Ed Beat: Open Letters; Faux Reforms; Arne Duncan; Chicago Battles On; Food Fight

Open Letter: Valerie Strauss, of the WaPo, is a remarkably reliably (and remarkably friendly) critical source on the machinations of the political "education" establishment. In her columns, on the "The Answer Sheet" blog, she has presented alternative views to the corpoRat ravings of the likes of Arne Duncan and Michelkle Rhee. Here she introduces Peggy Robertson, a  "teacher explaining why she is offended":

...(She) taught kindergarten, first, second, fourth, fifth and sixth grade in Missouri and Kansas for 10 years. She was hired by Richard C. Owen Publishers in 2001 to serve as a Learning Network coordinator and spent the next three years training teacher leaders and administrators in educational theory and practice in various states. In 2004 she became literacy coordinator for the Adams 50 School District in Westminster, Colorado. A version of this appeared on her blog, Peg with Pen..

She knows the bureaucracy, the money guys, and the big wheels. Her "open letter to Prez Shamwow F. Lowbar urges him to renounce the emphasis on testing/accountabilty and to return to a more wholistic conception of the art. There is considerably LESS chance of Pres. Shamwow F. Lowbar actually DOING that than there is of him selling a daughter to horny Arabs.

Strauss, Continued:  Soooo-PRAHHS! Turns out all these corpoRat reforms just aren't that helpful for students who aren't already in the middle-class.Who gnu, I asks ya!@

...(A) new study on the effects of this movement in Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago concludes that little has been accomplished and some harm has been done to students, especially the underprivileged.
The report looks at the impact of reforms that have been championed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other well-known reformers, including Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, and, in New York City, Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City Public Schools and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It says:

The reforms deliver few benefits and in some cases harm the students they purport to help, while drawing attention and resources away from policies with real promise to address poverty-related barriers to school success…

The full study, titled “Market-oriented education reforms’ rhetoric trumps reality,” was conducted by Elaine Weiss and Don Long of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education initiative, which was convened in 2008 by Economic Policy Institute President Larry Mishel in an effort to champion a well-rounded approach to education that goes beyond test-based accountability. It will be available here next week. The executive summary can be seen here now.

"Market-based" accountability and assessments are short-hand for the imposition of CorpoRat "standards" on public schools for the purpose--mainly--of keeping the Negroes down.

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 On Arne: Among the first (of many) President Shamwow, F. Lowbar's DIS-appointments was the naming of Chicago CorpoRat lawyer and "education entrepreneur" Arne Duncan to the post of Secretary of the Dept. of Education. Duncan was a disappointment first, of course, because he was and still is an advocate of Charter schools, school privatization, and the militarization of schools wherein "darkies" compose the majority of the population. It was one of the first 'tells' that ThePrez was just another CorpoRat hump.
Former, reborn, corpoRat hump, Diane Ravitcvh recently took to the pages of the NYReview of Books to grade Duncan's (and by extension, ThePrez") performance:

 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan loves evaluation. He insists that everyone should willingly submit to public grading of the work they do. The Race to the Top program he created for the Obama Administration requires states to evaluate all teachers based in large part on the test scores of their students. When the Los Angeles Times released public rankings that the newspaper devised for thousands of teachers, Duncan applauded and asked, “What’s there to hide?” Given Duncan’s enthusiasm for grading educators, it seems high time to evaluate his own performance as Secretary of Education.

Fyeieio: he fuukin FLUNKS, an just about every relevant measure of competence and leadership.

Meanwhile (or rather, previously), concerned students, parents and teachers had taken to the streets (in March) at Harvard to protest the Shamwow F. Lowbar/Arne Duncan reforms, when Duncan came to the school to pump corpoRat reform. One participating professor recorded  her thoughts:

“As a professor of education, an educator of teachers, and someone who creates curriculum,” (Prof) Carlsson-Paige said, “I see the harm education reform is causing children—the disappearance of play, creativity, and the arts from our schools. Evaluation is now driving curriculum, and curriculum is being reduced to something mechanistic. This isn’t real learning. Children are learning information by rote in the early years that cannot give them the solid foundation of knowledge they need to build on, as school continues. And the ‘drill and kill’ methods turn kids off from school early on and keep them from discovering the joy in learning. And this is mostly about poor children, because more well-to-do communities are able to provide all kinds of compensatory learning activities, such as trips to the museums, theater and music programs, summer camps.
“We’re losing out on the opportunity to have a well-educated citizenry,” she said. “True citizens need to be able to not take things at face value, to think critically, to question authority. Tests don’t measure critical thinking or imagination. They reduce the whole learning process to lower level kinds of information that can be tested. It’s really sad and scary to see this happening.”

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A Toddlin' Town: Chicago remains at the epicenter of tesistance to "reform," with the city's minority population, and teachers' unions, very nearly in open rebellion over Mayor Rahm (it-up-yer-ass) Emanuel's school closure plans--the majority of which are in majority minority districts of the city--and the President of the Chicago Teachers' Union considering a run for the mayoralty. 

Stymied in its efforts to stop the city from closing scores of schools, the Chicago Teachers Union on Monday said it will turn its attention to a voter registration campaign and efforts to oust Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other elected officials.
Asked at a news conference if she would consider a run for mayor, CTU President Karen Lewis quickly and loudly said, "No. Thank you." But then she added, "Not yet."

In addition to targeting Emanuel, union officials said they will be looking for candidates to replace aldermen and members of the Illinois General Assembly who "have failed to listen to the voices of thousands of parents, educators, students, school employees and activists."
The union said it will provide "boot camps" for candidates, fund political campaigns through its political action committee and canvass neighborhoods on behalf of its candidates.
Although Chicago Public Schools continues to hold hearings on school closings, Emanuel has said the time for negotiations is over. On Monday, CPS announced that public hearings for each of the schools facing closing this year will begin at its central office Tuesday. The Board of Education is expected to vote May 22 on the plan to close 53 elementary schools and one high school program.

School closings threaten not only the educational prospects for many of the city's poorest students, they als o would coinstitute a blow to the minority community members hired as teachers and other school personnel, while driving children far from their local neighborhoods.

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 Food Fight: While not strictly an "education item," this vid, from a TED Talk on, among other things, the outright capture of many schools' internal nutrition policies by Coca Cola and MickieD's is important and instructive:


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As The Cookie Crumbles: The Play's The Thing...

Most children's school days any more are structured almost explicitly, it seems, to exclude any possibility of pleasure. Under regimes of 'standards' and 'high-stakes testing,' school has become a relentless proceeding of make-or-break competitions against odds that are stacked against a substantial minority of students.

     Our industrial model of schooling is very good at inculcating habits of workerly obedience and conformity--and dismissing the reluctant (we call them "drop-outs). Bells arbitrarily break up the day, between often meaningless/monotonous tasks, which forcibly reminds students their time is not their own., should they accidentally become beguiled. Homework ensures that kids get the idea that their work-day doesn't end when they go off the clock; extra CAN be demanded without recompense.  Endless testing prepares them for a lifetime of arbitrary and capricious assessments, and life-changing decisions that depend on them.

     But "play," even at the earliest ages, has vanished, has all but been banished.

     In Hong Kong, in '96, I visited a fairly typical, high-rise elementary school, in Kowloon, on the mainland. There were in excess o f 1500 students, grades 1-4; each grade had its own floor. The logistics were pretty staggering. During class, the children were pictures of decorum, sitting quietly, listening respectfully. But then came the local equivalent of "recess," and pandemonium would be a serious understatement: The whole building shook as a seething, swirling, churning, thunderous, shreiking, scrambling, howling free-for-all of activity erupted, for 10 solid minutes. Play! Like you've seldom seen: Exultant and loud.

     And then it was over, and everyone was back, sitting peacefully, at their desks, respectfully attending to the lessons.
 
     Play is not trivial, not unimportant, not insignificant. There is a lot of research on the matter, from the philosophical speculations of Huizinga's "Homo Ludens" --the playing man-- to volumes of scholarly material from universities and teachers' colleges. But let me try to put it into accessible terms:

     We've all seen the "nature" show wherein the camera pans across a field, then dollies in on some activity in the undergrowth, which is revealed to be some litter of cats or canids--foxes, coyotes, lions--tussling furiously over, under, around and through one another, obviously enjoying themselves enormously, while the narrator piously intones: "These little (lion/tiger/fox) cubs appear to be playing, but do not be deceived: they are practicing for the deadly business of life."

     And so do we, when we play, hone our skills at adaptation, and sharpening our attention: There's nothing like a dodge-ball up-side the head to keep you alert...
 
     Play ISN'T just for adults who can afford the latest toys. It's an essential tool of what is called "meta-cognition." It's how kids learn that they know needful stuff. It's hows we know we know.

     Let's go play in the surf: I'll see you at the beach...

The "Ed" Beat: Good-bye, and Why; The Weight; Play Is Good!; Have Book, Will Travel; Debunkery;

Lead With the Bad News: A good, devoted, caring teacher writes: "Dear Schools, Kids, Parents, & Colleagues
I quit! I'm done. It's over. Good-bye. With sadness! Here's why.

With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that  “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.”...My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom. Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR (through the submission of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching) that there is little time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly appropriate to this case.

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Common Core = Dead Weight: A considerable amount of what Mr. Conti was objecting, and that which cumulatively drove him to resign is comprised by and in the assumptions (as well as the "business model") of the Common Core Curriculum. There was a recent march on the Department of Education, by teachers and student-centered activists protesting the decline of a knowing-centered approach to learning and the rise of "reform-driven," process-centered content delivery models which "...include the implementation of controversial Common Core standards as well as a the opening of more corporate-run charter schools, a "longitudinal database full of student information to track performance," and teacher evaluations based on high-stakes standardized testing."

“Reform” has become a kind of code word, referring to a specific agenda of high-stakes testing, weakened collective bargaining, and school closings that have generated massive instability for American children, particularly low-income people of color. [...]Educators today are being punished for decades of growing income inequality, an eroding social welfare system, and an economy brought to its knees by lack of regulation—factors which make work in building supportive, democratic schools and classrooms that much more important.[...][We are] demonstrating in front of the Education Department because the people working inside have ignored their message.

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Data! The air is thick with busy "entrepreneurs" eager to dip their snouts in the public education money trough as long as it lasts. This blog, out of NEW JERSEY, has the right attitude: So Much to Debunk, So Little Time.  He's an exhaustively rigorous, detailed analyst, taking on the claims of "legitimately" rigged scholarship which purports to support the corporat/business culture's endorsement of charter schools and privatized education which, in turn, are becoming masks for the de facto resegregation of "minority" children and communities, as well as the eventual elimination of public schools.

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Speaking of "Scholars" for Hire: One of the Koch brothers recently bought the Business School at George Mason University for a 'gift' of a couple of million dollars, with the stipulation that Ayn Rand's novels and philosophy be included in the curriculum of the school. More and more, researchers at publicly-sponsored universities are being by-passed by pre-paid, scholars-for-hire.  It, like much else which reeks of corruption in our present age, was the product or Raygunism: "the rise of the dogmatic scholar that has its roots in the 1980s, a period identified by Isaac Asimov as “a cult of ignorance” guided by a new ethic, “Don’t trust the experts.” An insider in the process, one John Holton, reported:

We met with President Reagan at the White House, who at first was jovial, charming, and full of funny stories, but then turned serious when he gave us our marching orders. He told us that our report should focus on five fundamental points that would bring excellence to education: Bring God back into the classroom. Encourage tuition tax credits for families using private schools. Support vouchers. Leave the primary responsibility for education to parents. And please abolish that abomination, the Department of Education. Or, at least, don’t ask to waste more federal money on education – ”we have put in more only to wind up with less.” Just discover excellent schools to serve as models for all the others. As we left, I detected no visible dismay in our group. I wondered if we were all equally stunned.

And so was born "A Nation At Risk, arguably the most dishonest, yet influential tome ever inscribed about Ummurkun  education .
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Scholastic Astro-Turf: Via Susan Ohanian's invaluable blog; she's tireless.We're all likely familiar with how zombie-capitalists like Bill and Malinda Gates are endeavoring to leave their money in such ways as to ensure the proliferation of their psychological pecularities, and ensuring a steady resupply of Microsoft users. Less familiar may be the efforts of groups such as those FUNDED by the Gates' ghouls: The Parents' Revolution.
Take all the worst things you can imagine outfits like the Walton family, the Gates, the Heartland Institute, Michelle Rhee, and ALEC, with pub licity by FreedomWorks, and you have some idea of the clout of the idea. The key phrase is "parent triggers":

 California became the first state to pass a parent-trigger law in 2010. The law allows systemically struggling schools to be taken over if parent activists are able to get 51 percent of a failed school's parents to sign a petition. The movement received a big boost from Hollywood last year with the release of the film Won't Back Down, which tells the story of two parents (one a teacher) who use a parent-trigger type law to take over their children's failing school in a poor Pittsburgh neighborhood. The movie largely depicts the teachers' union and school bureaucracy as opponents of change. It was produced and funded by Walden Media, which is owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, a longtime champion of hard-right causes.

Michelle Rhee, whose group StudentsFirst is one of the nation's leading proponents of parent-trigger laws and other efforts to privatize public education, sponsored a series of screenings and hosted panel discussions to promote the film and its message. Panelists included former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Parent Revolution's Austin.

While advocates claim parent triggers are intended to empower parents, critics charge that they target schools in the poorest areas with high immigrant neighborhoods, populations that are particularly vulnerable and susceptible to manipulation. The critics contend that parents may lose power once a school is converted to a charter.

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Play, Damn It! Most children's school days any more are structured almost explicitly, it seems, to exclude any possibility of pleasure. Under regimes of 'standards' and 'high-stakes testing,' school has become a relentless proceeding of make-or-break competitions against odds that are stacked against a substantial minority of students.

     Our industrial model of schooling is very good at inculcating habits of workerly obedience and conformity--and dismissing the reluctant (we call them "drop-outs). Bells arbitrarily break up the day, between often meaningless/monotonous tasks, which forcibly reminds students their time is not their own., should they accidentally become beguiled. Homework ensures that kids get the idea that their work-day doesn't end when they go off the clock; extra CAN be demanded without recompense.  Endless testing prepares them for a lifetime of arbitrary and capricious assessments, and life-changing decisions that depend on them.

     But "play," even at the earliest ages, has vanished, has all but been banished.

     In Hong Kong, in '96, I visited a fairly typical, high-rise elementary school, in Kowloon, on the mainland. There were in excess o f 1500 students, grades 1-4; each grade had its own floor. The logistics were pretty staggering. During class, the children were pictures of decorum, sitting quietly, listening respectfully. But then came the local equivalent of "recess," and pandemonium would be a serious understatement: The whole building shook as a seething, swirling, churning, thunderous, shreiking, scrambling, howling free-for-all of activity erupted, for 10 solid minutes. Play! Like you've seldom seen: Exultant and loud.

     And then it was over, and everyone was back, sitting peacefully, at their desks, respectfully attending to the lessons.
 
     Play is not trivial, not unimportant, not insignificant. There is a lot of research on the matter, from the philosophical speculations of Huizinga's "Homo Ludens" --the playing man-- to volumes of scholarly material from universities and teachers' colleges. But let me try to put it into accessible terms:

We've all seen the "nature" show wherein the camera pans across a field, then dollies in on some activity in the undergrowth, which is revealed to be some litter of cats or canids--foxes, coyotes, lions--tussling furiously over, under, around and through one another, obviously enjoying themselves enormously, while the narrator piously intones: "These little (lion/tiger/fox) cubs appear to be playing, but do not be deceived: they are practicing for the deadly business of life."

And so do we, when we play, hone our skills at adaptation, and sharpening our attention: There's nothing like a dodge-ball up-side the head to keep you alert...
 
 Play ISN'T just for adults who can afford the latest toys. It's an essential tool of what is called "meta-cognition." It's how kids learn that they know needful stuff. It's hows we know we know.

Let's go play in the surf: I'll see you at the beach...

WWH/CJE Soapbox: Compromise THIS!

I never cease to be slightly gob-smacked and agog at the suggestions that "we" really CAN "get along" with the conservotards, and that we SHOULD. 

A correspondent today was extolling the virtues of a recent book, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion", by Jonathan Haidt. She claims it provided her with insights into why Prez LowBar has been so gutless when it came to "pro/lib" causes: He's "reaching out." 

She claims "the rest of us need to learn how and why this is being done, re-craft some of our goals and messages, and aim for a more unified society."

But I GOTTA ASK: Unified with whom? With what? Rand Paul? Paul Ryan? Rick Santorum? Newt Gingrich? Mitt Rmoney? To just whom, exactly, should we be "reconciled?

I haven't read the book. Probably won't, since I'm not much of a "book reader" anymore.

BUT I have the same question for all the folks who plead piteously about 'just getting along' with our antagonists: Just wanna know WHAT a "good liberal" or a "progressive" will be willing to compromise in order to "heal" such divisions?

Reproductive choice for women? Birth control?
Universal, single payer health care?
Regulation of climate-threatening industries?
Civil rights for minorities?
Clean air/water?
Prayer/creationism in schools?

Well? Where's the compromise? Where do you START?

You tell me! Look at their (the 'tards) demands.

Tell me to which you'd agree, in the name of "unity?"

I'm with the Dixie Chicks (if they're still there): I am NOT ready to make nice.

The Ed Beat: The Drone Assessment Plan; Standards (x 2); What Gates Hates; Artistic Control; Heard it On Oprah

Drone-Based Assessment: An educator and education critic whose praises I have often sung is Susan Ohanian. I first noticed her work in the field of "literacy education," which is one of my sub-specialties, when I read her book, One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards, which came out the same year (1999) I was getting out of the field. She is one of the most acuter, and angriest critics of standardization in schools. I heartily recommend her blog. Her sharp wit is demonstrated in the following:
Who says "Irony is dead"?

Washington--Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sat with a panel of education reformers to announce the launch of new "Race for the Drones" competitive grants. Available to states already earmarked for Race to the Top funds, unmanned drones will be available for teacher evaluation. Duncan said this modernization of an old, static process is the next rung on the education reform ladder. "Up, up up," said Duncan. "This advanced technology of drones will transform how America evaluates its teachers."

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Gold Standards: There are buckets of money to be made in the testing industry. A very close "friend" of the Bush crime family is the family which owns McGraw-Hill, which publishes bales of books and reams of tests. They are NOT losing money.
But resistance is growing. We've been following the story of the teachers in Seattle who have rebelled against administering another meaningless, standardized tests, which actions have JUST THIS WEEK been vindicated! Mad props to the brave folks of Seattle Public Schools:

The school system, which serves more than 45,000 students, had initially threatened protesting teachers with punishment, including a possible 10-day unpaid suspension, according to a memo obtained by Reuters.
The district appeared to soften its stance in February, with an official saying that only educators responsible for administering the test, not those teachers merely voicing opposition, could be punished. The district now says that no teachers will be punished.
"There will be no discipline of any test administrator," Jose Banda, Seattle Public Schools superintendent, wrote on the district's website on Friday.

Meanwhile, there are ripples of resistance being felt even in the troglodytic confines of the Texas legislature. Former Gov. George W. ("The Chimperor") Bush had made Texas an almost impenetrable miasma of standards and standardization, but apparently SOME of the disquiet about it got through to the Lege. This is how the American Prospect: websight reported it:

When the biennial state legislature gaveled in (in January), it didn't take long for newly re-elected Speaker of the House Joe Straus to mention testing. "By now, every member of this house has heard from constituents at the grocery store or the Little League fields about the burdens of an increasingly cumbersome testing system in our schools," he said. "Teachers and parents worry that we have sacrificed classroom inspiration for rote memorization. To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing: The Texas House has heard you."
     It's quite a turnaround for the state that brought standardized testing onto the national agenda. In the 1990s, Governor George W. Bush implemented a series of statewide requirements. Running for president, he claimed the new accountability system led to dramatic improvements, particularly among poor and minority students, calling the results the "Texas Miracle"—though just how miraculous these gains were has since been called into question. In Washington, Bush modeled his No Child Left Behind legislation on the state plan, and around the country, testing became an increasingly prominent part of public education.
     Now Texas is almost certain to scale back on testing, which has continued to expand since Bush's time. Currently the state tests kids every year in multiple subjects between third and eighth grade. In fifth and eighth grade, children who fail are automatically held back. High-schoolers must pass a number of class-specific tests to graduate. The state uses the tests to evaluate the students and the schools. Many other states have a similar system, and plenty have gone even farther, using standardized test results to determine teacher performance and the like.

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The publicity given to the latest Gates Foundation report on teacher evaluation [ Gates: Test scores not enough for teacher reviews,Jan. 9,] adds strength to the common view that there is something very wrong with American teachers. There is, for example, no pressing concern about how we should evaluate nurses, carpenters, doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, plumbers, butchers, newspaper reporters, etc.
     Every profession has some inferior practitioners, but the available evidence says that American teachers as a group are excellent. When we control for the effects of poverty, our international test scores are very good, ranking at or near the top of world. There are two major factors preventing teachers from being even more effective:

(1) The high level of child poverty in the U.S., 23.1 percent, second among high-income countries; children who are hungry, have poor health care and  little access to books will not do well in school regardless of teacher quality.

(2) The unreasonable demands of the Common Core: a tight, inflexible curriculum that crushes creativity, designed by elitists with little idea of what goes on in classrooms, and a massive amount of testing, more than we have ever seen on this planet.

— Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus, USC

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An Artistic Approach to School Success: Whoooda thunk it?
Schools CAN get along without glowering, intimidating, heavily-armed thugs with attitudes patrolling the corridors? Even "urban" schools?
That's incredible (snark)..,

Spend some time in the average school in a low income urban neighborhood and between the security guards, armed police, and metal detectors, you'll understand why students, parents, teachers, community activists, and academic researchers say black and Latino kids are being being better prepared for incarceration than college. The ubiquity of law enforcement in city schools makes the decision by Andrew Bott, principal at Orchard Gardens Pilot School in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood, to fire all his school's security guards and replace them with art teachers, all the more inspiring.

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I Saw It On Oprah: So it must be true...and in this case, probably it is:

The Oprah Winfrey Network reality show, Blackboard Wars, filmed at John McDonogh Hi School in New Orleans this school year reveals some rather shocking details about how charter schools operate in Louisiana. State Board president, Chas Roemer has often bragged that charter operators have the freedom to operate their schools without the usual bothersome red tape required of traditional schools. But we were always told that charters must comply with basic accountability and school reporting rules. Apparently they are exempt from much more than we were led to believe.
.... Observation: A common gimmick used by most of the charters is to sell pie in the sky to the community and news media. Plastered on the walls at John McDonogh are slogans like: WHAT COLLEGE WILL YOU ATTEND (I noticed that the large question mark was missing from the end of the slogan but none of the students or producers of Blackboard Wars seemed to notice) This is an empty promise because the great majority of the students there will not in any way be prepared for college. These schools never seem to teach their students that most adults have to work at real jobs to earn a living. Most of the courses at this school do not relate to the real world nor prepare students for real world jobs. These kids are facing a dead end when they get their fake diplomas. But of course this fake college prep for all is being pushed by the top administrators in our LDOE.

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