Mugging Indiana Part 2

I. STRIPPING RITZ OF POWER

Indiana Governor Mike Pence pretends to be conciliatory by dissolving CECI, his failed attempt at a duplicate education department. However, with that one step forward the Governor has taken two...or perhaps more...steps back.

First, Governor Pence will use his supermajority-rubber-stamp-legislature to do what Tony Bennett, CECI, and his minions on the State Board of Education (SBOE) could not do. He is going to remove the State Superintendent of Public Instruction from the position of chair of the SBOE. Defeating Superintendent Glenda Ritz has been his goal since they both took office in 2012. He and his partners in the legislature and the SBOE have spent the last two years trying various methods of overturning the votes of 1.3 millions citizens of Indiana. Now, with the legislature in his pocket, he can orchestrate removing her from her only position as chair of the SBOE.

In the end Glenda Ritz, who won election over the corrupt incumbent, Tony Bennett, will have only one of the 11 seats on the state board and will no longer carry any leverage as chairperson. The rest of the seats will belong to appointees of Bennett's pal, Mitch Daniels, and Governor Pence himself. Without Superintendent Ritz as chairperson defending public education, the privatizers, led by Elsener, will end all dissent on the board and fully join the governor and legislature in the process of privatizing public education in Indiana.

Pence's Board of Education overhaul wins backing

Pence announced Thursday that he would like to have his appointees to the State Board of Education select their own chairman, a move that places Democratic Schools Superintendent Glenda Ritz in danger of losing the chairmanship. Pence won the backing of House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro Tem David Long shortly after his announcement.

The only surprise here is that it took Governor Pence this long to figure out a way to scrub 1.3 million Hoosier votes.

After this final victory over the voters of Indiana the Governor will continue with his ALEC based plans...

II. CHARTERS

The Governor has called for -- and the Supermajority in the legislature will undoubtedly give him -- increased funding for charter schools in Indiana. The privately run charter schools, operating with little or no public oversight, will take tax money meant for public schools, and use it to enrich their shareholders and CEOs. Almost as an afterthought, they will hire minimally trained or inexperienced instructors to teach children whose neighborhood schools have been closed by the also-now-rubber-stamp-SBOE (See part V. below). Has the Governor checked to see how Indiana's charters are doing?

Results from Indiana and elsewhere around the country have shown that charter schools don't do a better job of teaching children than traditional public schools. They enrich shareholders and CEOs, use poorly trained or inexperienced personnel (aka cheaper) whenever possible, and do it all with public tax dollars. Charters have a habit of skimming the best students from traditional public schools (or dumping those lower achieving students who happen to sneak in somehow), so that the most expensive and most difficult to teach students remain in the now drastically underfunded public schools.

III. FREEDOM TO DESTROY THE TEACHING PROFESSION

The policy which the Governor named "Freedom to Teach" will allow schools to gain exemption from certain regulations in order to "innovate." The waivers will allow schools to "innovate" by hiring unqualified and unlicensed teachers, ignore the nearly eviscerated collective bargaining law for staff, and ignore other laws meant to protect employees and improve education. With lower staff salaries, more of our tax money will be funneled into the pockets of the businesses, their shareholders, and the CEOs running the schools...some of which will likely find its way back to the reelection coffers of the politicians who made it all possible.

IV. VOUCHERS

Like charter schools, vouchers don't improve education or save the state money. Vouchers are tax dollars which flow into church collection plates or corporate bank accounts. The Governor wants to open vouchers up to everyone...and increase yet again the amount of public money allotted for the privatization of Indiana's schools. Have vouchers saved the state money? Have they improved education?

V. TAKEOVER SCHOOLS

The now-supermajority SBOE, under direction from the Governor, will be able to take control of money coming from the federal government (privatizers as well) and use it to take over public schools and public school systems. Those schools would then likely be turned over to private corporations to function as charter schools...

...full circle.

DID BENNETT REALLY LOSE?

We, the voters of Indiana, did this to ourselves. Even though we elected Glenda Ritz, Indiana voters chose as governor Mike Pence who was clear in his quest for privatized education...and reelected the legislature's architects of the Daniels-Bennett plan for privatizing public education in the state.

Tony Bennett doesn't need to be in the Superintendent's chair for his plan to succeed in Indiana.

It's worth repeating. The Governor's plan for education is bad for children.

• Charter schools don't do any better than traditional public schools 1 2 3
• Vouchers do nothing to help public education or save money 1 2
• Testing isn't teaching and tests don't measure everything. They especially don't measure the success or failure of teachers and schools. The number one factor in low test scores is poverty 1 2 3
• Unions are not the cause of students' low achievement...and union teachers don't become teachers just for the high pay 1 2 3
• Experienced teachers are better than beginners 1
• Indiana schools are not, and never have been, failing. Poverty is the main cause of academic low achievement 1 2

It's not too late. The same legislators we elected in 2012 and 2014 can be told that a privatized education system is not what we want for the children of Indiana. If even half of Glenda Ritz's 2012 supporters contacted state legislators the response would be positive.

Click here to contact your state senators and representatives. Tell them to support PUBLIC schools, not privatization and the deprofessionalization of educators.

After you've written to your legislator, contact the legislators on the House Education Committee...and the Senate Education and Career Development Committee...and tell them the same thing.

We can't wait another two years to stop the Daniels-Bennett-Pence plan for privatization of Indiana's schools.

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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.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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Mugging Indiana

Governor Pence has decided to close down the divisive Center for Education and Career Innovation through the same executive decree he used to start it up. In his words,

Someone has to take the first step to restore trust and harmony,

For Governor Pence to claim the high road as the first to offer peace is like a mugger who seeks approval because he beat you up, stole your wallet, but was kind enough not to stab you in the neck.

For two years the Pence run state school board and the CECI have been bludgeoning Superintendent Ritz. Now he decides to be "conciliatory," knowing that he can get the rest of his agenda through legislative fiat. All he really needs, after all, is legislation which removes the State Superintendent of Public Instruction from the chairmanship of the state board...and eventually from having any influence over education in the state. Once Ritz loses her leverage as chair of the State Board of Education, she becomes just another member of the board which consists of ten members representing politicians and one representing "the people."

In his proposal, Governor Pence said,

We will propose adjust funding for public charter schools that will allow more communities in Indiana to offer more choices for families and their kids, and attract more investment for education innovation in Indiana — investment that frankly is currently going to other states. And, we will improve the largest school choice program in America by lifting the cap on the dollar amount for vouchers and supporting efforts to raise the cap on the choice scholarship tax credit program.

Charters in Indiana -- as elsewhere -- don't do a better job than traditional public schools. The nations most expansive voucher program sucks up tax money which should be used for public schools and it isn't saving the state any money as promised. It isn't improving education as promised. Education reform in Indiana is a simple redistribution of public money from the taxpayers' pockets to churches, edupreneurs and charlatans.

The governor could just has easily have said,

"We'll continue to do all the things we're doing which have no research basis in order to transfer tax money to our donors, destroy the teaching profession, crush those irritating teachers unions, and end the scourge of public education in Indiana once and for all. "

Charters, vouchers, merit pay...I would expect nothing less from this governor. I don't doubt that if you lift up the rock Pence and his friends are sitting on you'll find a nest of slugs and grubs with names like Walton, Gates, and ALEC.

Bosma and crew are correct. This is EXACTLY what the people of Indiana have chosen.

More:
Statement of Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz
Pence power grab aimed at Glenda Ritz

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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.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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Evaluate Harvard

Arne Duncan, while not a teacher, is a trained social scientist. He graduated magna cum laude in 1987 from Harvard with a degree in sociology.

Sociologists and other social scientists use tests in their work, so good social science preparation programs train their students in the basics of tests and measurements. It's necessary that they understand such concepts as...

VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY

Two of the most important concepts in testing are validity and reliability. Simply put, the validity of a test indicates the extent to which it actually measures what it claims to measure, and reliability is a measure of how consistent a test is. For example...

Validity Evidence

Construct Validity
Construct validity refers to the degree to which a test or other measure assesses the underlying theoretical construct it is supposed to measure (i.e., the test is measuring what it is purported to measure).

As an example, think about a general knowledge test of basic algebra. If a test is designed to assess knowledge of facts concerning rate, time, distance, and their interrelationship with one another, but test questions are phrased in long and complex reading passages, then perhaps reading skills are inadvertently being measured instead of factual knowledge of basic algebra.

A test, then, is invalid if it fails to test what it is supposed to test, if it actually tests something other than what it is supposed to test, or if it is used for something other than that for which it was intended. Psychologists wouldn't use a test of receptive language to measure IQ. Physicians wouldn't do a throat culture to determine if a bone was broken. Teachers wouldn't use a math test to measure spelling achievement. It is a misuse of a test to use it to measure something other than that for which it was intended.

As a trained social scientist Duncan should know this.

MISUSING ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

Why, then, has he been encouraging the misuse of standardized achievement tests?

White House Wants To Make Sure Schools Do A Much Better Job Of Preparing Future Teachers

"With these proposed regulations, the administration is moving to rate teacher preparation programs based partly on the test scores of the K-12 students of the graduates of the programs in question,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a statement. “By replicating the K-12 test-and-punish model ... the administration is simply checking a box instead of thoughtfully using regulations to help craft a sustainable solution that raises the bar for the teaching profession.”

To be fair, grading schools of education on their students' students' test scores (did you get that?) isn't the only way of evaluating a school of education being proposed by the Duncan Department of Education. It is, however, a use of tests which has no validity...just as grading teachers for evaluation on their students' test scores is invalid. Granted, the U.S. DOE doesn't come out and say that schools of education should be graded by students' students' test scores. Instead, the DOE...

...demands that emphasis be placed on teacher outcomes, such as employment, retention and success in the classroom. That could include evaluating training programs based on the test scores of K-12 students taught by their graduates, a model that provokes heated contention in the education community.

and states ought...

...to develop rating systems for teacher preparation programs that would track a range of measures, including the job placement and retention rates of graduates and the academic performance of their students.

Duncan's DOE doesn't say the states must use test scores to evaluate teachers and schools of education, but they use the common euphemisms for test scores. Phrases like "success in the classroom" and "the academic performance of their students" clearly call for using student test scores to measure teachers and the schools which train them. This is an incorrect use of standardized testing.

Student achievement tests aren't valid tools for evaluating teachers. Student achievement tests aren't valid tools for evaluating schools of education.

As a trained social scientist Duncan should know this.

HARVARD FAILED

During his college days Harvard should have trained Duncan in the correct use of tests. They apparently didn't.

I think that means that Harvard has failed in its preparation of social scientists and Harvard students shouldn't be allowed any federal grants.

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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!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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Random Quotes - December 2014

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

John Kuhn is a strong voice in the fight for public schools. He understands that public education is not just for parents and children who participate in the public school system...public education exists to enrich and preserve our nation, just like public parks, museums, roads, street lights, and water systems.




Bush: Nuanced and Wrong by Peter Greene

We all benefit from America's public schools. We should all contribute

School tax money is not a stipend paid to each individual child. It is an investment by the community in the community. I agree-- the feds should play a secondary, or even quaduciary role, in education. Particularly when federal ed policy is being dictated by the kind of anti-public-ed amateurs we've been subjected to for at least two administrations (and probably the next one, too). But local communities and, to a lesser extent, states should be hugely involved.

Choice and charters are, of course, all about cutting local control and community investment out of the picture. That is simply wrong, and bad for education as well. [emphasis added]

Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America by Bob Herbert

Bob Herbert has written the most important book of 2014.

Quoting a parent after the 2013 mass school closings in Chicago...

"...they're being scattered and displaced to other schools like they were pieces on a chessboard or in a Monopoly game. They're not Monopoly pieces. When all you see are numbers, when all you care about is data, then you won't understand that every child has different needs, speeds, and challenges. And you won't understand the importance of a school to a neighborhood and to the families in that neighborhood. It's just a building to you. You won't understand how we're anchored to these schools.

"It's cruel, you know. They like to tell people that they're offering us choice, but they're actually giving us ultimatums." [emphasis added]

Quoting Jessie Ramey (public education activist from Pennsylvania)...

It's not simply a case of greedy people. For an awful lot of them it's ideological. They're playing this game of education reform not because they're educators, not because they know anything about education, necessarily, but because they have an agenda. It might be political, or corporate, or anti-union, or they have an excessive belief in the wonders of technology, or they don't believe government can or should be running the schools. They have something to prove, and at the moment they're trying to prove it through education. They will all tell you that they genuinely care about the students. But when you look at what they're pushing, it's not good for kids. None of this corporate reform stuff has actually worked in practice and a lot of it is damaging, particularly for poor children and children of color.  [emphasis added]

and in summary...

Those who are genuinely interested in improving the quality of education for all American youngsters are faced with two fundamental questions: First, how long can school systems continue to pursue market-based reforms that have failed year after demoralizing year to improve the education of the nation's most disadvantaged children? And second, why should a small group of America's richest individuals, families, and foundations be allowed to exercise such overwhelming -- and often such toxic -- influence over the ways in which public school students are taught?

There is no reason why plutocratic school systems should be any more acceptable to a majority of Americans than plutocratic government in general.

No, America’s education system isn’t broken by John Staver (professor of Science Education and Chemistry in Purdue University’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction).

Today’s corporate education reformers use international test results to argue that American K-12 public schools are broken. Yet, research-based evidence calls into question such attacks on American public education. Analyses of students’ scores on two international assessments are not sufficient to provide thorough, sound, evidence-based insights about the status of American K-12 education. However, research has long identified a major problem for American K-12 education that remains at large. Its name is poverty. When will policy makers seriously engage and act to solve the problem of poverty? [emphasis added]

ELECTIONS

Record number of evil candidates elected. Teacher hating, school bashing, CCSS loving… by Ken Previti

Stop falling for the hold-your-nose, lesser-of-two-evils scam that is based in propaganda and corruption. Democrapublicans posing as whatever each brand used to be. Get active now!

Our children need you. Communities, teachers, and American public schools need you.

On Making Voting Harder by Lewis Black

Gerrymandered districts, voting restrictions, ID laws...

Elected officials shouldn't get to choose who gets to choose elected officials.

THE JOB OF TEACHING

Let's Talk About Teacher Retention, Not Tenure by Peter Greene

"Reformers" complain about "bad teachers" and then make the job of teaching less attractive by removing job benefits. Why complain about "bad teachers" and then lower the requirements needed to get a teachers' license? Why complain about "bad teachers" and then make it easier to hire 5 week trainees to replace veteran teachers? Why complain about "bad teachers" and then denigrate advanced degrees and experience?

It's not really about "bad teaching" at all, but rather about "busting the union" and running payrolls on the cheap.

...making teaching jobs crappier and less secure is not likely to get people to stick around.

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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!

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 201

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