Obama Administration “New” Testing Plan

The Obama administration has issued “new” guidelines for standardized tests and the President himself has come out against “too much” testing and in favor of making sure that we’re not “obsessing about testing.” President Obama spoke about good teaching, good education, and said that he didn’t like hearing from parents who said that there was too much testing and from teachers who said that too much testing took the joy out of learning. This is similar to what he said several years ago. Here is a report from 2011.

“Too often what we have been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools,” the president told students and parents at a town hall hosted by the Univision Spanish-language television network at Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C. Obama, who is pushing a rewrite of the nation’s education law that would ease some of its rigid measurement tools, said policymakers should find a test that “everybody agrees makes sense” and administer it in less pressure-packed atmospheres, potentially every few years instead of annually. At the same time, Obama said, schools should be judged on criteria other than student test performance, including attendance rate. “One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you’re not learning about the world, you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math,” the president said. “All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting.” “And young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in,” Obama said. “They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring.”

At this point your irony meter ought to be hitting maximum…since “using tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools,” is exactly what the President’s education program, Race to the Top, is all about. “Failing schools” are defined by test scores…and Race to the Top encourages states to punish “failing schools” by closing them and replacing them with charter schools. Furthermore, Race to the Top also encourages states to evaluate teachers by test scores, something which is both unreliable and invalid.

The new administration testing plan doesn’t really change anything. The impetus for the change was a report from the Council of the Great City Schools which said that there was too much testing. The report called for less than the (average of) 2.3% of student class time spent on testing. In our local school district that’s 180 days X 6 hours a day X 2.3% = about 25 hours of testing a year. That length of time doesn’t include class time for test prep. It doesn’t include time talking to students about testing or teaching young students how to take a standardized test. It doesn’t include the time wasted by school corporation and school personnel sorting, organizing and labeling the tests. It doesn’t include class time used traveling to the computer lab for testing or rearranging classroom furniture so that students would be unable to see each others’ test booklets.

The administration’s new testing guidelines call for no more than 2% of student class time spent on testing. Using the formula above, we have 180 days X 6 hours a day X 2% = about 22 hours of testing a year.

So, the administration is calling for a maximum of about 22 hours a year testing instead of a maximum of about 25 hours a year testing. And there’s still all the extra time for test prep, testing talk, and wasted school personnel time. Big deal.

Where did Obama administration’s 2 percent cap on standardized testing come from? You won’t believe it. (Or maybe you will.) – by Valerie Strauss

…The 2 percent is not much less than the 2.3 percent that a new two-year study on standardized testing says kids now spend on these mandated exams…

…It turns out, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, it came from New York State. That’s where standardized testing administration and Common Core State Standards implementation have been so mishandled in recent years that 20 percent of students opted out of the tests this past spring, and the governor, Andrew Cuomo, turned on John King, the commissioner of education who resigned late last year and this year turned up as No. 2 to Duncan. Now, King is the designated successor to Duncan when he leaves his post at the end of this year.

At a gathering at the National Press Club on Monday, a reporter asked where the 2 percent limit came from. Duncan said to ask King because New York had passed a 2 percent standardized testing cap. The New York State legislature last year passed a series of changes involving public education, including on test-taking (1 percent for local standardized tests and 1 percent for state-mandated standardized tests) and test prep (2 percent, though not for charter schools, just traditional public schools)…

So we have President Obama’s new Faux Secretary of Education to thank for the 2% number. But standardized testing, as it’s practiced in the U.S. in 2015, doesn’t help teachers, doesn’t help students, and doesn’t help parents; In fact, it seems “reformers” are only interested in testing for two reasons. 1) to “prove” that schools and teachers are “failures” and 2) to force the closure of “failing” schools so privatization – and profit – can continue.

Department of Education SorryNotSorry About High Stakes Testing by Steven Singer

Can the administration prove any positive value for standardized testing? I’m not asking them to trot out the tired party line about equity. I mean can they prove that testing actually helps children learn in any appreciable way? If the answer is no (and Spoiler Alert: it is!) then we shouldn’t be wasting any more time with it. Not 2%. Not 1%. ZERO PERCENT!

…You can only lie to our faces for so long. Despite your best attempts to trash public education in the name of saving it, we’re not so dumb as to believe any more of your evasions, deceit and dishonesty.

In fact, the “new” guidelines are much like the old guidelines when it comes to using standardized tests in inappropriate ways. They will still be given to every student every year. They still have high stakes consequences for schools, teachers, and students. They will be misused, additionally, to label teacher preparation programs. They will still be used to grade and label schools, humiliate students, and evaluate and blame teachers.

Fact Sheet: Testing Action Plan by USED

Rulemaking on teacher preparation programs: Last December, the Department of Education released a notice of proposed rulemaking to improve the quality of teacher preparation programs by asking states to perform more rigorous evaluations of the quality of these programs based on more useful measures. In the proposed rule, the Department had suggested moving to a system that would measure the quality of a program by looking at certain discrete categories, including: success in placing teachers within a reasonable period of time after graduation, especially in high-need schools, surveys of teachers about the quality of their preparation, retention rates, employer surveys, and teachers’ impact on student learning. The proposal required that states place a significant weight on growth in student learning, including growth on statewide standardized tests in evaluating these programs. In the coming weeks, we will release a final rule that maintains a focus on student learning, but provides states flexibility on how to weigh the results of statewide standardized tests and measures of student learning more broadly in any teacher preparation accountability system that it develops. As in other areas, we believe that student learning as measured by assessment results should be a part, not the sole determinant, of determining the quality of a particular program. [emphasis added]

Curmudgucation gives us his excellent insight…

Obama’s Testing Action Plan Sucks (And Changes Nothing) by Peter Greene

…there is a difference between “I hear you, and we are going to find a way to fix this” and “I hear you, and we are going to find a way to shut you up.”

The fact that the administration noticed, again, that there’s an issue here is nice. But all they’re doing is laying down a barrage of protective PR cover. This is, once again, worse than nothing because it not only doesn’t really address the problem, but it encourages everyone to throw a victory party, put down their angry signs, and go home. Don’t go to the party, and don’t put down your signs.

…and the Network for Public Education…

Network for Public Education Fund Response to Obama Administration Statement on Testing by Carol Burris

…Anthony Cody, who serves as the vice-chairperson and treasurer of NPE, responded to the announcement by saying, “Limiting testing to 2% is a symbolic gesture that will have little impact so long as these tests are used for high stakes purposes.”

While the Department of Education remains wed to annual high-stakes tests, it is time for states and districts to call their bluff regarding flexibility. The research coming forward is clear. The overuse of standardized testing is educational malpractice. States should drop the destructive pseudoscience of VAM, empower educators to create their own meaningful assessments of learning, and get off the testing juggernaut.”

~~~

Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade…“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

~~~

~~~

~~~

I Get a Response From NEA

CANDIDATE INTERVIEWS

Earlier this month I posted about the NEA’s Primary Election endorsement of Hillary Clinton for U.S. President. I included a comment I had written in response to a special ed teacher’s guest blog on Lily Eskelsen-Garcia’s blog.

You can read the guest blog, Proud to Be an Educator for Hillary. Scroll down and you can see a comment. As of this writing, my comment has not been included, however the one comment that is there expresses similar objections to the endorsement. Perhaps mine wasn’t written well enough…or I was too emotional…or confrontational…or impolite. It doesn’t matter. I only mention this to indicate that, apparently, the NEA is willing to read opposing views: something positive.

You can read my comment in my post, Finally, I Rant About NEA’s Endorsement of Hillary.

I submitted an abridged version of my comment a second time. I thought perhaps that it hadn’t been published because it was too long. After that submission, I received a response from NEA which you can read in its entirety at the end of this post.

My point in arguing against the endorsement of Secretary Clinton is not because I disagree with many of her positions on public education, it’s because I don’t know many of her positions on public education. I would argue against the endorsement of any of the three candidates who responded to the NEA’s questionnaire for the same reason.

In her letter to me, Lily provided a link to the interviews she did with the three candidates (all Democrats) who responded to the NEA questionnaire: Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders (you can see all the interviews here. Scroll to the bottom section for the complete interviews).

Some of my objections have been answered. Lily asked all three candidates about their views on equality of opportunity, testing, college debt, collective bargaining, and their vision for rescuing the middle class. All three candidates gave essentially the same answers with minimal differences.

• All children need equality of opportunity and we need to fully fund public education.
• Too much testing is horrible and we need to fix that.
• College should be available to all. Debt is bad.
• Collective bargaining is important for all workers. Unions are important.
• America’s middle class is shrinking. We need to dump Trickle Down economics and provide health care, a higher minimum wage, and better jobs.

There is nothing about the record of the three candidates on the interview page. There’s a link in the letter from NEA to a summary of Secretary Clinton’s record, but that doesn’t highlight the differences between the candidates. It only tells me, vaguely, what Clinton has done. During the interviews the candidates tooted their own horns freely, so that’s something.

The problem, as I see it, is not that Secretary Clinton is not deserving of NEA’s endorsement. It’s that there is still too much about the candidates that we don’t know. We did this before, with Barack Obama, and for our no-strings-attached support we got Arne Duncan and Race to the Top.

The fault is partially with the candidates. Clinton’s campaign site has a section on K-12 education, but it’s vague and unspecific. Sanders’ and O’Malley’s sites don’t say “boo” about K-12 education. All three discuss universal preschool and affordable college. To earn NEA’s support we ought to get some assurances that we won’t get a DFER, someone who wants to privatize public education, or another Arne Duncan in the office of Secretary of Education.

DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS: WHERE ARE THE DETAILS?

But the lion’s share of the fault is with NEA’s leadership. Where were the questions (or if you asked them, where were the answers) about…

• Charter schools? I know that Clinton and Sanders are “in favor” of charter schools and that they support charter school accountability, but where are the details?

• Vouchers? Democrats are generally against vouchers, but in the last few years they have made fewer and fewer comments about vouchers. Where do the candidates stand? Will they work to stop our tax dollars going to religious institutions?

• No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the reauthorization of ESEA? Where are the questions about the failure of No Child Left Behind, the cost and damaging competition of Race to the Top, and the fact that there is still no renewal of ESEA? Where do they stand on providing support for schools that need more help or are they willing to close schools with high poverty and blame the victims for “failing?”

• VAM? How do the candidates feel about teacher evaluations being based on student test scores? How about teachers of non-tested areas, such as music and art teachers, being evaluated using reading and math test scores of their students?

• School letter grades? Should schools be judged by how well their students do on test scores? Is an A school simply one in which the children score high on the state standardized test?

• Due process? Where do the candidates stand on due process (aka tenure) for K-12 teachers?

• National Teacher shortage? How will the candidates relieve the national teacher shortage? How will they encourage more students to go into education?

• Common Core? We know Lily loves her some Common Core, but not all of us do. I find many of the early childhood standards to be developmentally inappropriate. Where do the candidates stand on this issue?

• The U.S. Education Department? Do they want to save the USED? Right now it’s filled with privatizers, DFERs, and “reformers.” How will a Clinton (or Sanders, or O’Malley) administration differ?

Lily, your questions about equality of opportunity, testing, college debt, collective bargaining, and the middle class were good; The candidates’ desire for universal preschool and affordable college is admirable. But it’s not enough. In the last two presidential elections the NEA supported President Obama because he said the right things. That’s not enough any more. I want more details. We still don’t know if any of these candidates support the corporate privatization of public education. I could make an educated guess, but it would have been nice if my professional association asked more detailed questions, or provided us with the answers to more detailed questions.

The candidates need to earn our endorsement. We need details, not vague references. We need assurances, not campaign sites that don’t even acknowledge the major issues facing today’s public schools, public school teachers, and public school students.

NEA’S RESPONSE TO MY COMMENT

Replying to your message about NEA’s presidential primary recommendation
from 2016presidential@nea.org

…Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts surrounding NEA’s recent primary recommendation of Hillary Clinton for president. I want to spend a few moments highlighting our process since February and, ultimately, our decision to move forward with the Clinton recommendation.
NEA members and leaders have engaged in our primary presidential recommendation process since last February, identifying and reaching out to nearly 25 candidates from both major political parties. Throughout this process, we asked for input from candidates and, equally important, did our best to highlight candidates’ positions on education issues for members like you. Throughout the last few months, we distributed a candidate comparison highlighting each candidate’s positions, hosted a tele-town hall with members to discuss the presidential field, and provided updated candidate positions via social media.

Just three candidates – Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders – met with me to discuss their positions on the issues. Afterward, I made it a priority to ensure all three taped interviews were distributed to NEA members and leaders throughout the country, which you can view right now.

These interviews remind all of us that each candidate is a dear friend of strong public schools and the students and children we work with, and Hillary Clinton’s proven track record, coupled with her comments throughout the recommendation process, is why I brought a recommendation for Secretary Clinton to the NEA PAC Council and Board of Directors for their consideration. Their discussions were thoughtful and robust, and our Board was able to spend time with Secretary Clinton on Saturday to discuss our issues.

Throughout this process, I am proud that NEA’s members and its leaders have had the opportunity to speak on this recommendation, and today I believe there is too much at stake to remain on the sidelines. Please continue to share your views, and go to Strong Public Schools for updates.

Only together can we work to ensure the next president ensures every child has a quality public education regardless of zip code.

Gracias,
Lily

*******************************************************************
Only the individual sender is responsible for the content of the
message, and the message does not necessarily reflect the position
or policy of the National Education Association or its affiliates.

~~~

Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade…“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

~~~

~~~

~~~

Finally, I Rant about NEA’s Endorsement of Hillary

Ok…so it took a while and everyone else has probably already said everything there is to say about the NEA supporting Hillary for President in the primaries, but I was looking around at blogs and I read one that triggered a rant.

The stimulus that finally got me going was a guest blogger on Lily’s blog who was Proud to Be an Educator for Hillary.

I have nothing against the teacher who wrote the blog and I did follow her link to Hillary’s Education platform on NEA’s server which said all the right things…well not all of the right things, but some of the right things. Missing, however, was detail about how those things would be accomplished and what they would be replaced with…for example,

Hillary Clinton supports reducing the role of standardized tests in public education, and she supports NEA’s push to create an opportunity dashboard, understanding the multiple measures that we must address and monitor to truly close the opportunity achievement gaps between students. She has committed to fighting to provide equal opportunity to have access to arts education, school nurses, librarians, and counselors, and funding so all students can succeed, regardless of their ZIP code.

Sounds great, right? Reducing the role of testing is something I would like to see, but what about teachers being evaluated by test scores, loss of due process, and loss of collective bargaining rights? What about the connection between poverty and low achievement?

Furthermore, how does her policy differ from that of Bernie Sanders? Martin O’Malley? Lawrence Lessig (did you even know he was running? Read Republic, Lost)? or other candidates?

Mrs. Clinton may indeed be the candidate we ought to support, however, I think we need to have more information before we endorse someone.

Here’s what I wrote as a response to An Educator for Hillary (I’ve fixed a couple of typos, added a link, and made one sentence bold).

The NEA board has decided for the rest of us that there is no need to get any assurances that our endorsement for a candidate will bring support for public education other than some vague references to “every child and teacher will get support.”

What is Hillary’s stand on Charter schools and the massive amounts of corruption which privatization has brought to so many states and school districts? More accountability? What does accountability mean for charter schools? More tests? Publicly elected school boards? Open enrollment or will Charters still be allowed to skim the cream? Will charters still be allowed to hire “teachers” with no credentials?

What is Hillary’s stand on the Common Core? We know Lily loves it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not developmentally inappropriate. What about the cut scores manipulated by state houses and governors in order to “prove that public education is failing?” What about the overuse and misuse of standardized testing — both Common Core related and otherwise?

What is Hillary’s stand on vouchers? Will there be any attempt to do away with public tax money going to religious schools?

What about due process for K-12 teachers (aka tenure)? Collective bargaining? Where are the details to Hillary’s education platform? What about test based evaluations? What about Teacher for America?

Why didn’t we get (or get to see) the details BEFORE we endorsed someone?

In 2008 we endorsed President Obama who “sincerely” told us that we didn’t devote our lives to testing…we devoted our lives to teaching and teaching is what we ought to be allowed to do. That, and a “seat at the table” was enough for us…endorsement done. Look what we got…Arne Duncan — who never set foot in a public school as either a student or a teacher — and Race to the Top which doubled down on No Child Left Behind’s labeling of low test takers as losers. Arne Duncan, who cheered when an entire school full of teachers in Rhode Island were fired because the school was “low achieving” (aka filled with high poverty students). Arne Duncan, who manipulated federal dollars meant for low income students so that it became a contest to see which states could raise the caps on Charters fast enough and evaluate teachers based on test scores.

A seat at the table? Haven’t we learned anything?

~~~

Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade…“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

~~~

~~~

~~~

2015 Medley #32 – Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan

GOOD RIDDANCE

Recently Arne Duncan, the Obama Administration’s Secretary of Education, announced his resignation. I’ve spent a lot of time criticizing him over the years for two main reasons.

1. I don’t agree with his “reformer” policies and
2. I think that a Secretary of Education ought to have some experience and expertise in actual education. Duncan has neither.

Here are some articles about his tenure as head of the U.S. Education Department…

The Faith-Based Education Policies of @ArneDuncan

Jersey Jazzman’s post about Duncan’s legacy reads like the Declaration of Independence. However, most states weren’t strong enough or economically healthy enough to stage a rebellion.

Each item in the Jazzman’s list shows how little Duncan understands about learning, schools, children, and public education. On the other hand, he knew enough to keep his children out of schools which were forced to follow his reforms.

• Duncan has created a test-obsessed education culture that has narrowed the curriculum and sucked the joy of learning out of our schools.

• Duncan has fostered an unbridled expansion of charter schools; while some may be well-run and showing marginal gains in test scores, many others have been involved in profit-seeking and corruption so egregious that they put defense contractors to shame.

• Duncan has allowed organizations like Teach For America and the Relay “Graduate” School of Education to provide substandard teacher preparation, even as he promotes the use of noisy, biased student growth measures to rate actual colleges of education.

• Duncan rewarded states that inequitably and inadequately fund their school districts, incredibly holding them up as exemplars.

• Duncan has decimated the morale of America’s teaching corps, de-professionalizing teaching and contributing to an atmosphere where teachers are blamed for problems they did not create.

• Duncan has overseen the implosion of teaching as a career; universities around the country are reporting that fewer students are enrolling as education majors, even as several states report shortages of qualified teaching candidates.

• Duncan has allowed the unprecedented mining of student data, blithely ignoring parental concerns.

• Duncan’s ham-fisted approach to implementing the Common Core has all but guaranteed that we will never see meaningful national standards reform in our lifetimes.

• Duncan inappropriately punished states for not implementing teacher evaluation policies that experts have found to be wholly invalid.

• Duncan has watched while the systematic defunding of our nation’s schools continues.

• Duncan has presided over the continuing resegregation of America’s schools, offering little more than weak platitudes in response.

And, perhaps worst of all, Duncan has denigrated the real concerns of parents, teachers, and students, using the most condescending language possible — all while hypocritically exempting his own children from the effects of his policies.

FYI: What Obama Said About Duncan

Diane Ravitch is succinct about Duncan’s legacy. She reported what President Obama said about Duncan…

In the car yesterday, I heard a report that Arne Duncan was stepping down. President Obama said: He did more than anyone else to bring American education into the 21st century, sometimes kicking and screaming.

Taking Obama’s lead, Ravitch explains what Duncan’s version of education in the 21st century means.

So this is what the 21st century will look like: boot camps for minorities; teachers with scripts; schools run for profit; school scams by corporations; education industry traded on New York Stock Exchange; high-yield online schools with high attrition rates; the monetization of public education.

The tenure of Education Secretary Arne Duncan — in his own sometimes startling words

Duncan’s most famous, stupidest comment…Hurricane Katrina was a blessing, apparently.

“I spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and this is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.”

So, how is the privatized New Orleans district working out? See for yourself…

• New Orleans Recovery School District, ACT Outcomes, and Falling Through the Cracks

• Louisiana Charters Are by Far the Worst According to 2011 8th-grade NAEP Anaysis

Vice President Biden Statement on the Resignation of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Vice President Biden is correct in one part of his statement. He said,

Arne has made almost unprecedented strides in changing the direction of education in this country…

That’s true –– Unfortunately the “direction of education” in which Duncan took the country is the wrong direction!

Arne Duncan has been one of the best Secretaries of Education in our nation’s history. Over the past 7 years, he has been a dynamic leader who brings unparalleled energy to his work. During his time as Secretary, Arne has made almost unprecedented strides in changing the direction of education in this country through his work to improve graduation rates, expand access to community colleges and raise academic standards for students all across the country. He has also done tremendous work through Title IX to make campuses safer for women and girls. He’s a man of great character and principle and he has become a close friend to Jill and me. We wish him all the best and we will miss him dearly.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan will step down in December

Duncan was a spokesman for the wealth-based, research denying, so-called “education reform” movement. He was, as I have written before, careful to keep his own children out of schools affected by his poison.

Duncan’s tenure was underscored by his embrace of an agenda that reflected the priorities of what’s become known as the education reform movement: support of charter schools, a willingness to spar with teachers’ unions, and a push for more rigorous teacher evaluations that take students’ standardized test scores into account.

Duncan is also known for the Race to the Top competition, a signature funding competition that used stimulus money to create incentives for states to adopt some of those policies, including common standards. Duncan also became an outspoken supporter of increasing the capacity of early education programs. This week, he made headlines by proposing to decrease incarceration for nonviolent crimes and use that money to increase teacher pay.

Arne Duncan’s Misguided Policies

In Race to the Top, as in any race, there are winners and losers. Public education ought not to have any winners and losers.

In December of 2010, already two years into Arne Duncan’s tenure as Secretary of Education, I heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson indict Duncan’s education policies for abandoning the very idea of American public education that Dewey and Wellstone had described so eloquently: “There are those who would make the case for ‘a race to the top’ for those who can run. But ‘lift from the bottom’ is the moral imperative because it includes everybody.”

If, as President Obama says, Arne Duncan has “brought our educational system, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st century,” I hope we will stop to reconsider. Has our society decided to strive for innovation and to abandon universal provision of services and equality of opportunity as overarching goals? And have we become satisfied to blame the teachers in our poorest communities instead of ourselves for the vast injustices that appear at school in the guise of the achievement gaps?

Arne Duncan’s Exit: Not Unexpected.

Duncan’s children are moving from one “reform-free” school system to another. To protect them from the damage he, and his “reformist” friends in DFER, the Gates Foundation, Broad Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and others, have done to America’s public schools, he is enrolling them in the private school he went to, the University of Chicago Lab School. It’s a school with highly trained, highly educated, multi-degreed, unionized teachers, small class sizes, and resources their peers in the city don’t get – like libraries and art teachers.

The Duncans could have stayed in Virginia where they were residing (and where Duncan’s kids were attending Common-Core-free public school) for another entire school year. Instead, Duncan’s wife, Karen, and their children headed back to Chicago in July– more than a full school year before Obama would finish his time as a two-term president.

So, for Duncan to say that he is resigning to be with the fam seems more like he knew he would be resigning at the end of 2015– right in the middle of a school year. So, it became realistic for the Duncans to move back to Chicago summer 2015.

The Upside of Arne Duncan

I was never on the “Dump Duncan” bandwagon. I heartily disagree with the “NCLB on steroids” policy thrust of the current Department of Education, but I never saw Duncan as effective spokesperson for the behind-the-scenes big guns he for whom was fronting: Gates. Walton. Broad. DFER. He could dish out memorized talking points, sort of, but skilled interviewers have run circles around the Secretary of Education.

Furthermore, getting rid of a hapless Secretary doesn’t mean the policy-making will improve, just as getting rid of an incompetent President hasn’t meant smooth sailing for the Republic. Arne’s blunders have not slowed down the drive to capture the previously untapped K-12 education marketplace.

A Fan of Talking Points

“He could dish out memorized talking points…” Duncan couldn’t do much in public but spout talking points, even when he was talking about basketball. The following interview with Jon Stewart was proof positive that Duncan can spout his talking points, but beyond that he was out of his league.

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:comedycentral.com:a4a794c6-2f1f-448a-b3be-fc4b2d34d27e

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

He never really responded to Stewart’s repeated questions about teachers opinions and actual concerns about Race to the Top.

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:comedycentral.com:c6824817-81c1-43a9-bf6f-92e1615fdb44

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

Listen when he says that schools belong to the community. Remember that Race to the Top forces schools to close only to be replaced by privately run charters.

Listen when he says Race to the Top helps to support “great” teachers and remember that his definition of “great” means high test scores and VAM…

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:comedycentral.com:f1024637-18aa-4776-b8c9-4d74eacca83f

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

The Duncan/King Robots and the Revolving Door

No doubt Duncan will take a job with some “reform” organization — like a “think tank,” a charter organization, a test-and-punish company like Pearson, or some state that wants to destroy their public school system.

Much rejoicing took place Friday when it was first announced that Arne Duncan was leaving the Obama administration early. Social media was a-buzz poking fun at the Secretary of Education who will now ride into the sunset to make money likely in the private sector, probably with something having to do with children. When you grow up around teachers it gives you a warm spot in your heart (sarcasm).

Perhaps he will work in President Obama’s future Presidential Center giving us his take on education matters from time to time—like Margaret “NCLB” Spellings sits cloistered in President G.W. Bush’s special place.

Or he might be like President Bush’s other ed. secretary Rod “NCLB” Paige, remember him? He was the guy who likened teachers to terrorists. He sits on the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation’s board, Eli Broad’s board too, and has done a bunch of serious periphery education stuff to foster privatization and make money. Here’s his Bio.

Maybe Arne could become Dean Duncan at the Relay Graduate School of Education—or even a real university president! The possibilities are endless for the guy who thinks soccer moms dote too much on their children, or that Katrina helped fix schools in New Orleans.

And, of course, there is Duncan’s coordinated and backed-up push for all children with disabilities to take regular tests. Who can forget that?

The Failure of Arne Duncan: How President Obama Placed Friendship Above Sound Education Policy and Stained His Legacy.

Duncan was never qualified to be Secretary of Education. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Sociology and a plan to play professional basketball. He learned all he knew about education from watching his mom tutor high-risk students…his “solutions” for the Chicago Public Schools didn’t work and formed the basis for his attack on the nation’s public schools.

Duncan doesn’t know anything about public education. He never taught in a public school. He never attended a public school.

The lesson: no matter how close the friendship, no matter how loyal the friend: beware. Arne Duncan, your basketball buddy, an elite upbringing, jumped onboard the worst of the education reform ideas. As Linda Darling Hammond, Diane Ravitch, Pedro Noguera, renowned researcher after researcher questioned the Duncan agenda, Obama never strayed from supporting his friend.

IT CAN ALWAYS GET WORSE

Meet the New Boss, Even Worse Than the Old Boss

Everyone who blames Duncan for this administration’s public education policy ought to take a close look at his replacement. Replacing Duncan with John King is like George W. Bush replacing Rod Paige (“Teachers are terrorists”) with Margaret Spellings (“I’m qualified because I’m a mom”) By allowing John King to take over as Education Secretary, President Obama is guaranteeing that the Duncan policies continue. King’s appointment is a slap in the face to every public school teacher, administrator, and student. The damage that Duncan did will continue.

…with the entire country embracing Race to the Top, Gun to the Head policies like Common Core, I’m not feeling the love. The high-stakes testing and developmentally inappropriate tasks for our children (and not his, or Duncan’s, or Obama’s) are intolerable. That’s not to mention the junk-science teacher ratings that have been foisted upon us, rejected by none other than the American Statistical Association.

Education is apparently on the president’s “Eff-It” list. At this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama said that he didn’t have a bucket list, but with time running out on his administration, he did have something that rhymed with it. The president’s choice of John King* to oversee the department after Duncan is a signal he’s not that concerned with education politics at this point.

That’s clever, but not precisely accurate. It appears to me that President Obama, who’s certainly in a position to say “Eff-it” to pretty much anything, has decided to continue with the reformy policies that are King’s signature. While it wasn’t clear to UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who deemed King suitable as an independent arbiter for our evaluation system, it’s quite clear to anyone paying attention that John King supports all things reformy, specifically including Common Core and junk science evaluations.

~~~

Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

A Manifesto for a Revolution in Public Education
Click here to sign the petition.

For over a decade…“reformers” have proclaimed that the solution to the purported crisis in education lies in more high stakes testing, more surveillance, more number crunching, more school closings, more charter schools, and more cutbacks in school resources and academic and extra-curricular opportunities for students, particularly students of color. As our public schools become skeletons of what they once were, they are forced to spend their last dollars on the data systems, test guides, and tests meant to help implement the “reforms” but that do little more than line the coffers of corporations, like Pearson, Inc. and Microsoft, Inc.

~~~

~~~

~~~

More Random Quotes – August 2015

THIS JUST IN: REPUBLICANS STILL HATE TEACHERS…

Republicans’ deep hatred for teachers can’t be denied and they’re not trying
from Steven Thrasher

If you’ve been listening to the Republican candidates you’ve probably heard some nasty things about teachers. Thrasher tells us why.

Teachers’ unions are made up of groups Republicans always love to bash: government workers with lady parts.

Just to be fair, the author also wrote about Democrats…

Republicans have always hated teachers’ unions for obvious reasons. They reliably support the Democratic party, even though Democrats routinely go to war against teachers as well, particularly alumni from the Obama administration.

…AND DEMOCRATS ARE NOT MUCH BETTER

Teacher evaluations at the schools that Obama, Duncan picked for their kids
from Valerie Strauss

Democrats are just quieter about it. All states have to comply with Arne Duncan’s proclamations about VAM…they could lose their federal funds or get stuck having to deal with No Child Left Behind. If using test scores to evaluate teachers was such a good idea you’d think that the Secretary of Education, and his boss, would send their precious children to a school run by “reformers.”

Think again…

These comments were delivered when Duncan sent his children to Arlington public schools. They are now going to attend the University of Chicago Lab School…which is full of unionized teachers and devoid of “reformer” education. When they lived in Chicago, the Obamas sent their daughters to the Lab School. They now attend Sidwell Friends.

“What did the president and the secretary seek and obtain for their own kids, where the important issue of teacher evaluation was concerned? The answers recently arrived in two e-mails:

“Arlington school district teacher, March 31, 2011: ‘We do not tie teacher evaluations to scores in the Arlington public school system.’

“Sidwell Friends faculty member, April 1, 2011:

“ ‘We don’t tie teacher pay to test scores because we don’t believe them to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.’ ”

IT’S THE “OTHER” SCHOOLS THAT ARE “FAILING”

Groundhog Day: Parents Again Rate Local Schools Higher than Schools of the Nation
from Stephen Krashen

Year after year parents rate their own children’s schools high…but it’s “those other public schools” that are bad.

Seventy percent of parents said they would give the public schools their oldest child attended a grade or A or B, but only 19% would give public schools in the nation an A or B.

An obvious explanation: Parents have direct information about the school their children attend, but their opinion of American education comes from the media. For decades, the media has been presenting a biased view. 

WHERE DOES THE BUCK STOP?
from a teacher friend

Contrary to “reformer’s” beliefs, teachers don’t like to make excuses. The charge of “making excuses” gives “reformers an “out.” When teachers cry “poverty” “reformers” and their legislator friends can claim “excuses” instead of actually dealing with a very real problem. As the late Gerald Bracey said,

Poverty is not an excuse. It’s a condition. It’s like gravity. Gravity affects everything you do on the planet. So does poverty.

The school administration blames the central office…who blames the state DOE…who blames the legislature…who are only doing what their donors demand.

Teachers must speak out!

Part of the problem is that teachers are caught in the proverbial “Rock and a Hard Place’ scenario. We can’t really turn to the public because in many cases they really don’t want to hear about it, and the state and administration simply blame someone else for the current state of affairs.

One of the things I remind my coworkers who aren’t outspoken…that if we remain entirely submissive and say yes, yes, yes to everything without defending students and teachers, we are just signing up for more of the same treatment.

TEACHER SHORTAGE

Blackmon: In Georgia, ‘reform’ aims to destroy public schools
from Myra Blackmon

Here is a pretty good summary of what “education reform” is all about…

This is how the self-selected “education reformers” operate. Their motive is profit and personal advancement. They love the idea of schools run by private organizations, staffed with uncertified teachers, cherry-picking the easy students and leaving the most vulnerable students behind. Unproven, invalid standardized tests drive every decision.

It is disgusting. It is immoral. It is repugnant to every American ideal of community, mutual support and benefit and democratic rule. It defies the values of local control in favor of centralized, easily managed power — all the while claiming “it’s for the children.”

It’s high time we kicked them all out and made them earn an honest living — as far from our schools as we can get them.

Education Roars Back
from Bob Grundfest

If you keep telling the nation that teachers are to blame for everything bad in our society…and you continue to cut salaries and benefits…and you close schools, cut staff, and, in general, trash public schools in favor of private charters and private parochial schools…and if you publicize all of this so high school and college students see how poorly teachers, and public schools are treated…

…why would a young adult, right out of high school, choose to make education his or her career…and why would anyone think that young adults would want to go into teaching?

Given the years of blame and economic hardship that teachers have had to endure, it’s no wonder that there’s a shortage. And given the attitude that many national and state leaders have about teachers, it’s no wonder that qualified students are looking at other fields of endeavor. The truth is that we pay a great deal of lip service to wanting a highly qualified, well-trained teaching staff at every school, but the best and brightest are not stupid; they see what’s going on in education and are increasingly turned off to it. And since we don’t have the best and brightest going into government, the solutions will be doubly difficult to come by.

MONEY FOR EDUCATION OUGHT TO GO TO EDUCATION

It’s common for legislators to complain that so much money is spent on education, but an important question is how it is spent. We use billions of tax dollars nationally to support testing and test prep and that’s money that should be going to instruction, materials, and student support.

…and what about all the money diverted from public schools to for-profit charters and voucher accepting parochial schools?

@TCBGP

TEACHERS ARE MORE THAN JUST TEST-JOCKEYS

‘Teachers want to change the world’
from John Kuhn

Relationships are greater than pedagogy. If you deliver flawless instruction but haven’t nurtured relationships with your students — even the challenging ones — then you might as well teach to an empty room.

DREAMS OF THE FUTURE

Neil DeGrasse Tyson quoted a young man in his book, Space Chronicles

There are lots of things I have to do to be an astronaut. But first I have to go to kindergarten — Cyrus Corey, age four.

~~~

Support Teachers of Conscience

The narrow pursuit of test results has sidelined education issues of enduring importance such as poverty, equity in school funding, school segregation, health and physical education, science, the arts, access to early childhood education, class size, and curriculum development. We have witnessed the erosion of teachers’ professional autonomy, a narrowing of curriculum, and classrooms saturated with “test score-raising” instructional practices that betray our understandings of child development and our commitment to educating for artistry and critical thinking. And so now we are faced with “a crisis of pedagogy”–teaching in a system that no longer resembles the democratic ideals or tolerates the critical thinking and critical decision-making that we hope to impart on the students we teach.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

~~~

Vermont State Board of Education: Statement and Resolution on Assessment and Accountability, Adopted August 19, 2014

~~~

~~~

~~~