Matt Damon Still a Save Our Schools Superstar

This week Jeb Bush, a shameless supporter of these destructive corporate reform policies, had the audacity to criticize Matt Damon for choosing not to subject his children to the test-driven, standardized public education Bush has helped create.

Jeb Bush and ed deformers are afraid of Matt Damon. Following up on NYC Educator's great post on Matt Damon (Who's Afraid of Matt Damon?) the other day, this from SOS:

     

 

        To most Americans, Matt Damon is a Hollywood celebrity and superstar. But to Save Our Schools supporters Matt Damon is a very different kind of hero. In the summer of 2011, he put the filming of his new movie, "Elysium" on hold and flew overnight to Washington, DC to address the thousands of teachers, students, and families assembled in the sweltering heat for the Save Our Schools rally. In his Speech he told the crowd of the many contributions that his own well-rounded, enriching, public school education made to his future personal and professional success. He decried the damage being done to public schools by the corporate based reforms of high stakes testing and standardization and promised to "have our backs" in the fight ahead. His words energized and inspired the crowd and gave us hope that our plight to save public education would not go unnoticed.

Since 2011, the damage of corporate driven reform policies has been further compounded by the widespread closing of neighborhood public schools in many cities, rampant privatization of public education by for-profit charter operators, and the Race-to-the-Top mandates that tie teacher evaluation to high stakes tests. Common Core Standards are ushering in a standardized national curriculum that is impervious to the individual needs of children, the wishes of families, and the professional judgment of teachers. A "new generation" of national assessments has been initiated and funded by corporate giants, and threatens to suck the remaining sparks of creativity and imagination out of our nation's classrooms despite the valiant efforts of teachers.

This week Jeb Bush, a shameless supporter of these destructive corporate reform policies, had the audacity to criticize Matt Damon for choosing not to subject his children to the test-driven, standardized public education Bush has helped create. In a cynical twist of reality, Bush accused Damon of supporting "choice" for his family but not for the rest of the country. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The kind of "school-choice" touted by Bush (and his many bi-partisan allies) offers nothing but a phony solution for parents whose neighborhood schools have been financially decimated or closed and whose kids are forced to travel across cities (and gang lines) to attend school. "School-choice" reformers know that school vouchers don't come close to buying a ticket into the kind of private schools their own kids attend. They also know that privately-managed charter schools (not parents) have all the "choice" when it comes to providing an education to children who are low-performing, those who have special needs, or those who are learning English as a second language. Reformers know that parents aren't the ones choosing to hire non-unionized, underprepared "instant" teachers, and they're certainly not choosing to warehouse our poorest children in scandalously overcrowded classrooms.

The kind of "choice" Matt Damon and his mother, Early Childhood Educator Nancy Carlsson-Paige support is entirely different from the type advocated by corporate funded politicians like Jeb Bush. It is the choice we must make as a nation to provide all our children with great public schools right in their own neighborhoods. It is the choice to ensure that public schools have small class sizes, enriching individualized and age-appropriate curriculum, professional career educators in every classroom, authentic and meaningful on-going assessment, and a wide range of community support services to offset the effects of poverty afflicting an astounding 20% of our nation's children. It is the choice to furnish schools with fully stocked libraries that spark the love of reading, to offer meaningful professional development options for teachers, and to build partnerships between schools and families to ensure that we serve the needs of all our children, not just the privileged and more able. Once we succeed in making these choices, the dilemma that Damon and so many parents face will dissolve.

So, is Matt Damon still a Save Our Schools superstar? You bet! And so are the growing numbers of parents "opting out" of high stakes tests, teachers who are boycotting tests and resisting one-size-fits-all national standards, and students who are beginning to make their opposition heard. 

Save Our Schools invites all supporters of public education to join us on August 24^th as we participate in the 50th Anniversary March on Washington. Our banner will remind the nation that "Public Education is a Civil Right." We know that Matt Damon agrees.

Another Blogger Slams Eva's Success Academy Charter Scam

Owen Davis at The Commonal follows up on Gary Rubinstein's analysis of the Eva Moskowitz charter scam which we reported on the other day: Rubinstein: Success Academy Scores Based on High Attrition Plus Other Factors.

Davis takes Gary's work a bit further:

It’s true that Success owes its success to more than just general student attrition. But Rubinstein only examined the overall numbers. When you look at specific student demographics, even more troubling patterns emerge. I’ve been dissecting the student data of prominent NYC charters since Democracy Prep and I sparred over its unmistakable pattern of steadily losing students with disabilities and students learning English. (They promised a “debunking” of my post. I’ll assume it’s still forthcoming.)
At Success, the pattern is similar, if not more stark. Not only do its classes contain disproportionately few students with disabilities and English language learners (ELLs), but their numbers almost invariably decrease with each passing year. This should have no uncertain effect on test scores.

 I actually get hot thinking about a slam at the arrogant Democracy Prep crowd which for some reason annoy me even more than Eva's crew. (I admit to having had some great discussions with some Success parents and officials -- we have been sparring for so many years.) Democracy Prep recently pushed out a program for GED students.

But how much fun is it to see Eva jump so far ahead that there will be intense scrutiny? Even her usual trolls have toned it down.

Owen concludes with:

What’s sad about this is how unsurprising it’s become. High-achieving charters, with no exceptions that I’ve found, enroll fewer needy students, witness substantial attrition of these students, or both. These patterns could reflect some implicit policy, or they could result from the extraordinary behavioral demands charters impose on students. The proximate cause doesn’t matter so much when it comes to test scores, though. Scores resting on high-needs student attrition shouldn’t withstand even the mildest scrutiny, yet they garner unreserved praise from the likes of Mayor Bloomberg and the Post. 
It’s just an added irony that one of Moskowitz’s Success expansions literally pushed at-risk students out of an existing school.
I need not dwell on how disturbing all this is. Any notion of success should be predicated on serving the neediest students right alongside those who make “no excuses.” Anything less is reprehensible.

Read it all, with charts:
http://commonal.tumblr.com/post/58209601458/harlem-success-academy-charter-and-attrition

Neo-liberalism and Ed Deform and Krugman on Rand Paul's "Better Dead than Fed"

Ed Deform's connection to neo-liberalism can be defined in one dirty word: CHOICE

CORE in Chicago began with 8 people reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" to try to make sense of what was being done to the schools because so much of it didn't make sense educationally or even rationally, the idea of a grander privatization conspiracy began to make sense. In fact, the only thing that made sense.

Paul Krugman nailed Rand Paul and others of his ilk to the wall in Monday's column, Milton Friedman, Unperson. Some people connect Friedman to the emergence of neoliberalism (see Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine - movie is here) and thus, ed deform which is based on NL.

Krugman doesn't use the term "neoliberal" but has referred to the concept of "shock doctrine" in a 2011 column on Wisconsin's assault on unions where he does give Klein her dibs:

The story of the privatization-obsessed Coalition Provisional Authority [in Iraq] was the centerpiece of Naomi Klein’s best-selling book “The Shock Doctrine,” which argued that it was part of a broader pattern. From Chile in the 1970s onward, she suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society. Which brings us to Wisconsin 2011, where the shock doctrine is on full display.

Remember, CORE in Chicago began with 8 people reading Klein's book to try to make sense of what was being done to the schools because so much of it didn't make any sense educationally, the idea of a grander privatization conspiracy began to make sense. In fact, the only thing that made sense.

Before I go on with Krugman's discussion of Milton Friedman, who called for the end of a public school system, I want to point to a thought I've been having: that basically we are seeing that many Republicans and Democrats are ideologically neo-liberals. Obama, the Clintons and so are in many ways are our union leaders, with Randi Weingarten leading the pack. In other words, you won't see UFT/AFT leaders placing the blame where it is due but instead putting it on individuals: Joel Klein, Bloomberg etc instead of educating the membership as what is really happening so they can be better equipped to defend themselves.

[By the way - look at handing principals unfettered power over the staff and Tweed's often non-intervention no matter how abusive the principal is, as the mini form of neo-liberalism.]

Here is some more info on neo-liberalism, a different animal from what is viewed as "left" leaning liberals in this country.

In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.
"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished.

See Afterburn for more tenets of neoliberalism and you will recognize so much of ed deform policy.

Now, back to Krugman's piece where he contrasts the libertarianism of Rand Paul with Milton Friedman, actually making Friedman look rational.

August 11, 2013

Milton Friedman, Unperson

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Recently Senator Rand Paul, potential presidential candidate and self-proclaimed expert on monetary issues, sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. It didn’t go too well. For example, Mr. Paul talked about America running “a trillion-dollar deficit every year”; actually, the deficit is projected to be only $642 billion in 2013, and it’s falling fast.

But the most interesting moment may have been when Mr. Paul was asked whom he would choose, ideally, to head the Federal Reserve and he suggested Milton Friedman — “he’s not an Austrian, but he would be better than what we have.” The interviewer then gently informed him that Friedman — who would have been 101 years old if he were still alive — is, in fact, dead. O.K., said Mr. Paul, “Let’s just go with dead, because then you probably really wouldn’t have much of a functioning Federal Reserve.” 

OK, we've established Rand Paul is an idiot. But Krugman does some interesting analysis of where the right wing Republican nut jobs have gone:

What ever happened to Friedman’s role as a free-market icon? The answer to that question says a lot about what has happened to modern conservatism. For Friedman, who used to be the ultimate avatar of conservative economics, has essentially disappeared from right-wing discourse. Oh, he gets name-checked now and then — but only for his political polemics, never for his monetary theories. Instead, Rand Paul turns to the “Austrian” view of thinkers like Friedrich Hayek — a view Friedman once described as an “atrophied and rigid caricature” — while Paul Ryan, the G.O.P.’s de facto intellectual leader, gets his monetary economics from Ayn Rand, or more precisely from fictional characters in “Atlas Shrugged.”

How did that happen? Friedman, it turns out, was too nuanced and realist a figure for the modern right, which doesn’t do nuance and rejects reality, which has a well-known liberal bias.One way to think about Friedman is that he was the man who tried to save free-market ideology from itself, by offering an answer to the obvious question: “If free markets are so great, how come we have depressions?”

Until he came along, the answer of most conservative economists was basically that depressions served a necessary function and should simply be endured. Hayek, for example, argued that “we may perhaps prevent a crisis by checking expansion in time,” but “we can do nothing to get out of it before its natural end, once it has come.” Such dismal answers drove many economists into the arms of John Maynard Keynes.

Friedman, however, gave a different answer. He was willing to give a little ground, and admit that government action was indeed necessary to prevent depressions. But the required government action, he insisted, was of a very narrow kind: all you needed was an appropriately active Federal Reserve. In particular, he argued that the Fed could have prevented the Great Depression — with no need for new government programs — if only it had acted to save failing banks and pumped enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a sharp decline in the money supply.

This was, as I said, a move toward realism (although it looks wrong in the light of recent experience). But realism has no place in today’s Republican Party: both Mr. Paul and Mr. Ryan have furiously attacked Ben Bernanke for responding to the 2008 financial crisis by doing exactly what Friedman said the Fed should have done in the 1930s — advice he repeated to the Bank of Japan in 2000. “There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens,” Mr. Ryan lectured Mr. Bernanke, “than debase its currency.”

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of debasing currencies: one of Friedman’s most enduring pieces of straight economic analysis was his 1953 argument in favor of flexible exchange rates, in which he argued that countries finding themselves with excessively high wages and prices relative to their trading partners — like the nations of southern Europe today — would be better served by devaluing their currencies than by enduring years of high unemployment “until the deflation has run its sorry course.” Again, there’s no room for that kind of pragmatism in a party in which many members hanker for a return to the gold standard.

Now, I don’t want to put Friedman on a pedestal. In fact, I’d argue that the experience of the past 15 years, first in Japan and now across the Western world, shows that Keynes was right and Friedman was wrong about the ability of unaided monetary policy to fight depressions. The truth is that we need a more activist government than Friedman was willing to countenance.

The point, however, is that modern conservatism has moved so far to the right that it no longer has room for even small concessions to reality. Friedman tried to save free-market conservatism from itself — but the ideologues who now dominate the G.O.P. are beyond saving.

When Krugman says, "The truth is that we need a more activist government than Friedman was willing to countenance," he is talking about economic intervention. The education community has seen the disaster capitalism of an activist federal, state and local government and I wish Krugman would one day give his attention to that. The common core has put both the anti-ed deform real reformers and the ultra-right anti-government wing-nuts (Glenn Beck) on the same side.

If Krugman could untangle that know he should get another Nobel Prize.

AFTERBURN 
Note how the merger mania in the airlines leads to LESS choice, higher prices and worse service. Whatever works for profits.

Some tenets of neo-liberalism as described by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia at CORP WATCH:

The main points of neo-liberalism include:

1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much.
   
2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
   
3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job.
   
4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
   
5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."
   

Naison Calls for John King's Removal

We've had 3 DUD NYSTATE Ed Comms in a row since 1995. Time to move on.

Dear Speaker Silver and Assembly Member Nolan

    It is time to remove John King  Education Commissioner of the State of New York. Commissioner King purposely decided to score state tests in such a way as to insure that the majority of the students in the state failed. The result was collective humiliation- of ELL students, of special needs students, of students living in poverty- and intimidation of the state's teachers, who future careers will be determined by these scores. The test results were a conscious, malicious "set up"-- and a power grab- by the Commissioner to close more schools, remove more school boards, and put more power in the hands of the state government at the expense of local school districts.

    This is an abuse of power by an unelected public official.  All throughout the state, teachers, parents, students and concerned citizens are rising up to say that excessive testing is squeezing the heart out of public education in our state, driving out the best teachers and principals, and destroying the confidence and morale of our most vulnerable students.  It is time elected officials heard their voices. It is time those who serve the public say no to policies that when all is said and done, amount to collective child abuse.

  I understand that some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the state support Commissioner King's policies. However, I urge you to hear the voices of all those quietly suffering because, through no fault of their own, they, their children and the students they teach, have been labeled "failures."

  Please work for Commissioner King's removal and put in his place someone who actually listens to the voices of teachers, principals, parents and students.

Sincerely

Mark D Naison

Professor of African American Studies and History

Fordham University

Rubinstein: Success Academy Scores Based on High Attrition Plus Other Factors

I wonder if this could start some kind of charter civil war. What ‘excuse’ is there for these other [charter] schools?  Surely behind closed doors they are accusing Success of some kind of manipulation, either by extensive test prep or by booting even more kids than they do. ... Gary Rubinstein

Gary Rubinstein follows up on his analysis of charter school chains like KIPP and Democracy Prep catastrophic test results with analysis of the one charter chain that blew everyone away. We posted commentary on Gary's previous post: Can We Close the Achievement Gap Between Success Academy and Democracy Prep, KIPP et al?

I loved that Success showed up the other charters as that brings the kind of scrutiny Gary provides as he does with all "miracle" schools. I left this comment on his blog:

We can certainly support the idea of 2 teachers in a room and that makes any comparison with public schools faulty. When you add the “disappeared” who most likely end up in public schools, the SA results don’t look so good given the different climate. So they have money to do this, often due to working young teachers to a bone and replacing them when worn out. Yes, cheap labor with 12 hour days and few career teachers. In no way scalable and over the long run as SA expands to 40 schools even sustainable. Watch the numbers as they get to higher grades. And the point that there is so much demand is bogus as we’ve been saying all along.

Yes, I absolutely support the idea of 2 teachers in a class in early grades -- actually, that is the private school model where they put novice teachers in with an experienced one. Great idea but not one that Eva really calls for in all public schools. Too bad because if she did she would not be as evil. But her aim is to undermine, not support public schools.

Gary makes these points:

I don’t think they really prove that there are super teachers out there who can get the ‘same kids’ to excel, even if it is just on standardized tests, since I’m not convinced they are truly the ‘same kids.’  But the ‘reformers’ should be very careful about this.  They already had Success as a big success story, as well as a bunch of others like KIPP and Democracy Prep.  Now they still have Success, but they have lost some of their schools they used to take credit for.  I’m not sure how they can reconcile their idea that test scores are an accurate measure of school quality with the fact that many of the schools they have been touting have lost their luster by that measure.

Here Gary looks at the key attrition rates.

So the next thing I looked at was their student attrition.  If they ‘lost’ many students, these scores are tainted.  Now there is only one Success school that has been around since 2007.  That school started with 83 kindergarteners and 73 first graders.  Those cohorts just tested in 6th and 7th grade, respectively.  The school has ‘lost’ a big chunk of those original 156 kids.  Of those 73 first graders in 2007, only 35 took the seventh grade test.  Of the 83 kindergarteners, only 47 took the sixth grade test last spring.  Overall, they have ‘lost’ 47% of the original two cohorts.  If this is one of the costs of having such high test scores, I’m not sure if it is worth it.
For the four cohorts that just took the fourth grade tests, those 316 students were, back in 2009, 443 kindergarteners, so they have ‘lost’ 29% of those cohorts.  Now their high test scores aren’t completely explained by this nearly 30% attrition rate, but it is still something worth noting as we consider if this program is ‘scalable’ or not.

 And talks about the teacher attrition rates:

When a school is ‘healthy,’ teacher are happy there and want to stay there.  The Success schools are known to have huge attrition of teachers, in the neighborhood of 50% per year. 

When push comes to shove, Success Academy will prove to be just another scam charter. Would NYC charter chief James Merriman send his kids there? Maybe he would given that Eva is abandoning the poor kids for the rich ones in Manhattan and gentrified areas of Brooklyn.

Read his entire piece.

And Perdido Street School too.
Just How Did They Get To Be So Successful At Succe...

"Waiting for Superman Makes List of Famous Documentaries That Were Shockingly Full of Crap

Waiting for "Superman" -- Charter Schools Kind of Suck, Too

[NOTE: SEE OUR RESPONSE TO WFS HERE]

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20585_6-famous-documentaries-that-were-shockingly-full-crap.html#ixzz2btdYTlUR

The Film:
Waiting for "Superman" is one of those documentaries that made everyone who watched it instantly call their friends and tell them they had to drop everything they're doing and see it right away. Even President Obama declared himself a huge fan.

According to this award-winning film, only 20 to 35 percent of eighth graders in the U.S. read at grade level, an alarming statistic that explains so much of the Internet. It follows a number of families as they try to get into charter schools, which offer a free alternative to the crushing bureaucracy that is killing our public education system. Tragically, not all of the families get in, damning those kids to schools where they'll hopefully at least be taught how to tell when their pimp is cutting their crack with too much baking soda.

s  

The Fallacy:
Waiting for "Superman" was all about improving the country's education, but it's so poorly researched and one-sided that it might actually be making things worse.

Let's start with that "only 20 to 35 percent can read well" statistic: The real number is closer to about 75 percent. Also, you might remember a throwaway line about how only 1 in 5 charter schools performs better than public schools -- yeah, that's sort of a big deal, movie. Thirty-seven percent of charters actually perform worse.

Via Wikipedia
Unfortunately the director went to a charter school, so math isn't his greatest strength.

The film focuses on the charters that perform better, of course, but at least one of those is achieving its results through fishy means. One of the administrators of a school shown in the film, the Harlem Children's Zone, expelled an entire class of children that he feared would throw off his glowing performance statistics. It turns out that when teacher pay and/or school funding is tied to student performance, a model that the film advocates, it opens the door for all kinds of shady shit, including flat-out expelling low-performing students the day before the test to boost their numbers.
In the movie, not getting into a charter school is the worst thing that can happen to a poor family, but studies have shown that school choice itself matters little to a student's success -- shockingly, it's more about how seriously the students themselves and their families take their education. And that ghetto public school might not actually be so bad: According to administrators from Woodside High School, which the film claims only sends a third of its students to college and only graduates 62 percent of them, the film excluded students who go to out-of-state colleges in their statistics, and their graduation rate is more like 92 percent. Shit, being left behind is starting to sound awesome.

A Weekend (not with Bernie) in Chicago

Moi, Yelena, AJ, James, Camille, Megan, Julie, Gloria, Jia (Sean caught a flight)

I have so much to say about the trip to Chicago I made with a big crew from MORE this past weekend but so much of it would be boring -- like you don't really want to know just how much beer I drank. And how much fun it was to hang out with year old Jack who can now make animal sounds upon prompting -- my fave was the snorting pig.

And the entire Eterno family was present -- Kara is 4 already? Jeez. James, nearing retirement in a few years will be having a hell of a lot of fun as full-time nanny. They are staying for a few extra days of vacation. To me having Julie and Jack and James, Camille and Kara present made the weekend special. (I was thinking that 2 years ago when we were there Jack wasn't even a gleam in the eye --- well, maybe a gleam.)

Guess: Which is the statue?

But this was serious business with people coming from all over the nation. I learned so much -- about how the CTU uses social media from their expert Kenzo Shibata who I first met in 2009. And the struggles of teachers from other cities and states --- so much that if I tell you some of it I would have to kill you. And you all know what a blabbermouth I am. So I am trying hard to stfu.

I did some video of the Friday night presentations of Karen Lewis, Julie Cavanagh and reps from Newark, Seattle and Chicago. I will post them later. (Funny but I did post them for conf attendees and got some blow back that I should edit out a few words here and there that might get some people in trouble. Given the attacks on teachers, there is increasing paranoia that may just be justified.)

To me this is not yet as much about as forming a national movement of social justice oriented unions, caucuses, individuals, etc. as it is about the first stage of such a movement -- networking and gaining trust in each other.

I am actually getting tired of the term "social justice" which is getting overused. It comes across to me as sloganeering instead of clearly stating what it is you want to do. Both at this conf and at MORE events there is a sense we have to sell the idea of SJ to people. Don't sell the term, just do it -- like build alliances with parents instead of trying to convince people that it is important. Show results like they did in Chicago. OK. Off soap box.

For me this was the 3rd time doing something like this -- 2009 in LA with 5 cities, 2011 in Chicago with about 200 people and this time. So we get to know more and more people around the nation. Two years ago few people knew Julie. Now she is on the national steering committee and played a  role in organizing this.

Many encounters are accidental -- like where you happen to sit down. I was sitting next to an LA teacher union activist and learned a lot about the LA story, where Alex Caputo-Pearl is running for union president, a very exciting idea -- Alex had a bunch of us over to his house for breakfast back in 2009 and is one of the most dynamic teachers I've met. I wrote about Alex and linked to a number of pieces about him not long ago. Alex is TFA, class of 1990.

Sunday morning I went to get coffee and ran into Bob Peterson, president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education and also founder of the social justice pillar, "Rethinking Schools," one of the most important journals for progressive teachers (which everyone should subscribe to and support). We had coffee together and I got to know a bit about him. That he has 2 daughters living in Brooklyn and visits regularly --- can't wait to get him to speak at a MORE event. I consider Bob a great educator -- a real teacher and now a union leader. With the attacks on Wisconsin teachers there is a good chance the NEA and AFT will merge in that state, which would be a good thing and bring in some progressive forces into the AFT.

And I had a brief Fred Klonsky citing but then had to go prep for a presentation I was co-giving with a CORE member so never got to chat with him. Actually, Fred has kids living in Brooklyn too and what a double treat it would be to get him and Bob together one day in Brooklyn.

At the Sat. night party I sat down with teachers from Philadelphia and we talked about how we can support each other. Also teachers from Newark's NEW Caucus who we hope to get together with real soon to chat about everything -- and what an impressive crew they are.

Next July the AFT convention is in LA and some of these people will be there. Will it be as an organized force to pressure the AFT leadership to resist ed deform more firmly? I do not see this movement presenting a challenge to Randi/Unity control of the AFT but more as a working within to get more locals to call for MORE from the AFT. If I am healthy and my house is not under 10 feet of water I will try to be there.

I may write some more about the weekend -- after I check with the censors.

I met Michelle Gunderson from CORE a year ago at SOS in DC. She helped run the entire weekend and was one of the many CORE people we met who just seem so knowledgeable and competent at whatever they do. And what they are doing is organizing in Chicago to bring parents and people together to fight the mean Rahm machine.

Here is a brief report from Samantha Winslow from Labor Notes, which played a big role in supporting and organizing the conference.

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/08/chicago-teacher-organizing-lessons-go-national

Chicago Teacher Organizing Lessons Go National

“Woke up this morning with my mind on education,” sang Michelle Gunderson, one of the organizers of a conference that brought teachers from around the country together to strategize. Photo: Samantha Winslow.

Teachers from across the U.S. gathered in Chicago over the weekend to share strategies for strengthening their unions to battle the seemingly never-ending attacks on public education.

A conference for social justice unionism, the host organizers called it. They were from the Chicago Teachers Union’s Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE). Many teachers see the group, which won office in 2010 and led last fall’s nine-day strike, as a model.

CORE and many other participants emphasized that teachers have to ally with their students and communities to advocate for quality public education—and show the public that “the people who care about your children are working with your children,” said CTU President Karen Lewis. “They are not in the state capitals.”

Teachers and union leaders from Chicago, Newark, St. Paul, New York, Los Angeles, and other cities were abuzz. They got down to nuts and bolts—everything from how to get parents involved at the school site, to how to talk to your co-workers, to how to fight mayoral control. And they talked about such big-picture questions as, “How do we combine bread-and-butter union issues with social justice and education justice?”

“CORE was definitely a blueprint for other caucuses around the country and the world,” said Shannon Coleman, who came with a group from Newark, New Jersey. “I was really in awe to see how they organized their members and aligned their members with the community, how they got a majority of their members involved.”

Coleman is on the steering committee of the NEW caucus, which recently won a majority of seats on the Newark union’s executive board. Seeing how many teacher groups share similar goals, “it clicked for me that this was the mission of our caucus,” Coleman said. “I could see what type of movement was starting to build.”
Tide Turning

“The tide is turning” against corporate attacks on teachers and public education, Lewis declared to loud applause, as she welcomed the more than 100 teachers on Friday.

The conference included panel discussions on running for union office, organizing with community members and parents, strategic political action, research to advance union struggles, and media and communications strategies.

CORE hosted a similar conference in 2011.

Nick Faber, an officer at the St. Paul Federation of Teachers in Minnesota, said his union has been inviting parents and community members to attend bargaining sessions this year, to show how their interests are aligned.

The union has modeled some of its strategies after CTU’s. The influential 2012 report The Schools Chicago Children Deserve was a template for a similarly named St. Paul report about the union’s and the community’s education priorities. At least a half-dozen teacher groups at the conference said they were working on similar reports for their own cities.

“What we can see from the conference is that there is already an incredible amount of social justice union activism, at the grassroots level, in locals across the country,” said CORE leader Xian Barrett, who helped plan the conference.

Last year’s strike in Chicago resonated even around the world. Lewis brought a surprise guest: Beth Davies, president of the National Union of Teachers in the U.K. Its 350,000 members in England and Wales are preparing for a national strike. They too were inspired by CTU.

No Reinventing

Collaboration and support among union locals and caucuses was a repeated theme. “We need to think about how we work together so we are not constantly reinventing the wheel,” Lewis said.

As the conference began, Philadelphia’s superintendent was announcing that a budget shortfall might keep the district from starting the school year on time next month. Teachers in both Chicago and Philly have fought massive layoffs and school closures this year.

“The lesson from Philadelphia and Chicago is that, even with strong [local] union activists, it is not enough to defeat the corporate education reform efforts,” Barrett said. But if we come together and collaborate we can win.”

Teachers concluded by discussing ways to collaborate: on national education policy, the overemphasis on testing, working with parents, and getting more teachers involved in union campaigns.

They also compared notes on the upcoming March on Washington. Working with National Nurses United and other organizations in Chicago, CTU is organizing a group to travel to D.C. for the 50th anniversary of 1963’s famous March for Jobs and Freedom.

In the spirit of the original march, which called for jobs and racial justice, organizers want to raise those issues again—this time highlighting school closings, foreclosures, and the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin and sparked national outrage. Teachers union leaders in D.C. also plan to participate in the march, as will many other national and local unions.

And it wouldn’t be a labor event in Chicago without a visit to the Haymarket Memorial, where students performed a series of readings to commemorate the events at Haymarket Square. Conference organizer Michelle Gunderson urged teachers to remember the fight for an eight-hour work day and their role in labor history.

Modifying a civil rights movement hymn, she sang in one conference session, “Woke up this morning with my mind on education.”

Samantha Winslow is a staff writer and organizer with Labor Notes.samantha@labornotes.org
- See more at: http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/08/chicago-teacher-organizing-lessons-go-national#sthash.jRito7A2.dpuf

Can We Close the Achievement Gap Between Success Academy and Democracy Prep, KIPP et al?

Emergency crisis emerges as Eva's Success exposes massive achievement gap amongst charters.

Moskowitz proclaims: They would have done better if not for those bad teachers at the charter schools. Clearly there are not enough choices out there for parents to choose between good and bad charters. But since we are the only good charter, I am changing my position on choice. We should be the only choice.

{OK, above it satire alert, though would it surprise you of Eva actually said that?}

Gary Rubinstein did some great work on the charter scores (Driven by data … right off a cliff). Gary uses their own data to hammer the nail.

The most stunning example is the famed Harlem Village Academy which had 100% passing in 2012, but only 21% passing in 2013 for a 79% drop....Democracy Prep officials didn’t respond to a request for comment...KIPP also did not respond to a request for comment.
I actually got one of the third grade questions wrong....these new tests have the opposite problem:  Students can do very poorly on them even if they do understand math.  This is why I don’t like to base 20% of my teacher rating on a single test that I didn’t write.
.... Gary Rubinstein

Gee, Harlem Village Academy suffered a bigger drop in scores than Michelle Rhee gained in her 10 minutes of teaching. HVA's Ed deform media darling Deborah Kenny, who had that noted educator Cathie Black on her board, will escape scot-free on this. I call for a recall on all her appearences on NBC's education shmation. Do any of these "experts" ever ask the question as to how a school gets 100% rates when it has enormous teacher turnover. [Below, in Afterburn, are a batch of ed notes links to Kenny and the school, including  a link to the fawning Brian Williams interview with her.

Gary also points to the hit in the big chains, KIPP and Democracy Prep, with TFA miracle workers, took.

Anyone have an eraser?

While DP won't comment, former chief Seth Andrews, wearing his yellow baseball/thinking cap, is probably thinking: I only left 6 months ago and they already fucked up our scam. Leonie Patrick Sullivan points out on the NYCParents blog:

The Democracy Prep results shouldn't be surprising to those who recall the earlier audit of Democracy Prep where DOE reviewers found “few lessons required higher-order thinking skills or deep analysis of concepts.” 

KIPP is already making plans to expand S.L.A.N.T.S. so KIPP can close the achievement gap between then and Eva's Success Academy. Can't let the competition get too far ahead. KIPP Amp dropped from 79% in 2012 to just 9% in 2013.

And TEP run by Zeke Vanderhoek, profiled on 60 Minutes, the NY Times, and the film "American Teacher" dropped from 76% to 20% in one year. Rewrite. [Also see Afterburn for Ed Notes links to TEP stories]. Gary sums up:

To see if most charter schools were like KIPP Star and Democracy Prep, scoring well below the 22% city average, or if most were still doing relatively well, like the Success Academies, I made another scatter plot, but on this one I marked all the charter schools (or at least the ones that had the word ‘charter’ in them) with a red circle.... charters are, in general, the ‘outliers’ meaning the schools that had the biggest drops relative to other schools with similar 2012 scores.  In the Stephanie Simon report she mentions that KIPP Star and Democracy Prep hadn’t done so well with their proficiency rate, but she doesn’t mention how far they had dropped.  Out of over 500 schools, which includes about 35 charter schools, of the one hundred largest drops, 22 were charter schools.

The Bronx Charter School Of Excellence, which recently received money from a $4.5 million grant to help public schools emulate what they do, dropped from 96% in 2012 to 33% in 2013.  So these are the schools that are the red ‘outliers’ hovering near the bottom right of the scatter plot.  In general, the average charter school went down by 51 percentage points compared to 34 percentage points for the average public school.  The most plausible explanation for charters dropping so much more than public schools is that their test prep methods were not sufficient for the more difficult tests.  In other words “you’re busted.”

evidence that charters are certainly not working the miracles they claim is very clear from this data.... if the ‘reformers’ really value their ‘data’ so much, they should really think about how to interpret the charter grade crash.... this suggests that maybe the hundreds of millions of dollars given to charters, both from the government and from private benefactors could be spent elsewhere in education more effectively.

Afterburn

Ed Notes Online: Harlem Village Academy Retained Only 4 Full ...

Sep 19, 2010

This year Harlem Village Academy opened its doors with only 4 full time teachers returning, a turnover of more than 75%. There are office staff, department heads and and administrators that returned (some of them teach one ...

Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village Academies, HVA Head ...

Nov 29, 2010

Cathie Black's placement on the board of Harlem Village Academy as a way to get her ed creds- despite the fact that she didn't attend any meetings, has focused attention on this scandalous school and its relation to the ...

  

Ed Notes Online: NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam ...

Jun 12, 2012

Why would you believe anything reported on NBC? Even more outrageous was the puff piece NBC's Today show and Brian Williams did in an interview with Harlem Village Academy founder Deborah Kenny. Leonie has done ...

Ed Notes Online: Steve Koss: The Cathleen Black story just gets ...

Nov 11, 2010

Seems that her singular claim to education involvement was being on an advisory board of some sort for Harlem Village Academy. However, the Times is reporting that she not only just joined that group a few months ago and ...

 

Ed Notes Online: NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam ...

Jun 12, 2012

I was researching Deborah Kenny to see what teaching experience she has and to learn more about her credentials (and salary) and you were the second piece to show up on a Google search. Great writing, Ed. I'm definitely ...

Ed Notes Online: Cathie Black on Board of Harlem Village ...

Nov 29, 2010

"[Deborah] Kenny, who oversees 450 students, is paid $442,000, including a $140,000 "bonus" and $27,780 in "other" expenses.....Bloomberg has called the school a national "poster child" for school reform. Conservative ...

Ed Notes Online: Videos: FairTest Honors Diane Ravitch with the ...

Jun 10, 2012

After all, being in the same space with Debbie Meier and Diane Ravitch is a very special occasion, especially as it was a fundraiser for a worthy organization. ..... NBC Bias on Deborah Kenny HVA Charter Scam and NY .

--------------

Ed Notes Online: TEP: Hey, Buddy, Wanna Teach for 125 Grand ...

Oct 02, 2012

Remember a year ago at Education Nation at the premiere of American Teacher celebrated Zeke and TEP, which had lured a Harvard grad teacher away from Jersey who ended up being a low rated teacher based on flawed ...

Ed Notes Online: The Failures of Katie Couric as a Reporter: Biased ...

Mar 14, 2011

Couric did bring up the fact that TEP's scores were lower than the public schools in the area (only a 31% pass rate) but didn't drill too deep on that one. You know the line: it takes time to reverse the effects of those awful public ...

Ed Notes Online: UFT Leaders Show Disdain for Tweedies: We Don ...

Dec 17, 2012

This is for all non-TEP schools (TEP is Danielson Pilot schools). If your school is not in the pilot, please let me know if you have groups of people coming into your rooms to observe or to ask you for your lesson plans, etc.

Ed Notes Online: Reviewing "American Teacher": Ed Deform Wolf in ...

May 27, 2011

And presenting Zeke Vanderhoek as a hero (on the post-screening panel) who pays teachers at his TEP charter school $125 grand is enough to make you gag. Vanderhoek was featured on 60 Minutes (Ed Notes link) trashing ...

Rob Rendo on Common Core

Common Core or no Common Core, standards for what children should know by a certain age (skills or content) have always been in flux and controverted.

The CCSS is, I think, on an extreme part of that spectrum of flux.

The consensus reality and research that more or less corroborates what, for example, a fifth grader should be able to do in math or ELA, has been largely ignored by policy makers for the last 5 to 7 years.
Now we are faced with an intentional system that ties scores to teacher and student performance in a high stakes fashion, resulting in a demoralization that may as well require fish to climb trees.

Test results were used and should continue to be used to find out what we need to reteach. Results and data drive a large part of instruction. They sill do, but, alas, now with the added layer of sad, angering, and destabilizing punishment that if one underperforms, one is mischaracterized as “not bright”, “not strong”, “poor”, or for dedicated and hardworking teachers, “ineffective”, “developing”, or “unemployable”. All of this would seem very reasonable and perfectly productive if it were done in every school: charter, parochial, private, public, specialized, etc.

But it’s not.

The very school President Obama sends his children to has openly declared that they do not test nearly the same way as public schools are forced to, and they do not measure students and teachers the same way either. Conduct a survey of every private facility in the United States (calling all teaching economists!), from the most competitively priced to the most deluxe and expensive, and see a pattern emerging about the qualitative differences in evaluating students and teachers, never mind the differences in resources.

Even the public school facility I attended between 1969 and 1982, which was fueled mainly by a blue collar population, was a resplendent, resourced, open-green-fields, ample teaching space system, and teachers were closely watched and monitored with feedback. Yet, they were never blamed for low test scores, and they were treated, with appropriate critiques from the administration, with respect and trust. We were a racially integrated school system. We thrived upon art, music, and gym. Students could literally build platform lumber framed houses from the ground up, repair automotive engines, design and landscape gardens, weld, play football, study French impressionism, compete in lacrosse or tennis, learn to cut hair, type, experiment with test tubes, microscopes, bunsen burners, petri dishes, telescopes, and learn AP physics. There was something for everyone. The list was endless. No wonder my parents paid such significant taxes. They’d frown when the tax bill came due; they’d smile when they received our report cards.

We had small reading groups. We had teachers who loved us and always made us feel safe, socialized, stimulated, challenged, and affirmed. My elementary school was my safe haven . . . far more than my own household, I must admit. It was not supposed to have been as imbalanced as that, but that was the situation, and I didn't choose it.  The responsibility for a child's sense of safety and self esteem lies clearly first and foremost in his nuclear family. Schools and classrooms trail right behind that. Yet I am grateful I did not have to come to a school where the teacher’s incentivized focus was mainly on my scores instead of holistically upon me.

I therefore felt safe in school. That's the best word I can come up with: "safe". I fell head over heels in love with learning because of that very safety. I'll never be able to thank enough or repay the vast majority of my teachers. Although, perhaps the best way to honor them is to fight for the dignity and truth of the teaching profession.

Anyway, I was very fortunate to have grown up in the era I did, and I excelled in school: honors classes, fast track programs, advanced course work, AP credits. I ultimately achieved a B.S. in architecture from an impossibly rigorous and strong program, and an M.S. in linguistics from an equally rigorous program. I have never been in doubt of my abilities, knowing full well what I still need to focus on and improve in. I have never been in want of intellectualism or critical thinking. I’ve conducted research. I’ve written articles and have been published. I have turn key trained colleagues. I am a life long learner, but I have reasonable awareness and confidence of my competence in general.

Students don’t face this same type of balance or developmental track any more. They have become numbers, statistics, “production-ists” in need of making a test score quota. I am convinced had I been a student under this current system, I would have fared poorly in school or been labeled with an artificial, man-made learning disability because I read better as I aged. I was behind in literacy in first and second grade. By the time I was in fifth grade, I ended up in a gifted reading group with the assistant principal. It was nirvana!

We were never taught to write any kind of essay until 7th grade, where I became hooked on writing and thrived from the encouragement, discussions, and red pen critiques of my teachers. I did not do ANYTHING with algebra until I was in 8th grade, and once introduced, it was addicting.

We have come a long, long way since 1969 . . . or even 1982.

In fact, we have stepped a long way back into a new epoch of factory style education, where every student is a widget, and and every widget is hyper-inspected along the conveyor belt to see if its frame will hold up once sold to the consumer, who is now the future employer. And if the person hired to do the assembly messes up just a few times, they are fired and replaced. This process happens knowing full well the conveyor belt is moving at 45 MPH, up from 10 MPH several years ago.

Who can really produce that many widgets when the belt is rolling by so quickly? It conjures up the imagery of the classic factory chocolate making scene from “I Love Lucy”.

But it’s anything but cute or funny.

Students are not widgets. Teachers are not robots. The process of teaching and learning is a humanistic endeavor. There are bonds to be forged, even while measuring situations and outcomes with data. The data used to help contribute indispensably to that human bond. Presently, the bonding has been devalued, thrown aside, and the data has become the new humanism.

But with such a high stakes grip, data will only continue to dehumanize education and demoralize children, families, and educators. There is a keen difference between being told “You are not the center of the universe / you will always have a lot to learn” AND “You are a failure because you did not measure up to these untried, unproven, unresearched, Herculean tasks that you and your teachers were not even given time to be exposed to”.

Is this a failure of the highly experienced people using and executing the functions of the system?

Or is it a failure of the inexperienced people designing, promulgating, and enforcing the functions of the system?

You decide.

I have.

Rob Rendo

 

The Howler on Times Test Editorial: The New York Times had a very poor week

Does [editorial writer Brent] Staples have expertise in education? There’s no sign that he ever covered education, or that he knows any more about the topic that your neighbor’s pet duck.

That editorial was loud and unintelligent. When it comes to the public schools, this highly self-impressed board has been and remains a long-running joke—a long-running public disgrace

The Times is a fatuous, low-IQ paper. Powerful forces in our culture work to obscure that key fact ..... The Daily Howler

The alleged drops in scores!

Posted: 10 Aug 2013 08:03 AM PDT

SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2013

The end to a very poor week: In our view, the New York Times had a very poor week.

.....notable was Thursday’s editorial about New York City’s new test scores. 

“Some candidates are looking for ways to blame Mr. Bloomberg for the drop in scores?” Pathetically, that seems to be true, but the editors don't seem to understand the key point—no one can be blamed “for the drop in the scores,” since there hasn’t been any “drop in scores” in any meaningful sense.

There is no way to compare this year’s passing rates to last year’s passing rates, since they emerged from completely different tests. That is a bone simple point, but the editors don’t quite seem to get it. Despite this, they demand that teachers improve the children’s reasoning skills!

More at: The alleged drops in scores!

Julie Cavanagh on Social Justice Unionism Prefaces Chicago Conf

Our union leadership continues to function from a “solutions-driven” unionism vision which results in our union leadership negotiating from the starting point of elected officials and corporate reformers rather than beginning with an agenda that is set by us, the folks on the ground, standing with students, families and communities. The only “solutions” that are devolved benefit the few and the powerful and the rest of us are told to accept these “solutions” because, “it could have been worse”.... Julie Cavanagh on social justice unionism

This weekend a bunch of MOREs headed to Chicago to meet up with teacher union members from around the nation to talk turkey about social justice unionism. 

Here is a statement from Julie posted on the MORE blog.

Newsday: drop in scores cd strengthen opt out movement

Imagine if they gave a test and nobody came. Grow the opt-out movement. Support the refuseniks. Join with Change the Stakes. Let's start organizing a parent boycott of the tests.

Leonie sent this Newsday piece.

http://shar.es/yYoR9

Hofstra Prof: Parents backed into corner

LI Supe: new data useless

The dramatic drop in student scores on state English and math exams could strengthen the movement by parents to have their children opt out of taking the high-stakes tests.
Less than 1 percent of students statewide in grades 3 through 8 were counted as "not tested," the state Education Department said Thursday. Parents and education experts said they expect their movement to gain momentum after the scores plunged more than 40 percent on Long Island and statewide.
"Parents can see opting out as a legitimate option to use in our fight to take back control for our children," said Jeanette Deutermann, 40, a parent of two children in North Bellmore, whose Long Island Opt Out page on Facebook has nearly 9,000 members. "The test results help our cause by forcing districts to publicly acknowledge the flaws in the state's testing policy, instead of defending them."
English scores: Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 | Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8
Math scores: Grade 3 | Grade 4 | Grade 5 | Grade 6 | Grade 7 | Grade 8
More than 1.3 million students statewide, including 210,000 on the Island, were slated to take the tests in April. An exact figure of those who did not take the tests was not available Thursday.
Education Department officials, in releasing the scores Wednesday, pointed to new, more rigorous exams overhauled to meet national academic standards as the cause of the low scores. They had predicted a significant drop.
"Three years ago the Board of Regents adopted more rigorous standards and committed to reflect those standards in the state's exams," department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said. "The goal is to make certain that all students are on track to succeed in college and meaningful careers when they graduate high school.
"Parents who keep their children from taking these tests are essentially saying, 'I don't want to know where my child stands, in objective terms, on the path to college and career readiness' -- and we think that that's doing them a real disservice."
But Debra Goodman, professor of teaching, literacy and leadership at Hofstra University's School of Education, said that opting out of the exams is one way that parents can protest. She also noted that a number of school boards and school administrators have been highly critical of the state assessments.
"I think that some of the parents -- the entire educational community, in fact -- has been backed into a corner where the only response that is available is for parents to opt out of testing," Goodman said. "Parents are starting to think, 'What benefit does this have for my child?' "
On the Island, 37.5 percent of students in grades 3 through 8 passed the new math test, compared with 75.4 percent last year. In English, the percent of students across those grades passing the latest tests was 39.6 percent, down from 67.2 percent in 2012.
More than 300 students in the Rockville Centre district opted out of testing. Superintendent William Johnson said Thursday that the test scores don't have much meaning for his district, calling them "uninterpretable data."
"I will not be able to use them to place kids into any programs," he said. "We are going to have to rely on other information . . . or data to do that."
He added, "I would certainly think that parents will have second thoughts about the results since we are not going to be able to use them effectively to do anything in the school district."
Amy Connor, 52, of Northport, said her three children, who attend school in the Northport-East Northport school district, opted out of taking the state tests. Because the test results are so new, she said she hasn't heard of other parents deciding to opt out, but she hopes it will strengthen the movement.
"I'm hoping parents will see what's going on and what's happening, and more parents will step in and refuse," she said.

And then this:

NY Superintendent of Voorheesville Central School District speaks out

I have rejected these missives [talking pts from SED] because they reek of the self-serving mentality the ‘powers that be’ have thrust upon our students and parents. Our community is sophisticated enough to recognize a canard when it experiences one.  These tests were intentionally designed to obtain precisely the outcomes that were rendered.  The rationale behind this is to demonstrate that our most successful students are not so much and our least successful students are dreadful. 

http://shar.es/yYf6x

Commentary on Math & ELA Results
Dr. Teresa Thayer Snyder
Over the past several months school leaders have been receiving countless messages from the State Education Department preparing us for the dire outcomes associated with the most recent spate of State testing in grades 3-8 in Math and English Language Arts.  As the date for the releases of the test scores approached, we received many notices of “talking points” to inform our communities about the outcomes, with explanations of new baselines and how these tests do not reflect the efforts of students and teachers this year.  I have rejected these missives because they reek of the self-serving mentality the ‘powers that be’ have thrust upon our students and parents.
Our community is sophisticated enough to recognize a canard when it experiences one.  These tests were intentionally designed to obtain precisely the outcomes that were rendered.  The rationale behind this is to demonstrate that our most successful students are not so much and our least successful students are dreadful.  If you look at the distribution of scores, you see exactly the same distances as any other test.  The only difference is that the distribution has been manipulated to be 30 to 40 percent lower for everybody.  This serves an enormously powerful purpose.  If you establish a baseline this low, the subsequent growth over the next few years will indicate that your plans for elevating the outcomes were necessary.  However, it must be recognized that the test developers control the scaled scores—indeed they have developed a draconian statistical formula that is elaborate, if indecipherable, to determine scaled scores.  I would bet my house on the fact that over the next few years, scores will “improve”—not necessarily student learning, but scores.  They must, because the State accepted millions and millions of dollars to increase student scores and increase graduation rates.  If scores do not improve from this baseline, then those ‘powers that be’ will have a lot of explaining to do to justify having accepted those millions.
If you examine the distribution of the scores, the one thing that leaps off the page is the distance between children in high poverty and children in relative wealth.  While all have been relegated to a point 30 to 40 percent lower than previously, the exact curve is absolutely connected to socioeconomic status—which has been historically true in such testing for more than a century.
The tragic part of this story is the collateral damage—the little children who worked so hard this year, who endured so many distressing hours of testing, who failed to reach proficiency, all because of the manipulation of the scaling.  We will be talking with parents whose children scored level four last year, who now may have scored a level two.  It does not mean much; it only means they are the unwitting part of a massive scheme to prove how these “high standards” are improving outcomes over time.  It is time to pay attention to the man behind the curtain—he is no wizard, but he is wily! 
By the way, if you want to know what curriculum experiences are being promoted for even our youngest learners by the ‘powers that be’, check out curriculum modules on www.engageny.org .  How many of us truly believe that expecting first graders to understand and explain why Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization is reasonable?  How many of us truly even imagine that six year olds should be able to identify cuneiform and hieroglyphics or understand the importance of the code of Hammurabi?  Check it out—then I suggest you let your legislators, and the Department of Education know what matters to you.
As we digest the information and prepare for the upcoming year, please rest assured that Voorheesville remains committed to challenging and cherishing our students.

Ravitch: Shock Doctrine Using Tests Will Spur Opt-out Movement

We are already hearing calls for parents to hit the deformers where it will hurt. Teachers who help will be droned. But strategies for teachers to play a role will emerge. The uft wants the tests and opposes the opt-out movement for fear the NY Post will say they want to avoid accountability. I say screw them all. A union must do what is right. And it should join in full force. But the enablers and hand maidens of ed deform won't rock the new status quo.
I'm on a plane to chicago delayed by a maintenance issue (Jack is behaving so far) so can't pull up the link to Diane's blog but check out the full post. Here is a piece.

"The Shock Doctrine may be a boomerang that helps to bring down the madness of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core, the Pearson empire, and every other part of the reformy enterprise.

New York may have inadvertently created by the most powerful recruiting tool for the Opt Out movement."

Cheers,
Norm Scott

Twitter: normscott1

Education Notes
ednotesonline.blogspot.com

Grassroots Education Movement
gemnyc.org

Education columnist, The Wave
www.rockawave.com

nycfirst robotics
normsrobotics.blogspot.com

Sent from my BlackBerry

The WAVE: Block Parties and Block Genealogy

Published in The WAVE, August 9, 2013

Block Parties and Block Genealogy
By Norm Scott

Sandy recovery efforts take a number of forms. There are still contractors on my block every day and a dumpster on the corner. But one of the clearest signs of recovery are the block parties that this year have a very special meaning. We had ours last Saturday.

Summer has always been a time for block parties in Belle Harbor and points east and west. You can find them by the extremely loud DJs, sometimes blasting away past midnight. Or cars parked on streets that are usually clear on weekends. Or the sounds of an enormous number of kids having the time of their lives - and exasperated adults trying to keep track of them.

The day after we moved in, August 1979 , there was a block party the next day. People on the block were very kind in greeting born and bred Brooklynites invading a block of multi-generation Rockaway natives. After thirty four years we are still the newbies on our end of the block with four of our nearest neighbors with more seniority. One of them was born in the house 86 years ago. As I see he and another 86 year old neighbor scamper around I take a deep breath of Rockaway air.

Our block hasn’t had many block parties since the 80s. Kids grew up. (I wonder what an adult only block party looks like). In the days and weeks after Sandy with everyone outside, people bonded. There was talk about how we will celebrate our recovery at the summer block party. That seemed so far away.

Organizing takes time and effort and us old folks are often not up to it. Newer families with kids are up to the job. Our block party began with a breakfast hosted by a couple, both police who been on the block for about 5 years, with such generosity of spirit and warmth. We got to talk to people we had barely had contact with, one who has been there for 30 years. I guess it takes a block party – or a massive hurricane – to bring people together.

The mood soon turned somber with the street renaming ceremony for Michael Glover, who spent his early years on the block where his mom had a house directly across the street from his

grandparents. I only remember Michael from his early years when he lived two houses away. There was a marine honor guard, traditional bagpipes, a fire engine and a big crowd moved by the speeches, one by a marine buddy who witnessed his death in Iraq in 2006 and was the first to reach him. Another by his mentor, a Ranger, who went back to the location of his death to honor him. It was raining throughout the ceremony and that seemed appropriate. The sign at the corner was unveiled to many sad cheers. We found out that Michael’s first cousin, who spoke at the ceremony, was buying the house next door to us, another wonderful facet of the rich history of our block.

The sun did shine in the afternoon as the party heated up and guests arrived. I was enjoying all the excitement but at times melancholia and nostalgia intruded as I thought about all the people who have lived on the block. Some moved. Others died. Just last week one of our former neighbors passed away. She was a Rockaway lion. I thought of my former next door neighbors who both died of cancer within a short time of each other over 20 years ago. Also Rockaway lions. We were thrilled to see their eldest daughter at the ceremony for Michael.

As the day went on and I ran into people those names kept coming up. A visiting former resident said, “Oh, you live in the Gerber house. We used to play on the lot before it was built.” That was over 50 years ago. It only becomes “your” house after you’re gone. If you hear it referred to as the “Scott” house check the obits.

As the party wound down late into the night, I sat on my porch thinking about the history of the block and all the stories surrounding it and what an interesting way to tell the history of a neighborhood. I realized I knew almost nothing about even nearby blocks and what a fascinating way for some historian to tell the story of Rockaway through block genealogy.