Testing is distorting reported "reform"

This is a report on testing problems in NYC.  The NYC reform effort, led by Joel Klein, is one of a few who make up the media preferred definition of reform.  See posts below.

On New York School Tests, Warning Signs Ignored

By JENNIFER MEDINA from New York Times.

When New York State made its standardized English and math tests tougher to pass this year, causing proficiency rates to plummet, it said it was relying on a new analysis showing that the tests had become too easy and that score inflation was rampant.

But evidence had been mounting for some time that the state’s tests, which have formed the basis of almost every school reform effort of the past decade, had serious flaws.

The fast rise and even faster fall of New York’s passing rates resulted from the effect of policies, decisions and missed red flags that stretched back more than 10 years and were laid out in correspondence and in interviews with city and state education officials, administrators and testing experts.

The process involved direct warnings from experts that went unheeded by the state, and a city administration that trumpeted gains in student performance despite its own reservations about how reliably the test gauged future student success.

Fact based and perspective challenges to Waiting for Superman

I have posted here several critiques of  the film, “Waiting for Superman,” so I do not need to repeat these criticisms.  The most fact based criticism is here What Superman got wrong. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html

My goal in the following is to share my own reaction to the film. First, it is an important film and I encourage people to see it.  It illustrates to a rather uninformed public and an often poorly informed press   several of the important issues including the budget crisis in schools and the importance of having quality teachers. 

Second. The film makes two glaring claims that were assertions by anti union advocates  when the film was made and now are wrong.  The film claims that the teachers union leadership in Washington D.C. would not allow the Michele Rhee offered contract to come to a vote.  In fact, since the film was made, the contract was submitted to a vote and it passed.  That is Rhee got the contract she wanted- which the film claims was made impossible by union obstruction.  Also, the film supports its claim that incompetent teachers are difficult to remove by citing the extreme case of the New York City room, called by the press the “rubber room.”  It is a compelling story.  However, the so called “rubber room was eliminated last year by the very union contract which the film makers claim was protecting incompetent teachers.

States lay off 58,000 teachers

State and local governments laid off nearly 58,000 teachers and other education workers in September, the government announced on Friday. The layoffs happened even though some have said the $26 billion bill passed by Congress in August was nothing but a sop for teacher unions.

Progressive economists said Friday that the layoffs would have been much worse without the aid, $10 billion of which was expressly allotted to prevent teacher layoffs.

"Back in the spring when they made their budgets, states assumed they were getting the aid in a lot of instances," said Ed Muir, a researcher with the American Federation of Teachers. "If you unpack the state budgets, more than half of that money was already assumed layered into state budgets. So that money saves jobs but you don't see it."

The California budget crisis

What caused this  budget crisis?

The proposed state budget takes 3.1 billion from k-12 schools, closes parks, forces state worker furlough’s and more.  County and city budget cuts reduce our police protection, cause limits on fire protection, and close mental health facilities pushing some of the mentally ill into jails and prisoners out of our jails early  on to the streets.

While  state budget reforms are needed, the basic cause of this crisis is the economic crisis in the nation.

 Crisis in the states.

The current  economic crisis has forced the cutting of higher education, of k-12 education, and of social welfare systems.  This crisis was caused by the greed and avarice of the financial class and aided by the politicians of both major political parties.

First came the housing bubble and the selling of near fraudulent home mortgages.  To make a profit m ajor banks and corporations looted the economy creating an international meltdown.  Now, they have been rewarded with bail out money.  The crisis was not caused by students, teachers, public employees  nor recipients of social security.   Now we have cuts in parks,  in universities, in nurses, libraries.  School children did not create this crisis.

The state budget stall

This morning the state budget waits to be passed. Three Senators are holding up the passage, imposing more pain on working people, state vendors, and the schools. Why does this happen?
Because California has a 2/3 rule to pass a budget. This 2/3 rule can be ended by voting for Proposition 25 in the November election.
At present a small minority of legislators hold up the budget. It takes as few as 8 Senators. The 8 at present are usually  Republicans. They can do this because of the requirement for a 2/3 vote to pass the budget. They cause millions to lose their jobs and to face layoffs. Proposition 25 will lower the requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds ( 67 percent) to a majority ( more than 50 percent) vote of each house. Only 3 states in the U.S. have this 2/3 rule. The effect of the rule is to promote minority rule. Passing Prop. 25 is one step toward essential budget reform in California.
Update. The budget finally passed this AM.

Comparing the budget plans

The California Budget Project has an analysis of the proposed budget.
here. http://www.cbp.org/pdfs/2010/100618_Budget_Comparision.pdf

Teachers' Unions as an agent of school reform

Baltimore teachers union is the hero, not a villain

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

After that, the new Davis Guggenheim movie "Waiting for Superman," which merely asserts that teachers unions are to blame for the deficiencies in American education, is almost a letdown.

 In the world of "Waiting for Superman," every public school is a disaster, every charter school is a rigorous (but nurturing) little Harvard or Oxford, and the blame for the plight of public schools and the paucity of charter schools can be laid entirely on the unions' doorsteps. You'd never know from the film that charter schools produce test results that aren't any better than those of public schools, or that the teachers at a number of charter schools -- including charter schools that do produce high test results -- are, horror of horrors, unionized.

Still, the narrative that education reformers and teachers unions are eternal and implacable enemies is a hardy one, and one that Washingtonians in particular may well believe after four years of pitched battle between Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the D.C. teachers union. The intensity of the local battle might blind them to the experience of cities where the school district and the union have jointly embraced a reform agenda, even including a version of merit pay. And yet, such an agreement -- an impossibility, if we are to believe the conventional narrative -- was reached just two weeks ago in the faraway city of Baltimore.

Bill Gates et al and Waiting for Superman

            When Generosity Hurts: Bill Gates, Public School Teachers and the Politics of Humiliation

Tuesday 05 October 2010

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

So-called reformers such as Michelle Rhee, who took over the District of Columbia public schools three years ago, have become iconic symbols for enacting educational policies based on a mix of market incentives such as paying students for good grades, merit pay for teachers and firing teachers en masse who do not measure up to narrow and often discredited empirically based performance measures.(18) Reform in this case is driven by a slash-and-burn management system that relies more on punishment than critical analysis, teacher and student support and social development. The hedge fund managers, billionaire industrialists and corporate vultures backing such policies appear to view teachers, unions and public schools as an unfortunate, if not threatening remnant, of the social state, and days long past when social investments in the public good and young people actually mattered and public values were the defining feature of the educational system, however flawed. This hatred of public values, public services, public schools and teachers is only intensified by a wider culture of cruelty that has gripped American society.

Read the entire post here:

http://www.truth-out.org/when-generosity-hurts-bill-gates-public-school-teachers-and-politics-humiliation63868

Clean up the California budget mess

 The budget resolution being hammered out at the Capitol could have been completed and signed by July 1,2010. They are negotiating how schools will be repaid for past spending cuts- a Prop. 98 requirement, and how to deal with the 2.1 billion dollar tax  giveaway to the corporations last year.

This deal was not completed earlier because the two sides; Republicans and Democrats refused to compromise, and because of the 2/3 requirement to pass a budget which allowed the minority party (the Republicans) to block passage of any reasonable tax increase and to insist on harsh budget cuts.

Irrespective of how you support or do not support these tax devices, the 2/3 vote rule imposes minority rule on the legislature and produces these stalled budgets. Prop. 25 would eliminate the 2/3 vote rule for the budget.

Without the ability of a minority party to hold the budget hostage, the Democrats would have passed a budget in June, and the Republican governor would have used his line item veto to eliminate many programs.  At present the Governor is holding out for a deal that would cut pensions for state workers.  Only a 2/3 vote could overturn the line item vetoes.   We would be in the place we are now, but we would have been there in July.

I urge all to vote Yes and Prop. 25 and stop this minority rule.  It does not serve the people of California.  The majority should make decisions and should be held accountable.

I urge you to vote Yes on Prop 24.  This would take away the tax windfall given to several corporations in the budget negotiations last year.  The Republicans insisted on a tax windfall to large corporations  to get the needed 2/3 vote.

It is past time to fix the budget mess. Vote Yes on Prop. 25.

Duane Campbell

This message has not been approved by the Sacramento Bee. 

Union leaders, Teachers, at the One Nation Rally

Wisconsin University Students ready to roll and vote

This blog is no longer on Sacramento Connect

This blog is no longer connected to Sacramento Connect, the blog roll of the Sacramento Bee.  Here is an explanation of why.

I attended an interesting talk on Sept. 23 by Barry Lynn, author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction. (2010)  He discussed many roles of monopolies in our society.

Among the most dangerous   roles is the monopoly, or the quasi monopoly on information.  In a republic, the citizens need several sources of information from multiple viewpoints in order to make citizens decisions.  Adding sources of information is precisely the purpose of this blog.

The Sacramento Bee is a near monopoly that gathers information in order to make a profit.  The purpose of the Bee is to make a profit.  To be on Sacramento Connect, you get listed by the Bee and they place ads on your blog.  They receive money from these ads.

Charter schools and school reform

  Charter Schools.

 Charters  are  usually public schools using public money  but without the direct over sight of school districts, school administrations and  school boards.  They often do not allow teachers to have a union and they usually do not have a union contract.  Charters are established by state laws and promoted by federal legislation including No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

In California, research shows  some charters do better than  some public schools, some do worse.  They are about average. The evidence is the  same in New York City.

 What are the clear effect of charters?   Charter school  teachers are paid about 20% less,  and usually  are expected to work much longer hours.  The average teacher works 69 hours per week for an average salary of  around $51,000 in California.

    In charters  teachers  are usually receive  less benefits and  little or no job security.  You can be dismissed by the director  of the charter for almost any reason.

  Charter advocates and other neo liberal reformers blamed the teachers unions for their own  failure to improve  public schools. Persons who claim to be reformers attempt to break the domination of the bureaucracy, such as in Washington D.C. under Chancellor Michelle Rhee, often focus on  bringing in superintendents with little background in administration and public schools, the firing of administrators and some teachers for failing to reform failing schools. It is the corporate world of individualism, competition, and consumption opposed to the public sphere of  learning civic cooperation and a pluralist democratic ethos. To date this strategy has produced a high teacher and administrator turn over, but it has not improved academic achievement.

Not Waiting for Superman

      Rethinking Schools has launched a new project, “NOT Waiting for Superman.” We could use your help and invite your participation.

As you may know, on September 24, the film Waiting for Superman will open in theaters in New York City and Los Angeles. Soon after, it will open in thousands of theaters across the country. The film, made by Davis Guggenheim who directed An Inconvenient Truth, is backed by a well-financed, sophisticated media campaign.

According to those who have seen the film, Waiting for Superman is “very sophisticated,” “emotionally engaging,”  “politically convincing to the uninformed,” and “contains powerful stories.” Politically it has been described as “anti-teacher union,” “anti-public education,” “pro-charter,” “promoting market solutions,” “anti-teacher,” and “promoting the Duncan/Rhee/Klein agenda.”

Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp wrote this after viewing the film:

The message of the film is that public schools are failing because of bad teachers and their unions. The film's "solution," to the minimal extent it suggests one, is to replace them with "great" charter schools and teachers who have less power over their schools and classrooms.

This message is not just wrong. In the current political climate, it's toxic.

The film was made by the Academy-Award winning director of "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary that helped awaken millions to the dangers of global warming. But this film misses the mark by light years. Instead of helping people understand the many problems schools face and what it will take to address them, it presents misleading information and simplistic "solutions" that will make it harder for those of us working to improve public education to succeed. We know first hand how urgently change is needed. But by siding with a corporate reform agenda of teacher bashing, union busting, test-based "accountability" and highly selective, privatized charters, the film pours gasoline on the public education bonfire started by No Child Left Behind and Race To the Top.

Waiting for school improvement

Dana Goldstein | September 23, 2010

Here's what you see in Waiting for Superman, the new documentary that celebrates the charter school movement while blaming teachers unions for much of what ails American education: working- and middle-class parents desperate to get their charming, healthy, well-behaved children into successful public charter schools.

Here's what you don't see: the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse); charter school teachers, like those at the Green Dot schools in Los Angeles, who are unionized and like it that way; and noncharter neighborhood public schools, like PS 83 in East Harlem and the George Hall Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, that are nationally recognized for successfully educating poor children.

You don't see teen moms, households without an adult English speaker or headed by a drug addict, or any of the millions of children who never have a chance to enter a charter school lottery (or get help with their homework or a nice breakfast) because adults simply aren't engaged in their education. These children, of course, are often the ones who are most difficult to educate, and the ones neighborhood public schools can't turn away.

The continuing economic crisis

The financial crisis is not over although it has been moved off of the front pages of many papers.  On Thursday, September 23, 2010, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission came to Sacramento chaired by Phil Angelides.  In his opening statement Angelides noted that there were 26 million out of work, over 2 million have lost their homes, over $12 trillion in wealth has been wiped out, and California has an official 12.8 % unemployment.

The crisis started in the housing markets, particularly  in places like Sacramento. The economic problems were accelerated by the near larceny of business practices by corporations including Washington Mutual and Long Beach Savings.  Sub prime and Alter A mortgages were promoted and sold to make outlandish profits even though it was clear that many home buyers could not pay for their mortgages.

The  current Great Recession was accelerated far beyond  Sacramento and the Central Valley by finance capital and banking, mostly on Wall Street, ie. Chase Banks, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs,  AIG, and others.  Finance capital owned the banks, and they robbed the banks through investment and trading  schemes including investments in mortgage backed derivatives. Wall Street’s actions plunged the U.S. into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, destroying jobs and lives, and triggering a recession in much of  the developed world.

Michele Rhee and school reform

I post this piece from the Washington Post because the approach pushed by Michele Rhee, and featured in the new film "Waiting for Superman," is often copied in California and in the Sacramento Region, including in the school reform  suggestions of Meg Whitman and the role of the media.

A chance to learn from Rhee's mistakes

By Mark Simon
Washington

Post editors and reporters appear to have latched on to every possible explanation for the public’s rejection of Mayor Adrian Fenty. Racial politics this week. Fenty’s personality. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s failure to communicate.

But Fenty’s defeat isn’t about race or personality. It’s about bad decisions, particularly on school reform. His school reform strategies, as shoved through by Rhee, alienated the voters.

Rhee certainly rates as smart, charismatic and bold. But she made decisions early in her tenure that alienated every constituency she needed, and she rested her “reforms” on strategies that national education researchers have repeatedly warned against."
Read the entire post here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/18/AR2010091803166.html
Update. Here are additional  alternative sources;
Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/2010/0915/Vincent-Gray-beats-Adrian-Fenty-What-does-it-mean-for-school-reform
Related: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/sarameads_policy_notebook/2010/09/parent_opinion_and_the_dc_mayor_elections.html#recommend

The writer, a member of Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform, is a DCPS parent, an education policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute and a former president of the Montgomery County teachers union.

Waiting for Superman

I haven't seen the film yet.  Here is a critical review.

An Inconvenient Superman: Davis Guggenheim's New Film Hijacks School Reform

Davis Guggenheim's 2010 film Waiting for Superman is a slick marketing piece full of half-truths and distortions. The film suggests the problems in education are the fault of teachers and teacher unions alone, and it asserts that the solution to those problems is a greater focus on top-down instruction driven by test scores. It rejects the inconvenient truth that our schools are being starved of funds and other necessary resources, and instead opts for an era of privatization and market-driven school change. Its focus effectively suppresses a more complex and nuanced discussion of what it might actually take to leave no child behind, such as a living wage, a full-employment economy, the de-militarization of our schools, and an education based on the democratic ideal that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. The film is positioned to become a leading voice in framing the debate on school reform, much like Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth did for the discussion of global warming, and that's heartbreaking.

I'm not categorically opposed to charter schools; they can and often do allow a group of creative and innovative teachers, parents, and communities to build schools that work for their kids and are free of the deadening bureaucracy of most districts. These schools can be catalysts for even larger changes. But there are really two main opposing positions in the "charter movement" -- it's not really a movement, by the way, but rather a diverse range of different projects. On one side are those who hope to use the charter option to operate effective small schools that are autonomous from districts. On the other side are the corporate powerhouses and the ideological opponents of all things public who see this as a chance to break the teacher's unions and to privatize education. Superman is a shill for the latter. Caring, thoughtful teachers are working hard in both types of schools. But their efforts are being framed and defined, even undermined, by powerful forces that have seized the mantle of "reform."

The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money's not the answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care, decent housing, and a living wage. Particularly dishonest is the fact that Guggenheim never mentions the tens of millions of dollars of private money that has poured into the Harlem Children's Zone, the model and superman we are relentlessly instructed to aspire to. Those funds create full family services and a state of the art school. In a sleight of hand, the film magically shifts focus, turning to "bad teaching" as the problem in the poor schools while ignoring these millions of dollars that make people clamor to get into the Promise Academy. As a friend of mine said, "Well, at least now we know what it costs."

Whitman's plans for California schools

 

Go Figure - Whitman’s Plan For Education Doesn’t Add Up…

CTA’s new TV ad calls out gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s plan that could cut another $7 billion from our schools. The question to her is how will she cut $15 billion from the state budget without taking nearly half or more from our schools. Whitman should know that education accounts for nearly half the state budget and in the last round of state budget reductions, public education took 53% of the cuts.

 

Background:

·        View Economist see flaws in Whitman’s policy proposals

·        View Education and California’s Budget

·        View Preparing for the Next Round of Budget Adjustments: How Education Might Fare

How You Can Help:

Contact Whitman and ask her to explain how she plans on cutting $15 billion from the state budget without cutting schools and colleges.

·        Call her at 408.400.3887

·        Email her at Communications@MegWhitman.com

·        Engage her on Twitter

·        Respond on her Facebook page and her Talk to Meg Website.

CTA

 

California Schools- not in compliance????

Update on Education Jobs Money

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is urging governors to act quickly and submit their state applications for their share of the $10 billion education jobs funding as soon possible so that the emergency aid can begin flowing to districts. So far, 17 states have had their funding requests approved:

	Funds	Estimated Number of            Teaching Positions              Created/Saved*
Alabama	$149.5 million	2,250
California	$1.2 billion	13,318
Colorado	$159.5 million	2,393
Connecticut	$110.5 million	1,251
Georgia	$322.3 million	4,397
Illinois	$415.4 million	5,118
Iowa	$96.5 million	1,503
Kansas	$92.5 million	1,572
Maine	$39 million	614
Massachusetts	$204 million	2,083
Nebraska	$58.9 million	966
Nevada	$83.1 million	1,184
New Mexico	$64.9 million	1,077
New York	$607.6 million	6,263
South Dakota	$26.3 million	574
Tennessee	$195.9 million	3,279
Wisconsin	$179.7 million	2,329

The $10 billion education fund was created to support education jobs in the 2010–11 school year and will be distributed to states by a formula based on population figures. States can then distribute their funding to school districts using their funding formulas or districts' relative share of federal Title I funds.

However, a provision in the bill requires states to have maintained their level of higher education spending this year, something many of the states have not been able to do. And the bill does not offer waivers for states to opt out of this requirement, which means that those states that have made drastic cuts to higher education could miss out on the windfall. Some states—such as California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—are believed to be caught in this noncompliance situation.

Only Congress can rectify this issue by repealing this provision.

Fiorina bought a Yacht

Elizabeth Warren appointed : Consumer Financial Protection

HUGE news: President Obama just appointed populist hero Elizabeth Warren to establish and lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!!  

This is the boldest step Obama's taken so far to rein in the big Wall Street banks. And it's a major victory for grassroots progressives who rallied for Warren. 

The banks fought to keep her out of this job—and now that she has it, they'll do whatever they can to keep her from exercising her full authority. That's why we need to get the word out—to make sure she has the grassroots support she needs to aggressively police Wall Street.

So we made a video of Warren's greatest hits from her appearances on the "Daily Show" and a list of five cool facts about her. Check them out at the link below and send them to all your friends:

http://pol.moveon.org/warren_fivethings_share.html?id=23486-2956400-gvpaARx&t=2

Top Five Things You Should Know About Elizabeth Warren

1. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was her idea.  Here's why she thinks this agency is so critical: "It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance your home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting your family out on the street."¹

Michele Rhee to lose her job?

Tonight NBC news with Bryan Williams advanced a  controversial opinion as fact tonight.
Bryan Williams described Michele Rhee as a leading voice of school reform.  In fact she is a major voice for one particular view of school reform- the corporate-test driven model.
Here is the transcript.  The oral statement was even stronger.  I encourage you to contact NBC and to protest. Please request a balanced report. The e mail is at the end of the transcript.

;Bryan Williams  NBC . Tonight.

washington, d.c., voters fired their mayor. while it was just a city mayor's race, that washington election result last night was heard across the country by those who follow education reform. that's because the defeat of mayor fenty means the departure of a big reformer. michelle ree is the chancellor of schools in d.c. this comes just as her profile is about to explode even bigger because of a new film called "waiting for superman." that premieres tonight in washington. our own tom costello is there for us.

Comcast pulls CTA ad on Whitman

This ad has been pulled by Comcast. The Whitman campaign objected.

The California Teachers Association added the word "could" to its TV ad slamming Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, prompting the cable carrier Comcast to resume broadcasting it
.

Why Civil Rights Groups oppose the Obama Education Agenda

Two weeks ago in a dispute over California legislation, Sacramento Bee writers claimed that the defeat of SB 1285     was a defeat for "civil rights" groups.  I questioned, who were these so called "civil rights" groups.  Here is what major civil rights groups are saying about education.

Dear Deborah,

In late July, the nation's leading civil rights organizations issued a withering critique of the Obama administration's education policies. Did you see it? It would be understandable if most people never even heard about it because of the circumstances under which it was released. The statement was issued by the NAACP, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National Urban League, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the National Coalition for Educating Black Children, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the Schott Foundation for Public Education. The press briefing was canceled at the last minute, when the leaders were invited to meet with Secretary Arne Duncan at the very hour they had scheduled their press briefing.

The statement—titled "Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn"—got little media coverage, but its detractors got plenty. Columnist Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post castigated the civil rights groups for daring to challenge President Obama, as did an editorial in The Wall Street Journal titled "Civil rights groups choose the teachers unions over black kids."  A hedge-fund manager associated with the pro-charter group "Democrats for Education Reform" called the civil rights leaders "gutless weasels" and accused them of putting the interests of the teachers' unions over the future of minority children.

Are California schools failing?

Today’s press  reports  gives API scores for  the state and local schools.  Here is some important information. 

State averages mean little.   A report on how the state is doing is here http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr10/yr10rel104.asp This site also explains what the various test scores mean.

The cde is very generous in describing progress.  When you compare these scores to how California students score on nationwide test, such as the NAEP, California students do not do so well.

 I encourage you tolLook at the performance of your school.  Looking at district averages is almost meaningless.  The score of a school tells you how well the school as a whole is functioning.

Look for the report of your individual students’ scores.  They are to arrive in the mail. A school may be working well  or poorly. However, of first interest is how well is your student performing.  You can influence this.

Here is a list of ways you can assist your student. From CTA. The California Teachers Association.

http://www.cta.org/Parents-and-Community/Family-Involvement/53ways/53-Ways-to-Help-a-Child-Learn.aspx

Fraud passed off as school reform - Kohn

What Passes for School Reform: "Value-Added" Teacher Evaluation and Other Absurdities - Alfie Kohn 

The less people know about teaching and learning, the more sympathetic they're likely to be to the kind of "school reform" that's all the rage these days. Look, they say, some teachers (and schools) are lousy, aren't they? And we want kids to receive a better education -- including poor kids, who typically get the short end of the stick, right? So let's rock the boat a little! Clean out the dead wood, close down the places that don't work, slap public ratings on these suckers just like restaurants that have to display the results of their health inspections.

On my sunnier days, I manage to look past the ugliness of the L.A. Times's unconscionable public shaming of teachers who haven't "added value" to their students, the sheer stupidity and arrogance of Newsweek's cover story on the topic last spring, the fact that the editorials and columns about education in every major newspaper in the U.S. seem to have been written by the same person, all reflecting an uncritical acceptance of the Bush-Obama-Gates version of school reform.

I try to put it all down to mere ignorance and tamp down darker suspicions about what's going on. If I squeeze my eyes tightly, I can almost see how a reasonable person, someone who doesn't want to widen the real gap between the haves and have-nots (which is what tends to happen when attention is focused on the gap in test scores), might look at what's going on and think that it sounds like common sense.

Republicans make economic crisis worse + Krugman

Things Could Be Worse

By PAUL KRUGMAN

TOKYO. from the N.Y. Times 

“Japan’s problems now are the same as they were in the 1990s, when you were writing about them. It’s depressing.” So declared one economist I spoke to here. “But the Japanese don’t seem all that depressed,” objected another. Both were right — and the conversation crystallized some thoughts I’ve been having about Japan’s situation, and ours.

A decade ago, Japan was a byword for failed economic policies: years after its real estate bubble burst, it was still suffering from chronic deflation and slow growth. Then America had its own bubble, bust and crisis. And these days, Japan’s record doesn’t look that bad to an American eye.

Why not? For all its flaws, Japanese policy limited and contained the damage from a financial bust. And the question in America now is whether we’ll do the same — or whether we will take a hard right turn into economic disaster.

Area schools await U.S. Aid. Outrage or incompetence?

The morning Bee has a frustrating report by Diane Lambert on B1 which says that  some area school districts are considering using their portion of the schools stimulus funds next year ( not this one) for a variety of  dubious purposes.  This manipulation reduces teachers in the classrooms.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/ca/edjobsfund.asp

Lets review.  What got this law passed?   The economic collapse on Wall Street had decimated our schools. We activists convinced Congress that we need teachers in the classrooms.  And, putting teachers back to work would stimulate (grow) the economic recovery.

Now, according to this article several local districts, including Natomas Unified, don’t know how they will spend the money, when they will spend it,  and for what.  This manipulation and profit taking reduces teachers in the classroom –remember we needed them, and  removes the stimulus effect of the appropriation.

I am appalled at the bone headedness of these officials. One result will be there will be no future appropriations for this purpose- that is the local officials are creating a fraud on Congress.  The stimulus package was not a birthday gift to be spent however they chose.   It is not a deposit in their piggy bank. It was an investment with particular goals – more teachers and public stimulus.

Any school board member who votes for these diversions should be voted out of office.   As the President said in his news conference, “this country is really hurting and we don’t have time anymore to play games.” Here are the present allocations;

Obama: They talk about me like a dog

Labor Day 2010

Happy Labor Day--the one day of the year set aside to honor America's workers.

More than 70 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "If I were a worker in a factory, the first thing I would do would be to join a union."

At the AFL-CIO's August Executive Council meeting, President Barack Obama referenced FDR's statement and took it further:

I think that's true for workers generally. I think if I was a coal miner, I'd want a union representing me to make sure that I was safe and you did not have some of the tragedies that we've been seeing in the coal industry. If I was a teacher, I'd want a union to make sure that the teachers' perspective was represented as we think about shaping an education system for our future.

That statement is a Labor Day treasure, and I want you to have the brief video that captures it.

Watch the video. *Click here to play* [ http://www.youtube.com/user/AFLCIONow#p/a/u/2/JkxYlvFmj9o

What created the populist explosion and how Democrats can avoid the Shrapnel in November

By Drew Westen, AlterNet

To say that the American people are angry is an understatement. The political brain of Americans today reflects a volatile mixture of fear and fury, and when you mix those together, you get an explosion. The only question at this point is how to mitigate the damage when the bomb detonates in November.

The bad news is that it's too late for Democrats to do what would have been both good policy and good politics (and what the House actually did do), namely to pass a major jobs bill when it was clear that the private sector couldn't keep Americans employed. The "Obama Doctrine" should have been that Americans who want to work and have the ability to contribute to our productivity as a nation should have the right to work, and that if the private sector can't meet the demand for jobs, we have plenty of roads and bridges to fix, new energy sources to develop and manufacture, and schools to build and renovate so our kids and workers returning for training can compete in the 21st century global economy. From having spent much of the last four years testing messages on a range of issues, from immigration to taxes and deficits, I can say with some certainty that nothing John Boehner or Eric Cantor could say could come within 30 points of generating the enthusiasm -- particularly among swing voters -- of a message that began, "We don't have a shortage of work ethic in this country, we have a shortage of work." That message resonates across the political spectrum. And it isn't even the strongest message we've tested in the last weeks or months that beats back the toughest deficit-cutting language the other side can muster.

But it's too late for that. The administration opted for an alternative doctrine, which Larry Summers enunciated on This Week several months ago: that unemployment is going to remain high for the foreseeable future and eventually come down -- as if there's nothing we can do about it -- and that they will push here and there for small symbolic measures whose symbolism tends to escape people who are out of work. It's hard to be excited by symbolism when your children are hungry or the bank is repossessing your home -- although you didn't do anything to deserve it -- while the people who did are once again making out like bandits.

Labor Day Picnic

 LABOR DAY WORKING FAMILIES PICNIC 

Monday, September 6, 2010 

This year the Sacramento Central Labor Council will be celebrating its 113th year of representing working families by having a traditional 

Labor Day Picnic at: 

William Land Park 

Village Green Area 

Off of Freeport Blvd. and 

Sutterville Road 

11:00-3:00PM 

This 

Inside Job- The financial crisis

Labor Day : Richard Trumka

Testing more while failing at school reform

There are schools that work well, and schools that work poorly.  The schools that work well almost always are in middle class neighborhoods, and the schools that work poorly are in poor neighborhoods.  When these students are brought together in comprehensive high schools- the lower class kids do poorly and the middle class kids do well.

There are skilled teachers, unskilled teachers, and poor teachers. The most recent evidence on Teach for America shows no particular merit in their approaches. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/teach-for-america

Research does not support the use of test scores, including value added testing as a reliable source of evaluation  http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/6276/. (See prior blog on this.) The New York Times has an article today by Sam Dillon that describes the controversy well http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/education/01teacher.html?_r=1&hpw

The essence of the argument around value added testing  as promoted in the Los Angeles Times series is that poor teachers should be eliminated.  One assumption is that individual teachers can change the school trajectory of kids.  While good teachers are important, the Broader, Bolder Approach work demonstrates that  communities need to improve the educational environment, not just hire and fire new teachers. http://www.boldapproach.org/