Wall Street’s Investment in School Reform. – D. Ravitch

Ravitch, Diane.  ”Wall Street’s Investment in School Reform.”  Education Week – Bridging Differences.  May 22, 2012.  Retrieved from:  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2012/05/how_wall_street_invested_in_sc.html

The author questions the real motifs of hedge fund managers touting charter schools.

The results are in: Some charters get high test scores, some get low scores, most are no different in test scores from public schools. The wonder is that there are so many low-performing and mediocre charters when they have everything the reform movement demands: no unions, no tenure, no seniority, performance pay, and plenty of uncertified or alternatively certified teachers.

The hedge-fund managers love to get public funding to manage schools that enroll minority children; this not only reduces the cost to them of running a charter school, but it enables them to fantasize that they are part of the civil rights movement of our day. Frankly, it is hard to imagine Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. linking arms with Wall Street hedge-fund managers in a crusade to eliminate unions and to promote privately controlled alternatives to the public schools where the great majority of children are enrolled. Some of us remember that Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis while supporting the right of the city’s sanitation workers to join a union.

Follow the money…

http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/infographics/advocacy-trickle-down.html

Ssshhhh! Testing in progress.

Anonymous. “Ssshhhh! Testing in progress.”  Blog.  All Things Education.  May 17, 2011.  Retrieved from: http://allthingsedu.blogspot.com/2012/05/ssshhhh-testing-in-progress.html

A NYC teacher asked for this to be posted anonymously for fear of retaliation of her administrators.  She describes the weeks leading to the standardized tests and how the rules affect her students and her ability to advocate for them.

Other than the pep rally, teachers spent the week prior to the testing in meetings being lectured on the importance of test security, the protocols that would be our bible for the next two weeks, and on just exactly what would happen to us if these rules were not followed. The plans outlined what would happen from the moment the students entered the classroom until the last test was signed back into our testing coordinator. We were instructed to go over the plans, ask any questions we had and be prepared in the weeks to come. Due to the fact that our school was under scrutiny for previous allegations of cheating, we were warned that any negligence in conforming our classrooms and ourselves to these guidelines would result in an investigation and strict consequences.

I planned lessons throughout the meetings and graded papers in the background, only contributing my thoughts in areas which I found to be egregiously unreasonable or unjust. For example, lined paper for scrap paper, smiling at students (this is what they say is “coaching”), and allowing students to stand and stretch during testing would absolutely not be tolerated. As I listened to these rules, I pictured my bubbly bunch of eight year olds’ faces. Then, the real bomb was dropped: Absolutely no bathroom breaks during testing unless the child was showing physical signs of distress. In addition, we also needed to prevent multiple bathroom trips by determining how badly each child had to use the restroom. Well, any teacher knows that once one student has “an emergency,” they all have emergencies. How am I to be the judge of the content of each child’s bladder? To this I was told it would be easier to deal with angry parents of a child who had wet themselves, than to have to explain the situation to the monitors from central offices.

The Weighting Game. – M. Di Carlo

Di Carlo, Matthew. “The Weighting Game.”  The Shanker Blog. May 9, 2012. Retrieved from: http://shankerblog.org/?p=5764

The author uses Florida as an example of why using weights could be misleading when judging school districts and applies the same weighting logic to teacher evaluation and value-added such as ours in Ohio.

Now, back to the original point: All of these issues also apply to teacher evaluations. You can say that value-added scores count for only 40 or 50 percent, but the effective weight might be totally different, depending both on how you incorporate those scores into the final evaluation score, as well as on how much variation there is in the other components. If, for example, a district can choose their own measures for 20 percent of a total evaluation score, and that district chooses a measure or measures that don’t vary much, then the effective weight of the other components will actually be higher than it is “on paper.” And the effective weight is the one that really matters.

All the public attention to weights, specifically those assigned to value-added, seem to ignore the fact that, in most systems, those weights will almost certainly be different – perhaps rather different – in practice. Moreover, the relative role – the effective weight – of value-added (and any other component) will vary not only between districts (which will have different systems), but also, quite possibly, between years (if the components vary differently each year). This has important implications for both the validity of these systems as well as the incentives they represent.

The worst eighth grade math teacher in NYC. – A. Pallas

Pallas, Aaron.  ”The worst eighth grade math teacher in New York City.”  A Sociological Eye on Education.  May 15, 2012.  Retrieved from:  http://eyeoned.org/content/the-worst-eighth-grade-math-teacher-in-new-york-city_326/

Professor Aaron Pallas writes about the “worst” math teacher in NYC according to Value Added scores.  Carolyn Abbott was a victim of her own success and was working with a severely flawed system.

How could this happen? Anderson is an unusual school, as the students are often several years ahead of their nominal grade level. The material covered on the state eighth-grade math exam is taught in the fifth or sixth grade at Anderson. “I don’t teach the curriculum they’re being tested on,” Abbott explained. “It feels like I’m being graded on somebody else’s work.”

“They’re not accepting answers that are mathematically correct,” Abbott notes, “and accepting answers that aren’t mathematically correct.” And the multiple-choice questions?  “Multiple-choice questions don’t test thinking,” she declares. Knowing how to answer them is “just an art.”

How about some thanks?

No Educational Gifts under This Tree. – S. Singer

Singer, Stuart.  ”No educational gifts under this tree.”  Blog.  The Principal Difference.  May 14, 2012.  Retrieved from:  http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference1/2012/05/no-educational-gifts-under-this-tree/

Author Stuart Singer writes about the many problems with using bubble sheet tests to evaluate schools, principals, and teachers.  Among the many problems is that the tests the students are taking have no bearing on their grades, GPA, or graduation.  They have no reason to take the tests seriously.

We were discussing accountability and one teacher mentioned that the students were ‘Christmas-treeing’ the tests. While I had never heard the term ‘Christmas-treeing,’ I quickly figured out that the students were not taking the tests seriously and were using the answer sheets to create drawings… In our discussion, the teachers talked about their frustration with the lack of student accountability. The school, the teachers, and the administrators were being held accountable for the results of the test, but the students were not.

Tea partiers threaten public education.

(May, 2012).  ”Tea partiers threaten public education.”  Join the Future.  Retrieved from: http://jointhefuture.org/blog/819-tea-partiers-threaten-public-education#disqus_thread

Pro education blog Join the Future exposes the anti-school group in Westerville as being associated with the tea party.

This is a move so radical and extreme that it has only ever been proposed once in the history of the state. If the “Center for Constitutional law” really cared about the Ohio constitution and public education it would be lobbying for a constitutional funding formula for our schools instead of trying to defund them.

How FCAT affected my life.

Video. Taylor, Tea’a.  ”How FCAT affected my life.”  Retrieved from:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ej4evcUkcAc#!

A high school video production class created this video about how high stakes, standardized tests affect them.

What do these individuals have in common?

• They are all scholars
• They all have high GPAs
• They all follow an honors curriculum
• They all failed the FCAT

In Case You Were Wondering What Educators Do On National Teacher Day – L. Eskelsen

Eskelsen, Lily.  ”In Case You Were Wondering What Educators Do On National Teacher Day…”  Lily’s Blackboard.  May 7, 2012.  Retrieved from:  http://lilysblackboard.org/2012/05/in-case-you-were-wondering-what-educators-do-on-national-teacher-day/

NEA Vice President Lily Eskelsen lists all the things teachers do.