s Pathways Magazine. Families living in this state of extreme poverty now make up 4.3 percent of all non-elderly families with children.

$2 a day for a family of four comes to about $3000 a year. Just for comparison, the federal poverty level for a family of four is about $25,000 a year.

STATE

Not just poverty, but homelessness, too. Right here in Indiana with the envious budget surplus, and the Governor who refuses to participate in medicaid expansion...

One State’s Homeless Student Population Grew By 121 Percent Since The Recession Started

The number of homeless students in Indiana schools has more than doubled since before the Great Recession, according to the Indianapolis Star, giving the Hoosier State the dubious distinction of having one of the largest jumps in student homelessness of any state over that period of time. Overall, student homelessness is up 121 percent in Indiana.
A total of 16,223 Indiana students were homeless in the 2012-13 academic year, the paper reports, compared to about 7,300 homeless students in 2006-07.

LOCAL

Poverty in our local (Fort Wayne) area is up, too.

Poverty reach spreads in Fort Wayne, Indiana

All area school districts have had increases in the number of students eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch, an indicator of low-income households, said Corona, a member of the Fort Wayne Community Schools board. About 70 percent of FWCS students qualify, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

The number of people in the nine counties served by the food bank in northeast Indiana has remained the same or dropped slightly in recent years, Corona said. Many are in the category of “food insecurity,” people “living on the good-natured ability of organizations like ours, families and friends to get them through week by week.”

EDUCATIONAL IMPACT

We know that poverty has an impact on student learning...

Test Scores, Students and Learning Our overall scores are unspectacular because of our high rate of child poverty.

Poverty means poor nutrition, inadequate health care and lack of access to books, among other things. All of these profoundly impact school performance.

This is compelling evidence that the problem is poverty, not teachers, teacher unions or schools of education. This is also compelling evidence that we should be protecting students from the effects of poverty, not investing in the Common Core.

Investing in Young Children

Across the U.S., large numbers of young children are affected by one or more risk factors that have been linked to academic failure and poor health. Chief among them is family economic hardship, which is consistently associated with negative outcomes in these two domains. [emphasis added]

Instead of blaming schools, teachers, and teachers unions for poor academic achievement, we need to invest in our children...

Only three advanced nations provide more resources for their rich children than their poor children. The U.S. is one of them.

That needs to change.

Meanwhile the top 1% control about 37% of the nation's wealth.

~~~

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.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Makin' Whoopi

MAYBE IT'S IGNORANCE

Ok, so Whoopi Goldberg is 1) either completely ignorant of what "tenure" means to a K-12 teacher or 2) she's been bought by the corporate "reformers" of television land.

Whoopi, for those of you who don't know yet...claims to love teachers (yes, her mother was a teacher), but hates "bad" teachers. So, since "bad" teachers are ruining it for everyone we need to support the legal fight against them and against "tenure" laws which give "lifetime employment" to "bad" teachers. Right? Not quite.

Ken Previti, over at Reclaim Reform, suggests that, instead of cursing her, we should educate her...

In defense of Whoopi Goldberg: She needs to be educated about due process.

Please email, tweet or otherwise contact Whoopi with the correct definition of tenure as you educate her about the scapegoating teachers are having inflicted upon them all across America. She needs massive amounts of our input; please help her understand.

This prompted a heated discussion on Diane Ravitch's blog entry, Ken Previti: In Defense of Whoopi Goldberg. It's a great discussion...have a look.

THE EDUCATION OF WHOOPI

I don't see any problem with trying to educate Whoopi Goldberg in the truth of K-12 tenure...as long as we don't expect it to make a difference.

See, Whoopi might be the "liberal voice" on The View, but that doesn't mean anything when it comes to public education issues.

Democrats, Liberals, and other fellow travelers

• When Barack Obama was running for President in 2008 a lot of us -- not knowing that he had his hands in corporate pockets -- assumed that he would come in and overthrow No Child Left Behind and usher in a new day in public education. Unfortunately, his promising words fizzled once he moved into the White House.

"Don't label a school as failing one day and then throw your hands up and walk away from it the next. Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test...You didn't devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do." -- Candidate Barack Obama talking to the NEA, Summer 2007

• Who remembers that Davis Guggenheim was the one who helped Al Gore blow the whistle on the corporate destruction of the environment?

• What about the Dems in Illinois? Check out Mike Klonsky's blog if you want to be informed about how the Democrats are treating public educators in the Land of Lincoln. And do I even have to mention the Democratic Mayor of Chicago?

• In Indiana, the last Democratic gubernatorial candidate was a DFER Reformer of the Month.

• How about NY Governor Cuomo -- Democrat, right? Let us also not forget that until 2001 Michael Bloomberg was a Democrat.

There is no guarantee that traditional friends of public education will support us...just because they call themselves Democrats or liberals. Just because Whoopi Goldberg is the "liberal voice" on her TV show doesn't mean that she will support public education the way we want her to.

Teach her the truth about tenure and due process...but don't hold your breath.


VERGARA

Immediately following the Vergara trial I entered into a discussion with a conservative friend -- like Whoopi, a child of a teacher who ought to know better -- and he continually tried to partisan-ise the whole issue.

Its funny the CTA is complaining about money when they just spent $2 million in the State Superintendent's race. They are also attacking Eli Broad, a life long Democrat.

Yeah, like Eli Broad is a "friend of public education."

...and later...

...One of reasons public education is not discussed now is that Republicans are from suburban/rural districts where their constituents believe they have good schools and they do not want to rock the boat; and the Democrats are mainly from urban areas where they do not want to take on the public teacher unions.

Again...blame the unions for bad teachers.

...and...

There are very little [sic] Republicans left in California; so these are mainly Democrats who are concerned about public education and the power of the CTA. Some schools are in such horrible shape, that the State passed a “Parent Trigger Law”, which allows 51% of parents with children attending a low performing school to sign a petition and force actions such as closing the school down completely, replacing the principal, firing 50% of the teachers, or converting it into a charter school.

His point was that "even the Democrats are in favor of busting the union and getting rid of tenure." Oh, and the parent trigger will solve all the problems of "public education."

The surprise was that I wasn't surprised that Democrats are into "school reform" up to their elbows. I think he was the one who was surprised that I didn't try to deny the Democrats involvement. He just assumed I was "one of them."

Here's an idea...and this is one for Whoopi, too (after all of us educate her):

How would it be if we held a meeting about "bad" teachers in which the local administration presented facts proving that the "bad" teachers were actually "bad." After all, we wouldn't want to accidentally fire the "good" teachers, would we? If an impartial observer agreed that the teachers were, indeed, "bad" then we fire them. Just like that! Problem solved.

~~~

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.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

2014 Medley #18

ISTEP, Privatization,
Texas, NASA

ISTEP OBSESSION

Indiana's big education news this week has been the release of the 2014 ISTEP scores. No surprises here...

Carmel-Clay and Zionsville public school corporations (Free and Reduced lunch populations under 10% and LEP under 5%) scored the highest.

Indianapolis Public Schools (Free and Reduced over 80% and LEP over 10%) and Gary (Free and Reduced over 80%) didn't fare so well.

The articles below (and most of the others I've seen) focus on the test scores, old standards, new standards, higher scores, lower scores, charter school scores, private school scores, and all are written with the underlining assumption that standardized tests are adequate measures of student achievement. They equate learning with test scores.

The insane focus on standardized test scores in the U.S. hasn't changed a bit since President Bush II signed No Child Left Behind into law surrounded by smiling suits filled with both Democrats and Republicans -- but no teachers.

In 2002 Alfie Kohn wrote about the mind-numbing, child-punishing testing regimen which permeates American education...

Standardized Testing: Separating Wheat Children from Chaff Children

Of all the chasms that separate one world from another, none is greater than the gap between the people who make policy and the people who suffer the consequences. There are those who reside comfortably on Mount Olympus, issuing edicts and rhetoric, and then there are those down on the ground who come to know the concrete reality behind the words...it’s the difference between important grown-ups who piously exhort us to hold our educational system “accountable” and a nine-year-old who has come to detest school because the days are now full of practice tests in place of projects and puzzles. Up there: people pounding the pulpits about the need for World-Class Standards. Down here: little kids weeping, big kids denied diplomas on the basis of a single exam score, wonderful teachers reduced to poring over the want ads...

And once you realize that the tests are unreliable indicators of quality, then what possible reason would there be to subject kids – usually African American and Latino kids -- to those mind-numbing, spirit-killing, regimented instructional programs that were designed principally to raise test scores? If your only argument in favor of such a program is that it improves results on deeply flawed tests, you haven’t offered any real argument at all. Knock out the artificial supports propping up “Success for All,” “Open Court,” “Reading Mastery,” and other prefabricated exercises in drilling kids to produce right answers (often without any understanding), and these programs will then collapse of their own dead weight.

ISTEP scores released, final year for old test

Carmel-Clay Schools once again scored the highest among school corporations...

Indianapolis Public Schools...51.6% of students passed both portions of the test

State releases ISTEP-Plus scores

The scores at EdisonLearning's Gary Roosevelt continue to falter. EdisonLearning is a private management company appointed by the state to operate the high school. The Indiana Department of Education graded the school an F in 2013.

IDOE releases 2013-14 ISTEP results

ISTEPs bring 'mixed bag' for Ind. charter schools

Carmel, Zionsville top Indiana's ISTEP scores

Middle schools at center of IPS testing woes


PRIVATIZATION

Privatization Watch is a great blog to watch. Public education isn't the only target of privatizers.

Here are some items from the last few weeks of Privatization Watch...

Fixing something that isn't working right makes sense. If public schools are "broken" (an assumption which I don't believe is true to the extent that privatizers do), then they should be fixed...not closed or sold to private corporations.

Rather than privatize, fix public schools

The solution should not be to outsource our children's education to institutions that care more about the bottom line or resist accountability. The solution should be to address and fix our problems, many of which were created by individuals and politicians who seek to privatize our schools and profit off our children.

Defend public schools.

The Public School Counterinsurgency Field Manual

A public school defender's tactics should certainly include conventional weapons, such as union organizing, protests, civil disobedience, legislative, electoral and judicial processes. But conventional weaponry alone cannot beat back an insurgency. School-based educators especially must focus on non-combative, ally-building approaches: tactics that foster personal connections between the local populous and their public schools.

Hedge fund managers, corporate shills, ALEC, and other private sources don't want the public to know that they are fostering the destruction of America's public education. "Corporations are people, too, my friends" is making it easy for billionaires and tax-freeloading corporations to buy up America's infrastructure.

Campbell Brown Won’t Say Who Is Funding Her School Privatizing Group

Using Brown’s logic no political contributions should be made public for fear that people will be criticized for funding candidates and initiatives others find objectionable. The rich and powerful should be able to buy elections and candidates freely – that’s none of the public’s business.

Rarely is the backwardness and venality of the movement to privatize public education made so obvious.

Private companies running charter schools is wrong. The idea behind public schools and public school boards is that public accountability is important. Luckily this group is being investigated.

FBI raided local charter school

FBI agents raided a Bond Hill charter school in June as part of an ongoing federal investigation into whether Horizon Science Academy Cincinnati, its sister schools in Ohio and two other states, and its management company outside Chicago had improper relationships with several technology vendors.

TEXAS TEXTBOOKS c. 2002

Textbook publishers don't publish different books for every state. Instead, they focus on the states with the largest markets and publish books that will sell there. Texas is one of the nation's biggest markets and the right wing faction of the state school board always makes it difficult for the rest of us.

In 2002, these folks decided that a free, public education is an entitlement, and is therefore unacceptable. One wonders if these folks want to start charging admission to public parks or libraries. The rabid anti-taxers don't believe that government has any purpose whatsoever...It's a selfish, anti-community attitude. According to them we're not "all in this together." Instead, it's "every man for himself." The social studies text books are up for revision this year. I don't doubt that the same sort of lunacy will prevail (Think I'm wrong? Take a gander at the Texas GOP platform for this year).

Ten Outrageous Changes Publishers Agreed to Make to Texas Social Studies Textbooks in 2002

A publisher agreed to delete “In the United States, everyone has a right to free public education” from a textbook after a critic argued that the sentence suggested education is an entitlement.

TIME TO DREAM AGAIN

Neil deGrasse Tyson...

Do You Know The Silly Reason Why America Put A Man On The Moon? Do You Know Why We Stopped Going?

"The NASA budget is four-tenths of one penny on a tax dollar." If I held up the tax dollar and I cut - horizontally into it - four tenths of one percent of it's width, it doesn't even get you into the ink. So I will not accept a statement that says, "we can't afford it."

Do you realize that the $850 billion dollar bank bailout - that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA? And so, when someone says, "We don't have enough money for this space probe." I'm asking, "No. It's not that you don't have enough money." It's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.

The home of tomorrow. The city of tomorrow. The transportation of tomorrow. All that ended in the 1970's. After we stopped going to the Moon, it all ended - We stopped dreaming.

~~~

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.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Teacher Shortages? No Surprise.

BLAMING TEACHERS

"Reformers" love to talk about "failing schools." In America, "failing schools" are most often schools filled with students who were born into poverty.

Test Scores, Students and Learning: Our overall scores are unspectacular because of our high rate of child poverty. (WSJ)

When researchers control for the effect of poverty, American scores on international tests are at the top of the world. Our overall scores are unspectacular because of our high rate of child poverty. The U.S. has the second highest level of child poverty among all 34 economically advanced countries. In some big city public school districts, the poverty rate is over 80%. Poverty means poor nutrition, inadequate health care and lack of access to books, among other things. All of these profoundly impact school performance.

This is compelling evidence that the problem is poverty, not teachers, teacher unions or schools of education. This is also compelling evidence that we should be protecting students from the effects of poverty, not investing in the Common Core.
Stephen Krashen

(See also David Berliner Responds to Economists Who Discount Role of Child Poverty)

So-called "failing schools" are closed only to be replaced with charters (which also, inevitably "fail"). Their staffs are fired or moved elsewhere. The disruption of students' lives is the political fallout of federal, state and local governments' inability to deal with poverty in their communities, i.e. "failing municipalities" in a "failing society."

Rather than attack the root cause of low achievement -- poverty -- politicians, and policy makers attack the invisible bogeyman of "bad" teachers. Teachers unions are blamed. The adults who teach and live with the students every day are blamed for the effects of poverty on learning and achievement.

"Reformers" force schools to fail by requiring higher test scores while providing less support for teachers and students. The "failing school" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the vulture-capitalists move in to take over, grabbing public dollars with no public oversight while they replace public schools.

TEACHER SHORTAGES

The pressure on teachers to help students pass "the test" is enormous and throughout the country teacher shortages are increasing.

In Indianapolis, 200 educators have left since the end of the last school year. They have either retired, quit or moved to other school systems.

IPS board member: 'Exodus' of teachers

"A lot of it is teachers are not feeling respected, they're feeling like people don't think they know what they're doing," Cornett said.

Of course they're not feeling respected. Despite any rhetoric to the contrary, politicians, pundits and policy makers are consistent in blaming teachers for all the ills facing public schools.

States like Indiana have elevated "the test" to the point where it is all that matters in a teacher's professional life. Teachers are paid based on how well their students do on "the test." Teachers' contract renewals are based on how well their students do on "the test."

Of course "the test" doesn't measure everything of value, but that doesn't matter. Teachers are being told what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach and then are blamed when that doesn't work.

Benefits for teachers have been targeted...incentives for becoming and remaining a teacher are disappearing through legislation and lawsuits. The advantage of being a career teacher is disappearing. The reward for having years of experience is disappearing. There's only "the test." Further, the Indiana legislature and State School Board have lowered the qualifications for becoming an educator. (How does that improve teaching and learning?)

The problem is not unique to Indiana. More and more states have made teaching less desirable and are now facing shortages of experienced teachers especially in high poverty areas.

"Lack of support" like "lack of respect" is common in America's schools. Through our political leaders and media moguls, we have insulted teachers for nearly 3 decades by refusing to include teachers in policy decisions and discussions, instead choosing to blame teachers for "failing schools" and removing benefits for career teachers.

"Reformers" and their political friends are apparently satisfied with "ed-temps" who will work for a few years and then quit and move on to other careers. Constant churn. Lower salaries. No pay incentive for longevity. No pensions. No career educators.

Is this what we want for our children? Is this what high performing nations do to improve their education systems? Is this what's best for the future of our democracy?

Southern Indiana schools rush to replace departing faculty

"You try to hire the best, it's sort of like a chess game when It comes to staffing.” Superintendent of Clark County Schools Andy Melin said, “You're just constantly trying to figure out what the next move needs to be always making sure the best people are in the best spots for our kids.”

Finding the best comes with competition. First year Principal Sara Porter says she still has three positions to fill at Pleasant Ridge Elementary and class starts next Thursday.

NATIONWIDE

The Teacher Dropout Crisis

"Roughly half a million U.S. teachers either move or leave the profession each year," reads a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group. And this kind of turnover comes at a steep cost, not only to students but to districts: up to $2.2 billion a year.

...Nearly 20 percent of teachers at high-poverty schools leave every year, a rate 50 percent higher than at more affluent schools. That's one of every five teachers, gone by next September.

...The report points to a variety of reasons for the turnover, including low salaries and a lack of support for many teachers. Which helps to explain why those most likely to quit are also the least experienced: 40 to 50 percent of new teachers leave within their first five years on the job.

Teachers in Demand Across the U.S.

• Arizona: Students head back to school and find teacher shortages

“We have a teacher shortage, and we’re trying to retain the best teachers we can get. And in order to do that, we have to have a competitive salary and give them working conditions that make them want to come back and teach,” said Chris Thomas with the Arizona School Boards Association.

• Florida: Approval of Critical Teacher Shortage Areas for 2014-15

• Illinois: Designated Teacher Shortage Areas

• Iowa: Teacher Shortage Areas

• Oklahoma: Oklahoma teacher need reaches crisis point

TEACHERS QUIT

“I’m Mad as Hell, and I’m Not Going to Take This Anymore!” The Real Reasons Why Teachers Stay or Quit the Profession

Make no mistake, if we don’t have a crisis with teaching already, we will have one in the next few years...you don’t get teachers to commit to reform, unless you make them a part of it. You also don’t endear them to you by blaming them in the media and constantly telling the American people they have failed, especially when they haven’t.

...our school district announces there will be fewer breaks and they will now ban recess so as to have more time for test prep, because they need to save the school from closing. PE is also on the chopping block. How do you respond, or do you say anything?

...You have angry parents who want you to quit teaching to the test, and they don’t want you administering the test to their child. They want you to stand up against testing. You don’t like the high-stakes tests either. How do you manage all the data collection when you want to be doing more meaningful work? How do you support parents and do what’s right for your students without losing your job?

...You have poor children in your class. Some you think might be homeless and others look sick. Your school lost its nurse a long time ago. Your school counselor is not readily available, if you have one. How do you help these children and also the child who has a severe toothache?

What defines an ‘ineffective’ teacher?

I am an effective teacher, despite what my principal, the observer from Central Office and the state may say. However, I am leaving a profession that ignores all data except test scores and very subjective evaluator scores.

~~~

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.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~