The Battle in Wisconsin and Rage Among Teachers

 Diane Ravitch 

Thousands of teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public sector workers have camped out at the Wisconsin Capitol, protesting Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to reduce their take-home pay -- by increasing their contribution to their pension plans and health care benefits -- and restrict their collective bargaining rights.

Republicans control the state Legislature, and initially it seemed certain that Walker's proposal would pass easily. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went into hiding, leaving that body one vote shy of a quorum. As of this writing, the Legislature was at a standstill as state police searched high and low for the missing lawmakers.

Like other conservative Republican governors, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Rick Scott of Florida, the Wisconsin governor wants to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers' union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.

Public schools in Madison and a dozen other districts in Wisconsin closed as teachers joined the protest. Although Walker claims he was forced to impose cutbacks because the state is broke, teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.

The uprising in Madison is symptomatic of a simmering rage among the nation's teachers. They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated.

The much-publicized film "Waiting for Superman" made the specious claim that "bad teachers" caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.

Teachers across the nation reacted with alarm when the leaders of the Central Falls district in Rhode Island threatened to fire the entire staff of the small town's only high school. What got their attention was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama thought this was a fine idea, even though no one at the high school had been evaluated.

The Obama administration's Race to the Top program intensified the demonizing of teachers, because it encouraged states to evaluate teachers in relation to student scores. There are many reasons why students do well or poorly on tests, and teachers felt they were being unfairly blamed when students got low scores, while the crucial role of families and the students themselves was overlooked.

Diane Ravitch.

Thanks to a reader for suggesting this post. 

Race to the Bottom: Obama school reform gone wrong

By Roger Bybee <http://www.inthesetimes.com/community/profile/6566>

Diane Ravitch, author of /The Death and Life of the Great American
School System/.

President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have
formed an alliance with billionaire "school reformers" whose agenda
is to downgrade U.S. public education and blame its shortcomings on
"bad teachers," warns educational historian Diane Ravitch.

Ravitch spoke Thursday night before a crowd of more than 1,000 education
professors, students, public school teachers, and community activists at
the University of Wisconsin.

"These corporate reformers are pursuing a strategy based on ideology,
not on evidence," she charged. "It is demoralizing teachers and setting
up public schools to be de-legitimized, as they are called upon to meet
impossible goals. This is not an improvement strategy, it is a
privatization strategy."

Ravitch, once assistant secretary of education under George W.
Bush, has undergone a remarkable transformation after observing how
the education system became fixated on test results, the scapegoating of
teachers and the promoting of a privatized approach to education.

She has now emerged as one of the leading critics of the Obama-Duncan
approach to public education, which has been driven by funding from
several huge foundations--the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli
and Edith Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family foundation.

The essence of this corporatized approach to public education is
"choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based
decision-making," as Joanne Barkan summarizes it an important /Dissent/
<http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781> article.

With progressive reforms for education generating little attention, the
corporate model has managed to make surprising inroads among some
liberals who have become persuaded that a market-driven education system
is key to America's future.

The corporate style of reform began with "No Child Left Behind" enacted
under George W. Bush, which promoted a preoccupation with standardized
testing and the conclusion that children's failure to measure up was a
direct result of inferior teachers.

This was followed by Duncan's "Race to the Top" program which embraced
the same core beliefs, including the closing of "failed schools." Duncan
and Obama, for example, applauded the decision of the Central Falls,
Rhode Island School Board to close the high school and fire all 91 staff
members, absurdly including the cafeteria and maintenance staff, based
on the assumption that low test scores reflected the failures of the
teachers.

The poverty of the students and the fact that a high percentage were
immigrants learning English were seen as irrelevant to the low test
scores. Eventually, both Duncan and the local school system were forced
to back off due to public outcry.

But Duncan, along with the three huge foundations, is still pressing
ahead with imposing what Ravitch calls their "punitive" and
"market-based" assumptions on the nation's schools.

However, as both Ravitch and Barkan have pointed out, all the major
studies show that the key elements of corporate-style education reform
are simply not working:

*No improvement in learning* The most comprehensive study of
de-regulated "charter" schools, conducted by conservative economists at
Stanford University, examined education results among students at 2,400
charter schools nationally. They found 83% of charter schools perform
either worse or no better than public schools.

*Merit pay* The new wave of corporate reformers have argued that
merit pay is vital to incentivize" and reward better-performing
teachers. But a 2010 Vanderbilt University study clearly demonstrated
that merit pay does not generate higher standardized testing.

A National Research Council report, backing up numerous other studies,
found that standardized test scores fail to effectively measure student
learning The main result observed by Ravitch has been the tendency of
school curriculums to get narrower and narrower, focusing almost
exclusively on "teaching to the test" in reading and math. Supposed
"success" stories of market-based, mayor-driven "reform" in Chicago and
New York quickly unraveled once newspapers began independently
evaluating the test scores of students.

Nonetheless, the combined PR clout of the Gates, Broad, and Walton
foundations has generated a massive wave of favorable publicity for
their crusade against what Ravitch called "the Bad Teacher Syndrome."
This included a cover story in Newsweek, a weeklong series on NBC that
"celebrated privatization and scapegoating teachers," as Ravitch put it,
and two segments of Oprah devoted to discussing Waiting for Superman, which Ravitch called a badly-biased documentary.

All of these high-profile attacks on teachers, their unions, and
union-won rights avoid the real causes of poor school performance. "Most
of the nations that the US is comparing itself with have much lower
rates of poverty among their children. It's 20% nationally here, and I
know it's much higher in this community." (32 percent of children in
Milwaukee are poor.)

"Poor performance is mostly due to poverty and racial isolation," Raitch
said. Barkan further illuminated this point in /Dissent:/

The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in US
schools where the poverty rate was less than 10% rnked first in
reading, first in cience, and third in math. But as the poverty rate
rose till higher, students ranked lower and lower.

Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75%. The
problem is not public schools; it is poverty.

And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical,
and social development between children in poverty and middle-class
children is set by age three.

The over-emphasis on testing, the targeting of teachers, the senseless
closing of schools, and the substitution of a market model for the basic
democratic right of public education are all generating an increasingly
vocal backlash from both teachers and parents.

"Teachers are going to be marching on Washington D.C. July 28 to 30 to
protest the 'testing and punishment' regime in education," Ravitch
announced.

The top-down corporate-style reform championed by Obama and the
billionaires threatens a further deterioration of education for poor
kids, and is an imminent threat to America's democratic traditions,
Ravitch concluded.
Reprinted with permission from In These Times.

Review: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

How Testing and Choice Undermine Education. 2010 by Diane Ravitch.
Review by Duane Campbell.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System; 

Historian  Ravitch, formerly a prominent conservative critic of efforts toward multicultural school reform has now reversed many of her earlier positions and in particular criticizes the over use and abuse of testing and the development of for profit charter schools.  Ravitch is currently a research Professor of Education at New York University, formerly a Fellow at the Hoover Institute, and an Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush.   It is interesting a welcome to have a  prominent scholar reverse her earlier positions.  She seems to have changed her positions because she continued to look at the data, and the test based reforms which she earlier promoted are not working out.  And, she examines the specifics of testing limitations. There is no evidence in the book  that she has reversed her earlier advocacy opposing  pluralism and multicultural education.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System   provides an important description of the media savvy campaign of the pro charter groups- such as Democrats for Education Reform, and the groups Ravitch calls the “Billionaires Boy’s Clubs” .  This is one of the best chapters in the  well written book.  She describes how the Broad Foundation, the Gates and others have taken a leadership in criticizing schools.  Their advocates clearly have the ear of Secretary of Education Duncan and Barack Obama.   A central purpose of their work is to weaken teachers unions.  A part of their effort is organized in the Democrats for Education Reform.

One of the points not developed by Ravitch is the ploy these groups use is  that you are either for the charter based reforms and privatization, or you are for continuing public schools as they are – a deceptive premise  at best.  There are thousands of dedicated school reformers who have worked for decades to improve schools.  And, we have improved some.  We should continue to improve and reform schools. 

In The Death and Life of the Great American School System, (2010)Diane Ravitch briefly describes her role in writing the current History/Social Science Framework for California schools.  I continue to dissent from her writing in these arena.  I hope that she re-examines her role in this area also.

Textbooks for  California schools are selected by the State Board of Education based upon recommendations of their Curriculum Committees and the state frameworks and standards.  It is urgent that the History-Social Science Framework be revised to provide an accurate history of the contributions of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos and Asians to the history of the state and of the nation. The current Framework reflects the historiography of the 1950’s. It was written in 1986 by senior scholars,  lead by Diane Ravitch.  They in turn were educated in the early 1970’s or before. It is substantially out of date. 

The current Framework was written in 1986 and published in 1987 after a great deal of controversy.  Ravitch was one of the three primary authors of the Framework. The Framework is  supposed to be revised each 7 years. The Framework, along with the standards, provides the guidelines for what is to be taught and what is to be included in the history and social science textbooks in California. In 2009, the History /Social Science Framework was  up for re consideration but the process was halted by the budget crisis.

 California has the largest population of any state, with more than 6,252,000 students  in school in 2008.   California students make up more than 11 percent of the United States total. California, along with some 16 other states, adopts textbooks for the entire state instead of district by district purchasing. This makes the California adoption the largest single textbook sale in the nation. Gaining   this market is an important goal for textbook publishers. Many publishers write and edit their books in a targeted attempt to win control of the large and  lucrative California and Texas markets.   Publishers promote and try to sell books developed in California in response to the narrow conservative Framework  throughout the nation in an effort to increase their profits. 

 The 1980’s were the age of Ronald Reagan.  As Governor he appointed members of the State Board of Education.  His influence continued long after he became President of the U.S. The view of history that won the battle  in California in 1987  was crafted by neoconservative historian Diane Ravitch and supported by Paul Gagnon and former California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995).  Ravitch was the historian and the primary author of the history sections of the Framework. 

The 1987 Framework still in use today  expanded African American, Native American, and women’s history coverage but remains totally inadequate in the coverage of Latinos and Asians. The only significant change between the 1985 and the 2005 adopted Framework was the addition of a new cover, a cover letter, and additions of photos such as of Cesar Chavez . Latinos currently make up 48.1 percent of California’s student population and Asians make up 8.1 %. 

The dominant neo conservative view  of history promoted by Ravitch  argues that textbooks and a common history should provide the glue that unites our society. Historical themes and interpretations are selected in books to create unity in a diverse and divided society, a unity from the point of view of the dominant class.  This viewpoint assigns to schools the task of creating a common culture. In reality, television and military service may do more to create a common culture than do schools and books.

Conservatives assign the task of cultural assimilation to schools, with particular emphasis on the history, social science, and literature curricula. Historians advocating consensus write textbooks that downplay the roles of slavery, class, racism, genocide, and imperialism in our history. They focus on ethnicity and assimilation rather than race, on the success of achieving political reform, representative government, and economic opportunity for European American workers and immigrants. They decline to notice the high poverty rate of U.S. children, the crisis of urban schooling, and the continuation of racial divisions in housing and the labor force. In California they decline to notice that Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and Latinos as well as Asians contributed to the development of this society.

This consensus conservative viewpoint history dominates textbook publishing in California , but these partial and incomplete histories do not empower students from our diverse cultural communities. By recounting primarily a consensual, European American view, history and literature extend and reconstruct current White supremacy, sexism, and class biases in our society. When texts or teachers tell only part of the story, schools foster intellectual colonialism and ideological domination (Cornbleth & Waugh, 1995). 

         When the 48.1 % of students who are Latino , and the 11.5 % who are Asian do not see themselves as part of history,  for many their sense of self is marginalized.   Marginalization negatively impacts their connections with school and their success at school.  It contributes to an over 50% drop out rate for Latinos and some Asian students.  An accurate history  would provide some students with a  a sense of self, of direction,  of purpose. History and social science  classes  should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives.   Instead, the current history textbooks  based upon the guidelines of the Ravitch written Framework, tell a fairy tale of what happened here in the Southwest.

 Many schools serving urban and impoverished students  need  adequate funding and fundamental change. As I argue in my book, Choosing Democracy: a practical guide to multicultural education (2010) these schools do not open the doors to civic and  economic opportunity. They usually do not promote equality. Instead, they recycle inequality. The high school drop out rates alone demonstrate that  urban schools  prepare less than 50 percent of their students for entrance into the economy and society. We cannot build a safe, just, and prosperous society while we   leave   so many young people behind.

Ravtich has written an excellent book detailing many of the controversial issues in education with a focus on the role of testing, the Billionaires Boy’s Club, and the role of Charters.  It is well worth reading.  She provides some needed criticism of the exaggerated claims and the media promotion  of the corporate side of the school reform debates such as provided in the promoted film, Waiting for Superman.    The book will be useful in promoting the needed debates on  school reform  leading up to the Congressional attempt to re-authorize No Child Left Behind and the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top in a Republican controlled Congress  this Spring.  

Diane Ravitch v. Bill Gates on School Reform

Ravitch answers Gates

By Valerie Strauss

In a paean to Bill Gates, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter calls Diane Ravitchthe Microsoft founder's "chief adversary."

It's the world's richest (or second richest) man vs. an education historian and New York University research professor.

Gates, through his philanthropic foundation, has invested billions of dollars in education experiments and now has a pivotal role in reform efforts. Ravitch, the author of the bestselling The Death and Life of the Great American School System, has become the most vocal opponent of the Obama administration's education policy. She says Gates is backing the wrong initiatives and harming public schools.

In the Newsweek piece, Gates poses some questions aimed at Ravitch. I asked her to answer them. Below are the questions Gates asked, in bold, and the answers, in italics, that Ravitch provided in an email.

Gates: “Does she like the status quo?"
Ravitch: "No, I certainly don't like the status quo. I don't like the attacks on teachers, I don't like the attacks on the educators who work in our schools day in and day out, I don't like the phony solutions that are now put forward that won't improve our schools at all. I am not at all content with the quality of American education in general, and I have expressed my criticisms over many years, long before Bill Gates decided to make education his project. I think American children need not only testing in basic skills, but an education that includes the arts, literature, the sciences, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, economics, and physical education.

"I don't hear any of the corporate reformers expressing concern about the way standardized testing narrows the curriculum, the way it rewards convergent thinking and punishes divergent thinking, the way it stamps out creativity and originality. I don't hear any of them worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government. I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education."

Gates: "Is she sticking up for decline?" 
Ravitch: "Of course not! If we follow Bill Gates' demand to judge teachers by test scores, we will see stagnation, and he will blame it on teachers. We will see stagnation because a relentless focus on test scores in reading and math will inevitably narrow the curriculum only to what is tested. This is not good education.

"Last week, he said in a speech that teachers should not be paid more for experience and graduate degrees. I wonder why a man of his vast wealth spends so much time trying to figure out how to cut teachers' pay. Does he truly believe that our nation's schools will get better if we have teachers with less education and less experience? Who does he listen to? He needs to get himself a smarter set of advisers.

"Of course, we need to make teaching a profession that attracts and retains wonderful teachers, but the current anti-teacher rhetoric emanating from him and his confreres demonizes and demoralizes even the best teachers. I have gotten letters from many teachers who tell me that they have had it, they have never felt such disrespect; and I have also met young people who tell me that the current poisonous atmosphere has persuaded them not to become teachers. Why doesn't he make speeches thanking the people who work so hard day after day, educating our nation's children, often in difficult working conditions, most of whom earn less than he pays his secretaries at Microsoft?"

Gates: "Does she really like 400-page [union] contracts?"
Ravitch: "Does Bill Gates realize that every contract is signed by two parties: management and labor? Why does management agree to 400-page contracts? I don't know how many pages should be in a union contract, but I do believe that teachers should be evaluated by competent supervisors before they receive tenure (i.e., the right to due process).

"Once they have due process rights, they have the right to a hearing when someone wants to fire them. The reason for due process rights is that teachers in the past have been fired because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or because they did not make a political contribution to the right campaign, or for some other reason not related to their competence.

"Gates probably doesn't know this, but 50% of all those who enter teaching leave within the first five years. Our biggest problem is not getting rid of deadbeats, but recruiting, retaining, and supporting teachers. We have to replace 300,000 teachers (of nearly 4 million) every single year. What are his ideas about how to do this?"

Gates: "Does she think all those ‘dropout factories’ are lonely?"
Ravitch: "This may come as a surprise to Bill Gates, but the schools he refers to as "dropout factories" enroll large numbers of high-need students. Many of them don't speak or read English; many of them enter high school three and four grade levels behind. He assumes the schools created the problems the students have; but in many cases, the schools he calls "dropout factories" are filled with heroic teachers and administrators trying their best to help kids who have massive learning problems.

"Unless someone from the district or the state actually goes into the schools and does a diagnostic evaluation, it is unfair to stigmatize the schools with the largest numbers of students who are English-language learners, special-education, and far behind in their learning. That's like saying that an oncologist is not as good a doctor as a dermatologist because so many of his patients die. Mr. Gates, first establish the risk factor before throwing around the labels and closing down schools."

Gates: "If there’s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we’re all ears.” 
Ravitch: "Here's the sad truth: There is no magic way to reduce the dropout rate. It involves looking at the reasons students leave school, as well as the conditions in which they live. The single biggest correlate with low academic achievement (contrary to the film Waiting for Superman) is poverty. Children who grow up in poverty get less medical care. worse nutrition, less exposure to knowledge and vocabulary, and are more likely to be exposed to childhood diseases, violence, drugs, and abuse. They are more likely to have relatives who are incarcerated. They are more likely to live in economic insecurity, not knowing if there is enough money for a winter coat or food or housing. This affects their academic performance. They tend to have lower attendance and to be sick more than children whose parents are well-off.

"The United States today has a child poverty rate of over 20%, and it is rising. This is a national scandal. The film compares us to Finland, but doesn't mention that their child poverty rate is under 5%. Mr. Gates, why don't you address the root causes of low academic achievement, which is not 'bad teachers,' but poverty. It won't involve magic, but it would certainly require the best thinking that you can assemble. And if anyone can afford to do it, surely you can.

I don't mean to suggest that schools as they are now are just fine: They are not. Every school should have a rich and balanced curriculum; many don't. Every child should look forward to coming to school, for his or her favorite studies and activities, but those are the very studies and activities likely to lose out to endless test preparation. Schools need many things: Some need more resources and better conditions for teaching and learning; all need a stable, experienced staff. Teachers need opportunities for intellectual growth and colleagueship. Tests should be used diagnostically, to help students and teachers, not to allocate bonuses and punishments. Teachers, principals, administrators, parents, and local communities should collaborate to create caring communities, and that's happening in many places. I know that none of this is the "magic way" that you are looking for, Mr. Gates, but any educator will tell you that education is a slow, laborious process that requires good teachers, able leadership, willing students, a strong curriculum, and willing students. None of that happens magically."

I also asked Ravitch about her reaction to the strange comparison Alter made in calling her "the Whittaker Chambers of school reform." She wrote:
"I wondered if Alter knows much about history. Whittaker Chambers renounced Communism and embraced American patriotism. Was Alter suggesting that Bill Gates is the Alger Hiss of school reform? I thought it was a weird analogy.

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Failed school reform

Recently, I (Diane Ravitch)  wrote a book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, in which I took issue with a number of currently popular education strategies that I had once supported, and now, seeing their questionable outcomes, challenge. Since then, I have been traveling across the country and have made three dozen speeches. What started out as a conventional book tour—with stops only in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—turned into something else: a whistle-stop campaign to warn against some of the education “reforms” currently in vogue. From the day that the news broke that I had turned against No Child Left Behind—the federal law that nationally enforces a heavy emphasis on testing and accountability—and that I’d come out against against market-based ideas of school choice, I have been overwhelmed with invitations to speak in almost every state.

The result has been exhilarating, exhausting, and ultimately disheartening. The exhilarating part was meeting thousands of teachers and hearing their appreciation for my support of their work. Teachers repeatedly asked if I could voice their opposition to what is now called reform. Many described the challenges they face trying to comply with the unrealistic goals of No Child Left Behind. At Stanford, a teacher from Salinas County broke into tears as she described her students, the children of lettuce pickers, most of whom knew no English. When I spoke in Oakland, a group of teachers drove four hours to hear me and to get copies of my book for every member of their school board.

The disheartening part was recognizing, along with my audiences, that the policies I criticize now have not only the unwavering support of Republicans but also the endorsement of the Obama administration. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been campaigning with Newt Gingrich to enlist bipartisan support for what I believe is a very conservative agenda. For me, the irony of all this is that I broke ranks with my former colleagues at some staunchly conservative think tanks by writing my book at precisely the moment the Obama administration has embraced their ideas. Again and again, I have been asked by talk show hosts (at least the well informed ones), “How did right-wing ideas become the education agenda of the Obama administration?”

My sense is that it has a lot to do with the administration’s connections to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Although both are usually portrayed as liberal or at least Democratic, their funding priorities have merged with those of the very conservative Walton Family Foundation. I explain this curious power elite in a chapter of my book called “The Billionaire Boys Club.”

The Obama administration has dangled $4.3 billion in federal aid before the states in a competition called the Race to the Top. To be eligible to win, the states must increase the number of privately managed charter schools, must agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, and must commit to “turning around” so-called failing schools (including by closing them or privatizing them). In the first round of this contest, the winning states were Tennessee, which received $500 million, and Delaware, which got $100 million—apparently based on their readiness to enact comprehensive reform along recommended lines. In this time of severe fiscal stringency, 37 other states—-including New York—have applied for funding from the next round of Race to the Top, each promising to reshape its education system around the administration’s priorities in order to win it.

The main ideas embodied in the Race to the Top program and other administration policies were incubated in conservative think tanks. I have argued that none of these “reforms” is likely to improve education, and all are likely to do harm.

Charter schools are the fad of the moment. There are some excellent charter schools, and some dismal ones. They have been around for nearly twenty years, and, to date, the best evidence shows that in aggregate students in them perform no better or worse than students in regular public schools. As their numbers grow under pressure from the Obama administration, their quality is not likely to improve; the history of American education is replete with small-scale demonstrations that became less effective when rapidly expanded to a mass scale. So, if history is a useful guide, charters, which are by definition very thinly regulated, will go from being no better or worse to being a very problematic sector riddled with extreme variability in performance and not infrequent cases of financial mismanagement. It is hard to see this turn to privatization of one of our nation’s basic public services as a route to better education.

Similarly, the strategy of tying teacher evaluations to test scores will have predictably negative consequences. It will promote more time spent preparing students for very inadequate tests and a narrowing of the curriculum (with less time for history, geography, science, the arts, foreign languages, and eve The main ideas embodied in the Race to the Top program and other administration policies were incubated in conservative think tanks. I have argued that none of these “reforms” is likely to improve education, and all are likely to do harm.

Charter schools are the fad of the moment. There are some excellent charter schools, and some dismal ones. They have been around for nearly twenty years, and, to date, the best evidence shows that in aggregate students in them perform no better or worse than students in regular public schools. As their numbers grow under pressure from the Obama administration, their quality is not likely to improve; the history of American education is replete with small-scale demonstrations that became less effective when rapidly expanded to a mass scale. So, if history is a useful guide, charters, which are by definition very thinly regulated, will go from being no better or worse to being a very problematic sector riddled with extreme variability in performance and not infrequent cases of financial mismanagement. It is hard to see this turn to privatization of one of our nation’s basic public services as a route to better education.

Similarly, the strategy of tying teacher evaluations to test scores will have predictably negative consequences. It will promote more time spent preparing students for very inadequate tests and a narrowing of the curriculum (with less time for history, geography, science, the arts, foreign languages, and every other non-tested subject). It will judge teachers for matters over which they have no control, such as student absenteeism and family involvement (or lack thereof).

Everyone asks, how can we stop this misguided and potentially harmful approach? I keep hoping that some elected official, some Governor or Senator, will recognize that millions of discontented parents and teachers—not just the vilified teachers’ unions—are looking for political leadership. They don’t want to lose public education, and they hate the relentless emphasis on testing and punishment. I keep watching for the leader who will mobilize those who now are voiceless and demand that our nation get serious about improving education: making sure that all children have access to a full and balanced curriculum—-rather than just preparation for standardized tests—and taking steps to improve the teaching profession, rather than demeaning and demoralizing it.

ry other non-tested subject). It will judge teachers for matters over which they have no control, such as student absenteeism and family involvement (or lack thereof).

Everyone asks, how can we stop this misguided and potentially harmful approach? I keep hoping that some elected official, some Governor or Senator, will recognize that millions of discontented parents and teachers—not just the vilified teachers’ unions—are looking for political leadership. They don’t want to lose public education, and they hate the relentless emphasis on testing and punishment. I keep watching for the leader who will mobilize those who now are voiceless and demand that our nation get serious about improving education: making sure that all children have access to a full and balanced curriculum—-rather than just preparation for standardized tests—and taking steps to improve the teaching profession, rather than demeaning and demoralizing it.

I am still looking.

Diane Ravitch 

June 10, 2010 3 p.m.

Testing and education stupidity

This is an issue which media pundits- and politicians-  ignore or do not understand.
From Diane Ravitch.

The assault on public education and the teaching profession is now in full swing, as states scramble to qualify for the billions of federal funds in President Obama's Race to the Top program. The latest outrage just occurred in Florida, where state legislators passed an extraordinarily stupid piece of legislation. This law abolishes teacher tenure and ties teacher pay to student test scores. In addition, the state will no longer consider either education or experience as factors in teachers' compensation. What teachers earn will depend on their students' test scores.
The economists who floated this bad idea, perhaps as a theoretical exercise, should step up to the plate and take responsibility for what they have wrought. This path devalues education, devalues whatever cannot be measured, and undermines teachers' morale. It may be that high school students, with a few weeks' training, can produce even higher test scores in basic skills than teachers with National Board Certification. If so, we should turn the schools over to anyone with a pulse and forget about professionalism. We may be the first nation in the world with a federal program intended to dumb down our schools and destroy the teaching profession.
You know how easily the test scores may be corrupted when high stakes are attached to them. For those who don't know, may I recommend that they read chapter eight of my new book, which demonstrates how high-stakes accountability has promoted cheating by teachers, principals, districts, and states. The polite term for cheating is "gaming the system." For those who want to learn more, read Richard Rothstein's Grading Education and Daniel Koretz's Measuring Up. And if you want to see the latest research on how pointless it is to evaluate teachers by test scores, even by "value-added assessment," read chapter nine of my new book.


Since my book appeared, I have received hundreds of e-mails from teachers around the country. All of them express profound disappointment, even despair, about the current demand to punish teachers if scores don't go up. It is not that they fear evaluation, but they know that students are not randomly assigned to classes; one year they will have an eager and receptive group of students, the next year they might get a group dominated by reluctant learners.

Several Florida teachers contacted me, seeking help. I asked one to explain how the new Florida law would affect her. She said that the law would create hostility among teachers, as well as between teachers and administrators. She wondered whether anyone would ensure that the demographics of every classroom would be the same, so that all teachers had an equal chance. And she wrote as follows:

I teach at a Title I school so I already have a low level of parent involvement as well as a high ratio of transience. My students do not have a great deal of stability in their lives. My students may go home to an empty house (if they have a house at all) and may not have much to eat for dinner. They may not get a good night's sleep because they are worried about gang activity (yes, we have active gangs in my small city), or they can't get to sleep until they know mom is home from her second job at night, or they are caring for younger siblings, cousins, neighbors, etc. There is no one at home to help them with their homework, or if there is, they cannot help because they don't speak English or they are illiterate themselves. No one is at home teaching my students about the importance of health and cleanliness so my student may come to school with poor hygiene. My student needs glasses, but the family can't afford to provide their child with the tools necessary for his/her success. My student does not even possess adequate background knowledge to fully comprehend the passages he/she is reading. So many aspects of my children's lives are out of my control; yet I will be held accountable (to the point that my teaching certificate itself is on the line) based on how these children perform on one test, one standardized test, taken on one highly stressful day out of their already tumultuous lives...According to NCLB and its brilliant analysis of adequate yearly progress, we are not even measuring my students according to the learning gains they made in one year. AYP does not compare my third graders at the end of the year with those same children at the beginning of the year. The flawed system compares my third grade students' scores this year against completely different students from previous years. Can we just put an end to this numbers game we are playing?

The legislation in Florida was initiated by a Republican state senator named John Thrasher. The bill will indeed thrash teachers and thrash the state's public schools. Who will be the beneficiary of the teaching-to-the-same-lousy-standardized-tests? We can safely anticipate more cheating and greater demand to private public schools.

Almost alone among the national media, Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post has kept close watch on this legislation. She tried to get a comment on it from Secretary Arne Duncan, perhaps hoping that he would denounce it. The Secretary, who was quick to applaud the mass firings of staff at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, had no comment on Florida's plan to abolish the teaching profession and turn it into the test-prep profession. (See also these other blog posts by Valerie Strauss: "Florida Senate Approves Disastrous Teachers Bill," March 24, 2010, and "Disaster for Florida Teachers: Senate Bill 6," March 24, 2010.)

Diane

Lets Fire the Teachers

An interesting post from Diane Ravitch.  Years ago she was an ardent advocate of NCLB. One additional issue.  President Barack Obama should find out more of the facts before he makes comments about the teachers who were fired in Rhode Island. It was a cheap- political shot.

Historian, NYU professor
Posted: March 2, 2010

First, Let's Fire All the Teachers!
===================================

Imagine that you are a teacher in a high school in a high-poverty district.
Many of your students don't speak English. Some don't attend school regularly
because they have to earn money or babysit with their siblings while their
parents are looking for work. Some come to school unprepared because they
didn't do their homework.

But you are idealistic and dedicated, you work with each of the students, you
do your best to teach them reading, writing, science, math, history, whatever
your subject. But despite your best efforts, many of your students can't read
very well (they are struggling to learn English), and many of them don't
graduate. If your school eliminated all its standards, you could easily push
up the graduation rate.

About 45 minutes away is another high school in a much better neighborhood.
Its statistics are far better than yours. The children are almost all born in
the U.S., and their parents are almost all college graduates with good jobs.
Their kids don't go to school hungry, they have their own room and their own
computer, and they have stellar test scores to boot. Their graduation rate is
very impressive, and most of their graduates go to college.

What is to be done about the first school? President George W. Bush signed a
law called "No Child Left Behind," which required constant improvement. The
Obama administration wants to rename the law but they too reject any excuses
for low performance and low graduation rates.


Recently, the school committee of Central Falls, Rhode Island, voted to fire
all 93 members of the staff in their low-performing high school. Central
Falls is the smallest and poorest city in the state, and it has only one high
school. Those fired included 74 classroom teachers, plus the school
psychologist, guidance counselors, reading specialists, and administrators.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan thought this was wonderful; he said the
members of the school committee were "showing courage and doing the right
thing for kids." The kids apparently didn't agree because many of them came
to the committee meeting to defend their teachers.

President Obama thought it was wonderful that every educator at Central Falls
High School was fired. At an appearance before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
on March 1, the President applauded the idea of closing the school and
getting rid of everyone in it. At the same meeting, President Obama
acknowledged Margaret Spellings, who was President George W. Bush's Education
Secretary, because she "helped to lead a lot of the improvement that's been
taking place and we're building on."

Well, yes, the President is right; his own education reform plans are built
right on top of the shaky foundation of President Bush's No Child Left Behind
program. The fundamental principle of school reform, in the Age of Bush and
Obama, is measure and punish. If students don't get high enough scores, then
someone must be punished! If the graduation rate hovers around 50%, then
someone must be punished. This is known as "accountability."

President Obama says that Central Falls must close because only 7% of the
students are proficient in math, and the graduation rate is only 48%. Sounds
bad, right?

But the President has saluted a high school in Providence, Rhode Island,
called "The Met" whose scores are no different from the scores at Central
Falls High School. At Central Falls, 55% of the kids are classified as
"proficient readers," just like 55% at The Met. In math, only 7% of students
at Central Falls are proficient in math, but at The Met--which the President
lauds--only 4% are proficient in math. Ah, but The Met has one big advantage
over Central Falls High Schools: Its graduation rate is 75.6%.

But figure this one out: How can a high school where only 4% of the students
are proficient in math and only 55% are proficient readers produce a
graduation rate of 75.6%? To this distant observer, it appears that the
school with lower graduation standards rates higher in President Obama's
eyes.

President Obama has said on several occasions that he wants to see 5,000
low-performing schools closed. So, yes, there will be plenty of teachers and
principals looking for new jobs.

The question that neither President Obama nor Secretary Duncan has answered
is this: Where will they find 5,000 expert principals to take over the
schools that are closed? Where will they find hundreds of thousands of superb
teachers to fill the newly vacant positions? Or will everyone play musical
chairs to give the illusion of reform?

As it happens, Central Falls High School had seen consistent improvement over
the past two years. Only last year, the State Commissioner sent in a team to
look at the school and commended its improvements. It noted that the school
had been burdened by frequently changing programs and leadership. With more
support from the district and the state, this improvement might have
continued. Instead, the school was given a death warrant.

Will it be replaced by a better school? Who knows? Will excellent teachers
flock to Central Falls to replace their fired colleagues? Or will it be
staffed by inexperienced young college graduates who commit to stay at the
school for two years? Will non-English-speaking students start speaking
English because their teachers were fired? Will children come to school ready
to learn because their teachers were fired?

It would be good if our nation's education leaders recognized that teachers
are not solely responsible for student test scores. Other influences matter,
including the students' effort, the family's encouragement, the effects of
popular culture, and the influence of poverty. A blogger called "Mrs. Mimi"
wrote the other day that we fire teachers because "we can't fire poverty."
Since we can't fire poverty, we can't fire students, and we can't fire
families, all that is left is to fire teachers.

This strategy of closing schools and firing the teachers is mean and
punitive. And it is ultimately pointless. It solves no problem. It opens up a
host of new problems. It satisfies the urge to purge. But it does nothing at
all for the students.

Diane Ravitch is the author of The Death and Life of the Great American
School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic
Books).


 

Ravitch

a blog note. I had to delete the excellent  post by Diane Ravitch which appeared here two days ago.
Something in the post disrupted the other posts on the blog.  I was unable to find the problem. It must be in the code.

Fake school reform

By Diane Ravitch. New York City.
This Strange New Era of "Reform"

Posted: 02 Sep 2008 11:00 AM CDT

Bridging Differences returns today with this entry from Diane Ravitch.

Dear Deborah,

Welcome back from vacation. School is open, and it’s time to start bridging differences. Let’s see what we can do to clarify the deep undercurrents in American politics that are changing what happens in the schoolhouse, and, in some cases, seem likely to change the very nature of the schoolhouse.

In my historical studies, I have usually found that the public debates about schooling may be heated, but teaching and learning change glacially. This has always been a source of frustration to reformers, whether they are progressives or essentialists, because they would like to prescribe big changes and see them happen fast. Ordinarily, that doesn’t happen.

Yet in these past six years, since the enactment of No Child Left Behind, we have seen bigger changes in daily classroom life than anyone could have imagined. The testing requirements of the law now define teaching and learning. As the old adage goes, what is tested is what is taught. So in district after district, all across the land, students are being prepared for the state tests in reading and math, often to the exclusion of other subjects, even recess.

This we all know. But something else is happening that is in some ways even more ominous than the Sword of Damocles that hangs over so many public schools.

We used to see a partisan divide about the big issues in education policy. The Democratic party advocated more funding for disadvantaged students and policies that promoted equity. The Republican party advocated choice, privatization, merit pay, and accountability, and criticized the teachers’ unions as the main obstacles to reform.

In this election cycle, that familiar divide has changed dramatically. The Republicans still advocate choice, privatization, merit pay, and accountability and are still critical of the teachers’ unions. But now there is a significant movement within the Democratic party that advocates the same positions as the Republicans.

The leading advocates of choice, privatization, merit pay, and accountability appeared in a panel discussion during the Democratic convention, led by Chancellor Joel Klein of New York City and Chancellor Michelle Rhee of Washington, D.C. Along with such colleagues as the Rev. Al Sharpton and Mayor Adrian Fenty of the District of Columbia, they present themselves as the true voices of “reform.” Listen to them and what one hears is the same views that the Republicans have been expressing since at least 1996, when Republican candidate Bob Dole launched an attack on the teachers’ unions. Now it is Rhee and Fenty trying to persuade D.C. teachers to abandon the tenure rights that their union won for them.

The “reforms” of the Klein-Sharpton-Rhee group are not at all new. They attack the teachers’ union, bash teachers, demand merit pay, promote charter schools and private management, and laud testing, lots more testing. They love NCLB, and they want it toughened. At bottom, they would like to see the public school system of the United States run like a business, with employees hired and fired at will. They are ready to privatize and outsource whatever they can, trusting private managers to succeed where the public sector (with themselves as leaders) has failed.

A number of articles recently have jumped on the idea that charters, testing, merit pay, etc. are the cutting edge of reform. (See here and here.)

It is curious, is it not, to see these two superintendents present themselves as successful reformers. Rhee has only recently begun her tenure, so it is indeed premature to anoint her a success, as so many in the media have already done, based solely on her bold rhetoric and her audacious effort to undercut the teachers’ union. Klein has been chancellor of the New York City public schools since the fall of 2002; he implemented his “reforms” in 2003. Since then, NYC has seen no significant gains on NAEP in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade math. The city’s gains in 4th grade math are suspicious, since the exclusion rate for that grade and subject was an eye-popping 25 percent, something not seen in any other district tested by NAEP. At the same time, the city’s education spending increased by a startling 79 percent.

Some formula for success. Some business model.

So this is the strange new era we are embarked upon, in which the mantle of “reformer” has passed to those who would dismantle public education, piece by piece.

Diane

Neo cons turn against NCLB

Here's a new article by two former NCLB supporters, Frederick M. Hess and Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Can This Law Be Fixed? A Hard Look at the No Child Left Behind Remedies" --
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.26716,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

The authors continue to place great (and, in my view, unwarranted) confidence in "standards-based reform." But, to their credit, Hess and Finn are open to rethinking their pro-NCLB position on the basis of real-world evidence, which foreshadows the chaos likely to ensue without fundamental changes in the law. If only the so-called "civil rights" groups were willing to do that, the politics of reauthorization would look quite different.

Here are Hess and Finn's concluding paragraphs:
"A Looming Wreck?
"NCLB began with the noble yet naïve promise that every American student will attain proficiency in reading and math by 2014. While there is no doubt that the percentage of proficient students can and should increase dramatically from today's approximately 30 percent level, no educator believes that universal proficiency in seven years is a serious goal; only politicians promise such things. The inevitable result is cynicism among educators and a compliance mentality among public officials.

And, an opinion piece by Diane Ravitch.
Get Congress Out of the Classroom
New York Times Op. Ed. Column -- October 3, 2007
by Diane Ravitch
Despite the rosy claims of the Bush administration, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is fundamentally flawed. The latest national tests, released last week, show that academic gains since 2003 have been modest, less even than those posted in the years before the law was put in place. In eighth-grade reading, there have been no gains at all since 1998.
The main goal of the law — that all children in the United States will be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014 — is simply unattainable. The primary strategy — to test all children in those subjects in grades three through eight every year — has unleashed an unhealthy obsession with standardized testing that has reduced the time available for teaching other important subjects. Furthermore, the law completely fractures the traditional limits on federal interference in the operation of local schools.


I did find them interesting.
This is not about supporting Chester Finn nor Diane Ravitch.

Note what the say. Finn says NCLB is a "civil rights manifesto", it threatens hard won accountability gains - so it should be amended.

Ravitch apparently wants a better test, a single nation wide test. She is not opposed to the current over testing, just stop those states from being too easy in their own testing.

The Forum for Education and Accountability offers a better response: the "NCLB's rigid, mechanistic, sanctions-based approach is doing more harm than good. The modest changes in the House Education Committee's discussion draft and those apparently under consideration in the Senate HELP Committee will not solve the problems. Minor tinkering won't fix the law's reliance on high-stakes testing, unrealistic achievement targets, and punitive mandates.

This brand of accountability sets up a majority of American schools for failure. Repeated studies have shown that most schools in most states will not make AYP (see link to report, below). Over the next few years, the result will be to weaken public support for public education. It could pave the way for privatization schemes that will leave increasing numbers of children behind. More generally, the chaos created by NCLB will intensify voters' cynicism about the federal government's ability to play a constructive or even competent role in social policy."

So, for me no cheers that Finn and Ravitch have taken a critical stand. They want to be consulted as insiders to write a more rigid accountability stand.
This reminds me of Ravitch's pernicious role in California. She was one of three who wrote the History /Social Science Framework in 1987, and currently in use. She defined what multiculturalism is, a neo con version, very Euro centric.
That is what these three are doing here. They are joining the chorus in opposition to NCLB in order to be selected to sit on the panels to draft a new bill or new language.

Duane Campbell