New Superintendents, leaders?, why school reform fails

Stop Waiting for a Savior

By TIMOTHY A. HACSI

DID Cathleen P. Black, the former publishing executive who was removed last week after just three months as New York City’s schools chancellor, fail because she lacked a background in education?

In this respect, she has had quite a bit of company over the decades. In 1996, Washington hired a former three-star Army general, Julius W. Becton Jr., to take over its low-performing schools; he left, exhausted, after less than two years. For most of the last decade, the Los Angeles Unified School District was run by non-educators: a former governor of Colorado, Roy Romer, and then a retired vice admiral, David L. Brewer III. They got mixed reviews. Raj Manhas, who had a background in banking and utilities, ran Seattle’s schools from 2003 to 2007, balancing the budget but facing fierce opposition over his plans to close schools.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who had hired Ms. Black without public discussion, quickly replaced her with a deputy mayor steeped in education policy. But the real issue is not the superintendent’s or chancellor’s background, but the excessive emphasis that politicians, educators and parents place on the notion of leadership rather than on empirical evidence about what improves education.

Even as the specific fixes advocated for schools have changed, the role of school-district leaders has gotten greater attention — and the selection process has become more political.

It doesn’t always take actual success to be lauded and promoted, nor does an education background guarantee anything. Roderick R. Paigebecame superintendent of Houston schools in 1994 and in 2001 parlayed his “Houston miracle” to become President George W. Bush’s secretary of education, and the point man for the No Child Left Behind law. That Houston’s test-score increases and low dropout rates were mirages did not impede Mr. Paige’s ascent or the emphasis on testing as a magic bullet.

Perhaps the best-known school leader today is Michelle A. Rhee, who was schools chancellor in Washington from 2007 to 2010. She aggressively took on the teachers’ union, but made more headlines than lasting reforms.

Of course, judging success is difficult. It is not clear what a superintendent would have to do to be universally seen as successful by teachers, parents, politicians, businessmen and taxpayers. One person’s savior is another’s villain, just as in politics. And unlike in politics, superintendents often have second lives; look no further than two of Ms. Black’s predecessors, Ramon C. Cortines, now the superintendent in Los Angeles, and Rudolph F. Crew, who became superintendent in Miami.

The record shows, however, that serial superintendents tend to do worse — at least in public perception — in their later jobs, which would seem to argue against the importance of experience in the field of education.

Ms. Rhee’s predecessor in Washington, Clifford B. Janey, had run the schools in Rochester, where he seems to have had a positive impact on test scores and the achievement gap. From Washington he went to Newark, where after two years he was shown the door.

Paul G. Vallas’s tenure as the head of Chicago’s schools, from 1995 to 2001, was generally seen as a success. His later stint in Philadelphia was less triumphant, relying as it did on privatizing school management, an idea with ideological appeal but little supporting evidence. Now he runs the schools in New Orleans, a herculean task.

Americans’ forward-looking disposition has many advantages, but one downside is that we tend to avoid problems as they develop and then either rise to the occasion (think World War II), or take half-hearted steps before moving on (think of New Orleans). School reform requires long-term efforts, but instead we look for a George Washington to fix our schools through intelligence, strength of will and, more recently, going after the right enemies (namely unions).

The singular attention on school-district leaders is a consequence of developments over the last three decades or so. In 1978, Proposition 13, which capped property taxes in California, convinced politicians across the country that tax increases amounted to political suicide, thereby making it harder to increase school financing. In 1983, “A Nation at Risk,” a government report that was more publicized than read, declared our public schools to be failing. Since then education reform has been driven by a fear of international economic competition but also constrained financially; superintendents come and go, while the challenges mount.

Cathie Black lasted only three months instead of the more typical three years, but her failure seems more one of public relations than of educational leadership. The problem is all the time we spend talking about how the last leader failed, how the current leader is struggling, how the next leader must succeed.

Until the headlines and our attention focus on what the research shows can directly improve school performance — additional money, used wisely; longer school days; better-paid and better-prepared teachers; year-round schooling — instead of the latest savior/soon-to-be-failure, we, like Ms. Black and Mr. Bloomberg, are missing the point.

Timothy A. Hacsi, an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is the author of “Children as Pawns: The Politics of Educational Reform.”

Jerry Brown appoints Honig

Honig Appointed to State Board of Education: More Support for Excessive Phonics Teaching?   by Stephen Krashen 

Reports of Governor Brown's appointment of Bill Honig to the State Board of Education have focused on Honig's previous legal problems.  More serious is Honig's stance on educational issues  ("Brown names top advisers," 1/6). 

After resigning as state superintendent, Honig became a dedicated supporter of intensive systematic phonics, the view that all children need phonics instruction that includes all major rules of phonics, presented in a strict order. 

Some basic phonics instruction is helpful, but evidence refutes the extremist intensive systematic position: Studies show that intensive phonics makes no significant contribution to performance on tests in which children have to understand what they read. 


Reading First, part of No Child Left Behind, is based on intensive systematic phonics. Reading First children performed no better on tests of reading comprehension than children taught by regular methods, even though Reading First children had more reading instruction.  

Studies also show that California's low reading scores are not due to a lack of phonics, but are because of a lack of access to reading materials. California has failed to support its public and school libraries, and studies relate library quality to reading achievement. 

Honig's misreading of research is more serious than his financial misdemeanor. 

Stephen Krashen


Sources:

Studies of intensive phonics and reading comprehension: Garan, E. 2001. Beyond the smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan 82, no. 7 (March), 500-506; Krashen, S. 2009. Does Intensive Decoding Instruction Contribute to Reading Comprehension? Knowledge Quest 37 (4): 72-74. 

Reading First: Gamse, B., R. Jacob, R., M. Horst, B. Boulay, and F. Unlu  2008. Reading First Impact Study Final Report (NCEE 2009-4038). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. 

Low reading scores not the result of lack of phonics: McQuillan, J. 1997. The Literacy Crisis: False Claims and Real Solutions. Heinemann.

US Senate Fails jobs bill

Earlier this afternoon, the US Senate failed to pass its version of jobs legislation. In response, Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, a nonpartisan public policy research group, issued this statement: "Nearly 1.5 million unemployed California workers won't receive unemployment insurance (UI) benefits that they would spend quickly and close to home, boosting the local economy and helping local businesses avoid layoffs. More than 2 million people nationwide will lose these benefits if Congress fails to act before leaving for the July 4 recess. California won't receive $1.8 billion in federal assistance - funds assumed in the Governor's May Revision, as well as the Senate and Assembly budget plans - forcing even deeper spending cuts than those enacted in recent budgets and already on the table as a result of the unprecedented drop in revenues brought on by the recession. These actions will cause private- and public-sector job losses and raise the risk of a double-dip recession as the loss of spending power ripples through the economy. Without more federal aid, state budget-cutting actions nationwide place at risk as many as 900,000 jobs over the next year. California will have to end its TANF Emergency Fund, which has enabled counties across the state to create 20,000 jobs, putting people back to work and keeping dollars flowing through local economies. Congress should not leave for the July 4 holiday until it extends unemployment benefits, provides additional aid to cash-strapped states, and extends funding for the TANF emergency jobs programs."  Jean Ross. California Budget Project

Parents give report card: California Schools Fail Students of Color

Students and Parent Groups Give Report Card on California Schools From 2000 – 2010

WHAT:    On the west steps of the California Capitol Building. students, parents, and allies will mount their defense of a public school system that has been under attack for the last decade.   Instead of receiving grades, theCampaign for Quality Education will instead grade California’s schools from 2000 – 2010.  Based on data, personal experience, and community surveys, the CQE will be grading California’s schools in the following categories:  Funding, Graduation Rates, College and Career Readiness, Teacher Quality, Facilities/Materials, and Accountability.

With the May California budget revise underway, students and parents from across California—Long Beach, Los Angeles, Orange County, the Central Valley, San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland—will also speak out against the $17 billion cuts to education over the last two years, back legislation that supports accountability and revenue creation, and make delegation visits with their local legislators.  With immigrant students, low-income students, and students of color a majority of California’s schools, the CQE will stress that their needs are California’s needs.

This event is timed to coincide with Brown v. Board.  Fifty-six years after the landmark Supreme Court case was supposed to desegregate schools, California graduates less than 60% of its black and brown students from high school. 

WHEN:        Tuesday, May 11, 2010        10:30am    Speakout
                                                                1:00pm      Legislative Visits

WHERE:    State Capitol Building (West Steps), Capitol Avenue, L Street, Sacramento, CA 95814

WHY:    “We are beyond cuts to the education budget,” said Melia Franklin, Executive Director of Parent Leadership Action Network (PLAN).  “This is an amputation and California’s future will pay for this ‘Lost Generation’ for years to come.  We come as parents and students of color, the people most affected by this Crisis in Priorities, to defend education and include our voice in solving this crisis."

For more information or to join us, please call Paul Tran, Communications Director at Californians for Justice, at (562) 951-1015 or email him atpaul@caljustice.org

Why School Reform Fails

Why school reform has failed.

After over a decade of test driven accountability, schools serving poor and minority students are not improved.  Why?

The people in charge of the reform, from No child Left Behind, to state developed accountability systems, and now the Race to the Top program,  are the same people who created the present  failing system.

They will not improve the system.

Reform has been stopped by the power of those in charge- they want to keep things as they are.  They think within the narrow confines of school interventions which maintain their own positions and their own leadership advantages.  So, “professionals” with a focus and training emphasizing limited views of research and testing, derive limited interventions which emphasize testing and measurement.  The last two decades of school reform have followed this direction. The post below  by Jim Crawford on the lack of evidence to support the proposed Race to the Top interventions illustrates this failure.

Anglo centered, culturally myopic, power centered, controlling, reductionist,  in the hands of the past generation.  They have refused to consider and allow to develop the culturally responsive strategies we know are necessary.  To pursue new strategies would require first that they understand the proposed changes and second that the proposed changes would continue them in the roles of leaders.  This has not happened,

One limit is that there has been little clear development of the multicultural alternatives.

While preparation ideas abound, the many subtle acts and interventions that skilled teachers use in their interactions are simply not described. =perhaps they are not describable. The issues are too complex and inter active.  Teachers can learn dozens of interactions and use them, but without a controlled and limited environment these strategies collectively lead to improved achievement, but we can not detail which intervention  made the difference.

The “ reformers” as recognized by mainstream media  can only recognize their own narrow ideological positions, dominated by positivism, and low level of testing, low quality assessments.

By holding on to these narrow- and failed- accountability measures, they have dramatically restricted teaching strategies to those that produce only marginal gains. But, their own narrow research paradigms de legitimate alternative views. And, they have failed.
   And, as developed in several posts here, there is the problem of poverty.  The U.S. has one of the most severe childhood poverty records in the developed world. It is precisely schools in these neighborhoods that fail.  The media approved "reformers" chant - no excuses.  But, that is because they don't work in schools held down by poverty.  More on this in other posts.

Excerpts from Choosing Democracy; a practical guide to multicultural education. 4th. edition. 2020.

Some media discover there is a controversy about NCLB

From US News and World Report, December 9, 2009

At the Department of Education headquarters in Washington, officials no
longer refer to the No Child Left Behind law by name. Last June, the
quaint red schoolhouse the Bush administration built in front of the
department building as a symbol of his signature domestic policy was
torn down. While the impact NCLB has had on the nation's classroom is
still the subject of fervent debate, there's no doubt that the Obama
administration intends to strike a new path for education reform.

When President George W. Bush signed NCLB in 2002, the policy met with
bipartisan praise and looked set to become the most influential federal
reform of the nation's schools since desegregation in the 1950s. Today,
efforts to reauthorize the law—something that was scheduled to happen
in 2007—continue to languish in Congress, unable to gather enough
momentum from either party in either chamber. Its sinking trajectory
demonstrates how difficult it can be for politicians in Washington to
improve the quality of education offered in classrooms across the
country.


The attitude many educators, politicians, and the general public have
toward NCLB can be characterized in a single word: conflicted. The law
mandates that 100 percent of K-12 public school students meet state
proficiency standards in reading and math by 2014. Schools that miss
the mark could face sanctions that include staff restructuring or
takeovers by outside agencies. Most educators and activists agree the
law has helped expose wide gaps in academic achievement between white
students and their economically disadvantaged, minority peers and has
identified low-performing schools.

The core criticism of NCLB centers on whether meeting these
requirements has, paradoxically, forced schools to lower the caliber of
the education they provide. Critics assert that because NCLB provides
no federal standards for what students at each grade level should be
learning, states can "dumb down" the difficulty of their reading and
math tests to meet the law's requirements.

"The biggest problem with NCLB is that it doesn't encourage high
learning standards," says Education Secretary Arne Duncan. "The net
effect is that we are lying to children and parents by telling kids
they are succeeding when they are not."

The pressure Duncan and the Obama administration now face is how to
improve NCLB so students are challenged to learn, not just score well
on standardized tests. Many education experts are speculating that
Obama's Race to the Top initiative is essentially a dry run for the
next version of NCLB. The Education Department is committing up to $350
million of the $4.35 billion available in competitive Race to the Top
grants to support the creation of assessments, or tests, linked to
common standards. (The National Governors Association already has
started work on common standards.) Rep. George Miller, the California
Democrat who heads the House education committee, says he expects that
the results of Race to the Top will influence the shape of the
reauthorization legislation for NCLB.

Education Department officials have started holding meetings nationwide
with teachers, parents, and others to get their input on changes to the
NCLB legislation. While department officials might not entirely agree
with NCLB's practices, they can't walk away from the law yet, either.

"Duncan is sticking a toe into these turbid waters," says Chester Finn,
president of the nonprofit Thomas B. Fordham Institute. "He is . . .
declaring that we must use [NCLB's] current tools—including
standardized testing—until we develop better ones."

Getting everyone in the debate to settle on which tools are better
could break the NCLB logjam in Congress







http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2009/12/09/no-child-left-behind-law-
loses-support_print.htm

Even Diane Ravitch recognizes the sham of Race to the Top

Obama's Awful Education Plan

By Diane Ravitch
Posted: August 23, 2009 10:22 AM
No group had greater hopes for President Obama and his promise of change than the nation's teachers. Poll after poll showed that they despised President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) law with its demand for testing, testing, testing. When asked, teachers said that NCLB was driving out everything except reading and math, because they were the only subjects that counted. Science, the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, all gave way to make more time for students to take practice tests in reading and math. In some districts, the time set aside for practice tests consumed hours of every school day.

NCLB was a failure, and not just because teachers didn't like it. Test scores inched up, but no more than they had before NCLB was passed. Scores on college-entrance exams remained stagnant. Just last week, the ACT reported that only 23% of the class of 2009 was prepared to earn as much as a C average in college. ACT tests over a million students, not only in reading and math, but also in science and social studies. ACT found that more than three-quarters of this year's graduates--who were in fifth grade when NCLB was passed--are not ready for college-level studies.

Part of the problem is that the tests on which so much attention is now lavished are low-level. Students don't have to know much to pass them.

Another part of the problem is that the states have been quietly but decisively lowering their expectations and passing students who know little or nothing. New York State's tests have recently been deconstructed and shown to be a sham. Diana Senechal, a New York City teacher, demonstrated on gothamschools.org (http://gothamschools.org/2009/08/17/guessing-my-way-to-promotion/) a few days ago that she (or anyone) could pass the New York state examinations in the middle school grades by guessing, not even looking at the content of the questions but just answering A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, in order. Frederick Smith, an independent testing expert, determined that virtually every student got enough credit on the written portion of the state tests to be able to guess randomly on the multiple-choice questions and pass (http://gothamschools.org/2009/08/21/test-analyst-reading-exam-bar-even-lower-than-critics-say/).

So, what is the Obama administration now doing? Its $4.3 Billion "Race to the Top" fund will supposedly promote "innovation." But this money will be used to promote privatization of public education and insist that states use these same pathetic tests to decide which teachers are doing a good job. With the lure of all that money hanging out there to the states, the administration is requiring that they remove all restrictions on the number of privately-managed charter schools that receive public dollars and that they use test results to evaluate teachers.

This is not change that teachers can believe in. These are exactly the same reforms that President George W. Bush and his Secretary Margaret Spellings would have promoted if they had had a sympathetic Congress. They too wanted more charter schools, more merit pay, more testing, and more "accountability" for teachers based on those same low-level tests. But Congress would never have allowed them to do it.

Now that President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan have become the standard-bearer for the privatization and testing agenda, we hear nothing more about ditching NCLB, except perhaps changing its name. The fundamental features of NCLB remain intact regardless of what they call it.

The real winners here are the edu-entrepreneurs who are running President Obama's so-called "Race to the Top" fund and distributing the billions to other edu-entrepreneurs, who will manage the thousands of new charter schools and make mega-bucks selling test-prep programs to the schools.

Follow Diane Ravitch on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DianeRav

Governor's Education Proposals: F

Governor’s Proposed Budget is “Disaster” for Schools

By Marty Hittelman
President
California Federation of Teachers

The budget proposed by the governor is a disaster for the students of California. It fails to provide adequate school funding. It also undermines vital health and human services that students need to achieve their best. The budget proposal cuts education funding by more than $7 billion. It will harm student achievement at all levels, from preschool to higher education. This budget will erase progress made in the past decade towards our current high standards of achievement.

Long-term solutions to our state's revenue shortfall are missing, due to Republicans’ allegiance to a blind and inflexible antitax philosophy. Instead of addressing the short and long term needs of California, this budget proposal ignores the need for stable school funding. Our polling has shown that Californians are willing to support our schools, including a willingness to pay additional taxes for that purpose.

The governor has proposed that schools shorten the school year to reduce costs. This clearly will set students back. There are better alternatives.

Here are some of the options available for providing additional revenues to support public education:

• Federal economic stimulus funds for schools should be fully directed to schools

• Restore income tax rates to 10% for Californians earning over $250,000 and 11% for over $500,000 ($7 billion in non-recessionary years)

• Institute an oil severance tax of 9.9% as is present in all other oil-producing states ($1.7 billion with oil at $100 per barrell)

Our public schools have already experienced more than $500 million in unexpected budget cuts this year—forcing many schools to lay off teachers and education support professionals as well as eliminating art, music, and vocational education programs that help students learn and succeed.

These proposed cuts will require laying off a broad range of educational employees and drive qualified teachers to other states where education is adequately funded. Class sizes will increase, individual instruction will decrease, learning conditions will be compromised and hundreds of thousands of students will be left without nurses, counselors or instructional aides.

These cuts come at a time when California already ranks 47th in per-pupil spending, and dead last in the number of counselors, librarians and school nurses per student. Schools are being asked to absorb more than our fair share of cuts – more than any other sector of government. That’s putting education last, not first.

For a clear idea of the scale of the governor’s proposed more than $7 billion cuts to education, here are a few of the possible ways these cuts could be accomplished:

• 50% increase in class sizes

• Laying off 160,000 classroom teachers

• Cutting more than $31,500 from every classroom

The vote this week by the Los Angeles Unified School District to lay off up to 2,300 classroom teachers is just the beginning of the deluge of teacher layoffs that will occur under the governor’s proposed budget.

The simple fact is California’s schools need additional revenues to provide our students with the education they deserve.

Californians need an approach that would permanently raise the revenue necessary to ensure California's future success.

Marty Hittelman, a community college math professor from Los Angeles, is the President of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) which is a member of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The CFT represents faculty and other school employees in public and private schools and colleges, from early childhood through higher education in California.

Why Legislative School Reform does not work

We spend less per student than 16 other modern industrialized countries (Slavin, 1998). And, California spends less than 26 other states. Moreover, of these, we are the only country that does not actively promote equality of educational opportunity. In the Netherlands, for example, schools receive 25 percent more funding for each lower-income child and 90 percent more funding for each minority child than in the United States (Slavin, 1998). Clearly, schools serving working-class students and cultural minorities fail in large part because our nation refuses to invest in its children. Our economy needs well-educated workers. We cannot permit schools to continue to fail. When schools succeed for the middle class and fail for working-class students and students of color, schools contribute to a crippling division along economic and racial lines in our society. Schools, as public institutions, must find ways to offer all children equal educational opportunity. Yet reformed schools are more exceptions than the common pattern, particularly in our urban areas.
Let us be clear about the reality of schools in our nation. Some middle-class schools could benefit from reform, but most middle-class schools work. Most schools in urban areas, however, are unable to provide the equal educational opportunity called for by our national ideals and by constitutional law. There will be no significant change in the quality of urban education without substantial new funds allocated to these schools. As the NEA’s Chase has noted, children in these schools need and deserve the same quality of buildings, teachers, materials, and resources as do students from affluent neighborhoods.

Neo liberal reformers, although they claim to be influenced by business management theories, miss use recent developments in management theory. They fail to recognize that teacher working conditions are student learning conditions. Most large city schools are highly bureaucratized and control oriented institutions- based upon a high level of control and distrust – as is the federal legislation NCLB. Modern management theory recognizes that in personell-intensive workplace, control does not work well. Each year schools place the most inexperienced teachers with students who need the help the most. We staff urban schools with large number of teachers who failed to find a position in their preferred suburban district, and then we wonder why over 50% leave within 3 years.
Attempts 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.
Rather than incorporate teaches into their planning, these school administrators
repeatedly imposed neo-liberal policies including closing schools and attacking teach-
ers unions. They admire what they believe to be corporate culture (not including the
revelations of the actual culture of 2008/2009 economic recession) and are arbitrary in
management systems with limited input from teachers or parents. Teachers have not
been respected nor consulted. Little thought has been given to how these policies, havebeen destructive to the children and their futures.
Neo liberal reformers blamed the teachers unions for their own failure to improve public schools. In one sense they are correct. Unions have organized and used political power to limit the expansion of corporate control over schooling. Unions have defended the traditions of Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey and others that public schooling should prepare young people for democratic life.

NCLB in practice

My school, Noralto Elementary School in Sacramento, is being torn apart,
thanks to No Child Left Behind.
Of the 664 students at my school, 450 of them are English language
learners. They come mainly from underprivileged families, and rely on our
school as a pillar in their lives. Many parents are unable to provide the
academic support our students need, and nearly all our students struggle
with language barriers. Consequently, the vast majority of them are
reading below grade level. Fortunately, the staff is full of passionate
teachers who care deeply about these children.
When students arrive at our school from Mexico, Thailand and Laos, they
have to learn to speak the language before they can begin to read.
Additionally, students arriving directly from Thailand and Laos must first
master the English letters before they can even begin to blend the sounds.
Can you expect these children to be reading at a fourth- or fifth-grade
level by the end of the year? Certainly not. Have the teachers failed
because they have not achieved such a miracle? Yes, according to our
president and his No Child Left Behind act.
Every year, No Child raises the standards higher, and schools scramble to
meet them. Last year, the Annual Yearly Progress score requirement was
24.4 percent for English Language Arts (reading and writing). My school's
was 27.9 percent - above the required percentage - but one significant
subgroup, our Asian American population, scored only 22.8 percent.
So, once again, we did not meet the goal. Failing to meet the goal two
years in a row labels a school Program Improvement. If you are such a
school for five years, No Child can come in and wipe the slate clean,
getting rid of all the teachers and replacing them with new, "more
qualified" teachers - teachers who evidently possess mystical powers to
teach English to nonnative speakers in the blink of an eye.
What is extremely frustrating for Noralto is that our administrators and
teachers have been working harder than ever, and our scores have steadily
improved since the inception of No Child in 2002, when our reading scores
were only 14.3 percent. However, the government continues to take punitive
action, and labels us as a "failing" school.
My school is in its fourth year of Program Improvement. Next year, the
imposed goal is 35.2 percent - a goal we cannot hope to meet - and it will
continue to leap every year until it reaches the 100 percent mark in 2014.
This means that my school and thousands like it have "failed," despite
desperate efforts to provide quality education for all students. For us,
this means that all nontenured teachers will probably be fired at the end
of this year, and all permanent teachers could be "involuntarily
reassigned" elsewhere in the district. And, sadly, our students and
families will be faced with new teachers who will have no connection with
them, the school, the community or each other.
How is this better for children? How does it make any sense? The reality
of No Child is that it is sucking the joy out of education. A teacher's
job is to breathe life into education and to get children to love
learning. Creating rigorous testing is simply creating an oppressive
educational system in which music, computers, physical education, science
and social studies are gradually fading into nonexistence as the panicked
push for language arts and math becomes a nationwide obsession.
"Good" teachers are the ones who teach to the test, rather than those who
employ creativity, excitement and a positive learning environment. At my
school, a specialist has created a rigorous "bell-to-bell" schedule, in
which each minute of our day is mapped out. We are told what and how to
teach, what to put on our walls, and what interventions to provide. All
assemblies and field trips have been banned.
As a bonus, No Child is up for reauthorization in Congress, with the
additional stipulation of merit pay. This dictates that teachers' salaries
will be contingent upon test scores. The immediate effect of this act, if
it goes through, is that all the best teachers will flee to the best
schools, leaving the children who need the most help with the teachers
least able to supply it. Then, truly, we will be leaving our children
behind.

Alyson Beahm is a teacher at Noralto Elementary School in Sacramento.
Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle

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PACT and California Teacher Preparation

Education Week
Published Online: October 29, 2007
Published in Print: October 31, 2007

LETTER
Calif. Teacher Assessment Offers No Improvements

To the Editor:
The Performance Assessment for California Teachers, or PACT, was approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing—not by teachers, nor by the college professors who prepare them (“Performance Test for New Calif. Teachers Approved,” Oct. 17, 2007). I and other faculty members in teacher preparation in the California State University system worked to oppose this bureaucratic imposition of an unfunded mandate.
Trial runs of this particular type of teacher-performance assessment lead many to believe that such assessment in its various forms will not actually improve the quality of teachers, nor contribute to closing achievement gaps. It will cost future teachers a great deal of time and money. Your article claims that studies of PACT pilots have shown positive results, but advocates of PACT have not sought evidence from those of us opposed to it.
The one-sided argument presented is that portfolio assessment is an improvement over the current assessment system. It may well be an improvement for elite universities with small teacher-preparation programs, such as Stanford, a leader in the development of PACT. There, academic professors do not usually supervise student-teachers or interns. In such sites, a portfolio assessment may be better than a written checklist from the field.
But for universities with large programs, the cost in time and money is substantial. For those of us at these lowly-brethren institutions, advocates would need to demonstrate that PACT is a more substantive assessment than professors making six to eight evaluative visits per semester to supervise student-teaching, plus the evaluation of host teachers. This has not been demonstrated.
What we have is another bureaucratic solution imposed on teacher education by persons who do not work closely with teachers in the field.
Duane E. Campbell
Professor of Bilingual/Multicultural Education
California State University-Sacramento
Sacramento, Calif.

Vol. 27, Issue 10, Page 27

G.O.P. Electoral Vote Scheme Blows Up – Spreading Egg All Over Faces of Republican Operatives, Shills

Over on the California Progress Report.
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com

G.O.P. Electoral Vote Scheme Blows Up – Spreading Egg All Over Faces of Republican Operatives, Shills

NAEP results: not definitive

The 2007 NAEP results are presently available on line. They are not yet available in print. As per past years, the Bush administration is making claims about the scores which are not supported by the evidence.
Here's a more intelligent article on the NAEP results than I've seen elsewhere. It brings out most of the important points, in my view. To wit:

1. The recent gains are quite modest, especially when it comes to closing "achievement gaps."
2. The upward trends in math and in 4th grade reading started well before NCLB took effect and appear to have leveled off a bit since that time.
3. The NAEP data offer no clear conclusions for policy -- it doesn't prove that NCLB is either helping or hurting.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119076129895539227.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Schoolkids Post Modest Gains in National Test
NAEP Scores Are Up Since '05, But Persistent Gaps Fuel Fight Over No Child Left Behind
By JOHN HECHINGER
Wall Street Journal
September 26, 2007; Page D1

NCLB controversy

Back to Article
SCHOOLS
Educators ponder who gets left behind
Renewal of federal education law sparks debate over testing

Nanette Asimov, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, February 19, 2007
Like a strict teacher demanding precision from her students, No Child Left Behind has inspired reactions ranging from anger to admiration during the five years it has re-shaped public education in every city and hamlet in America.

Now that Congress is preparing to reauthorize the 2002 federal law, groups representing a range of interests -- educators, employers, testing advocates, testing foes and politicians of every stripe, including the president -- want the rules rewritten to reflect each of their points of view.

But as the congressional debate kicks off, this much appears certain: The law's basic premise requiring every student everywhere to score at grade level by 2014 will be kept intact, regardless of how improbable success may be.

And schools that persistently fail to meet annual benchmarks for improvements in test scores still will be subject to a range of penalties -- from having to help students find a new school to shutting down altogether.

What Congress may change are some day-to-day rules.

Like the law itself, the rules are aimed at getting back to basics:

What's a highly qualified teacher? What makes a school successful? What's fair if you don't speak English or have a learning disability? Should testing focus exclusively on math and English? How much money should be spent, and how do we know if it's well spent?

Criticism about the highly prescriptive law has come mainly from educators -- traditional allies of the Democrats, who now control Congress. But Democrats such as East Bay Rep. George Miller and Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy not only helped write the bipartisan No Child Left Behind law, they've been among its greatest champions.

"This is a defining issue about the future of our nation and about the future of democracy, the future of liberty and the future of the United States in leading the free world," Kennedy said of the law when it passed. "No piece of legislation will have a greater impact or influence on that."

But the California Teachers Association's parent organization, the National Education Association, which represents more than 3 million teachers, has declared No Child Left Behind fundamentally flawed. What the teachers dislike most is that the law essentially sends bad schools to the corner with a dunce cap.

"No Child Left Behind is the worst thing that's ever happened to education,'' said Barbara Kerr, president of the union's California arm. "It's punitive. It's the scourge of many of our teachers."

The union wants Congress to expand the definition of successful schools to include those that improve somewhat -- not just those that raise test scores by the prescribed amount.

The union is not alone in demanding this change. Other educators, including state school superintendents, school board members and even parents have been asking Congress for it for years.

The way it is now, each public school must make adequate yearly progress. That means more students must score at grade level every year until everyone is proficient in 2014, though each state can set its own pace. Last year in California, the law required only one-fourth of students to score at grade level at each school. About 60 percent of schools met that goal.

Missing the state's goal two years in a row triggers consequences at schools that get federal funds for having a high proportion of low-income students -- as most California schools do.

Some consequences are welcome, such as new money for tutoring, more training for teachers and added technical assistance.

But some are not: Schools must tell students they can transfer to a higher-scoring school. If the low-achieving school continues to miss adequate yearly progress goals, more extreme measures can be imposed: Teachers can be ordered replaced or the school can be turned over to outside management or shut.

Many educators are asking Congress for a broader definition of success.

Business leaders -- the students' future employers -- are arguing just as fervently against making it easier to meet progress benchmarks.

"There is no more important or easy-to-understand measurement of student academic achievement than whether a child is reading and learning math at grade level," said Jim Lanich, president of the advocacy group California Business for Education Excellence. "By focusing on grade-level proficiency for every student, every year, in every subject, and by requiring reporting for each subgroup of students, it's easy to see which students are improving and which students are losing ground."

"Subgroup" is edu-speak for students sorted by ethnicity, poverty, language skills and special needs. No Child Left Behind also requires each subgroup in a school to make adequate yearly progress.

In coming months, advocates for students in these subgroups will appear before Congress to argue that fewer kids should have to be tested, that more English learners should be allowed to take a different test from children who are fluent and that students in different subgroups should be allowed to improve at differing rates.

Their key rationale is that the law unfairly paints many schools as failures, and that asking all students to reach the same benchmark ignores the fact that not all start from the same place.

"There is no 'standard' student, so why are we using standardized tests?" is how one 17-year-old student in San Francisco, Theresa Muehlbauer, once described the problem.

But one group representing low-achieving students will tell Congress just the opposite -- that the law has never been more necessary.

Russlynn Ali, executive director of Education Trust West, an advocacy group in Oakland, says bringing every child's skills up to grade level is the major civil rights battle of the 21st century -- and that broadening the definition of successful schools would weaken No Child Left Behind at its core.

"For the first time in our history, we have publicly committed to meeting the needs of all children who enter the schoolhouse door, regardless of the background or level of achievement they bring with them," Ali recently told the California Board of Education. She was urging the state to aggressively implement the federal law.

Miller, the Martinez Democrat who helped write the law and now chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, which is holding reauthorization hearings on it, said Congress is leaning toward the broader definition of success.

But he said another constituent's proposed change is already dead in the water -- the recommendation by President Bush that the government offer vouchers for private and religious school tuition.

That "didn't pass muster when Republicans controlled the Congress," he said, "and it certainly won't pass muster now that Democrats do."

E-mail Nanette Asimov at nasimov@sfchronicle.com.

© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.

and more:
It is all not as simple as news writers and politicians would have us believe:

.. Second, who said anything about abandoning a school improvement agenda? Third, what makes you think NCLB has a school improvement agenda? NCLB doesn’t even measure school or student improvement. Nor does it really measure achievement gaps (e.g., schools that make AYP have achievement gaps that are as large, and often larger, than schools that don’t, gaps are measured at only one cut point, etc.).Which of its measures do you believe have been demonstrably proven to improve schools or student achievement? Can you identify any present in- school reform, or set of reforms, that has shown results that are large enough to close from ½ to a full standard deviation in achievement gaps? If not, isn’t that a set up for kids and educators: Achieve a goal for which there is presently no school reform means available for doing so? And can you point to any school or school system, here or abroad, that’s even close to 100% proficiency in challenging subject matter, which is what NCLB requires even though we know that most, but not all, states have lower standards than that? (If NAEP proficiency level becomes the standard, then, of course, every state will have unrealistically high standards.) Have the laws of individual differences been repealed anywhere but here?
How nice that NCLB allows its supporters to feel they’re on the side of the angels, but none of them have to produce unattainable results and suffer the demoralization and other consequences of “failure.” Other folks with equally noble sentiments would prefer not to see yet another generation of disadvantaged children sacrificed to high-minded false promises and, instead, do something that can actually make a difference while also holding schools accountable for things that are attainable, valuable and under their control.
[from Bella Rosenberg]