Trump's Education Secretary claims that she could do nothing to make America's public schools any worse, but of course we know that is far from true.

Wait until you see how badly SHE'S going to fuck everything up!

Courtesy of Slate:  

On Wednesday, at a forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington, the president’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was asked whether she would concede that when poorly implemented, the “school choice” doctrine she has championed for much of her career could have a negative effect on students. She saw no such risk: 

“Well, I’m not sure how they could get a lot worse on, you know, a nationwide basis than they are today,” the secretary said. “The fact that our PISA scores have continued to deteriorate as compared to the rest of the world and, you know, that we’ve seen stagnant—at best—results with the NAEP scores over the years—I’m not sure that we can deteriorate a whole lot.” 

The problem with DeVos’ sweeping assertion—and by extension, her apocalyptic view of American public education—is that the numbers tell a more complex, muddier story. Take PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, a test that compares 15-year-olds’ performance across dozens of countries. Depending on how you read the most recent PISA results from 2015, American schools could be described as doing great (we’re ahead of Switzerland in reading, and above France and Sweden in science), as doing OK (the U.S. placed near the middle overall), or as failing miserably (America’s math ranking is bad and has gotten worse since 2012). 

And, of course, numbers can also be an unreliable diagnostic tool: Just because you think the PISA or National Assessment of Educational Progress numbers are awful doesn’t mean you know what to do to improve them—or even know how to track that you’re doing something right. DeVos certainly doesn’t seem to: Asked earlier in the Brookings Q&A what dataset could be used to assess her own performance as education secretary in four years’ time, DeVos rambled a little about the primacy of policies that favor choice while conceding, “I’m not a numbers person.”

No she is not a "number's person" but neither is she an "education person." 

Simply put she is uniquely unfit for this particular responsibility.

As for not making things worse, all one has to do is look back at the LAST Republican President's attempts to make over our education system, the disastrous NCLB, to quickly realize the ignorance of that statement.

Public school educators take Betsy DeVos to school.

This is what Sec. DeVos said about our teachers after her visit. Needless to say, we're about to take her to school... @dcpublicschools pic.twitter.com/Wcx1YyqDHL

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

First, the secretary visited the classroom of Ashley Shepherd and Britany Locher, a dynamic co-teaching team that differentiates for the...

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

needs of students ranging from a first grade level to an eighth grade level in reading. They build amazing relationships with students and..

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

maintain a positive classroom environment focused on rigorous content, humor, and love. They aren't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Then she saw Latisha Trent in action. Ms. Trent has been at Jefferson for 3 years, and each year her students grow MULTIPLE grade levels...

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

in Math. EVERY student realizes his or her maximum potential in Ms. Trent's room. She isn't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Then the Sec. met Band teacher Jessica Harris, who has built our Music program from the ground up. Ms. Harris pours her heart into her work.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Ms. Harris is patient, kind, relentless, and reflective. She is everything you want in a teacher. She isn't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Morgan Markbreiter was there as well. Ms. MB has unleashed the passion of countless students through her Video Game Design course. MB also..

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

runs our INCREDIBLE after-school program, which provides FREE tutoring and enrichment to our kids. She isn't waiting to be told what to do.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

JA teachers are not in a "receive mode." Unless you mean we "receive" students at a 2nd grade level and move them to an 8th grade level.

— Jefferson Academy (@JATrojans) February 18, 2017

Apparently somebody brought this to the attention of DeVos who then sent out this attempt at conciliation.

.@JATrojans Your teachers are awesome! They deserve MORE freedom to innovate and help students.

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) February 18, 2017

Somehow I doubt that the teachers will be fooled by that.

Educators are by definition intelligent and well informed.

They know what's coming, and it terrifies them.

NCLB crippled public education in this country, and DeVos clearly has plans to finally put it out of its misery. 

(H/T to the Daily Dot.)

President Obama signs bill to overhaul NCLB. Finally!

Courtesy of ABC News:  

Calling it a "Christmas miracle," President Barack Obama signed a sweeping overhaul of the No Child Left Behind education law on Thursday, ushering in a new approach to accountability, teacher evaluations and the way the most poorly performing schools are pushed to improve. 

Joined by lawmakers, students and teachers in a White House auditorium, Obama praised the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind for having the right goals. He said that in practice, it fell short or applied a cookie-cutter approach that failed to produce desired results. Under the new law, the federal government will shift more decision-making powers back to states. 

"With this bill, we reaffirm that fundamentally American ideal that every child— regardless of race, gender, background, zip code — deserves the chance to make out of their lives what they want," Obama said. "This is a big step in the right direction." 

The overhaul ends more than a decade of what critics have derided as one-size-fits-all federal policies dictating accountability and improvement for the nation's 100,000 or so public schools. But one key feature remains: Students will still take federally required statewide reading and math exams. Still, the new law encourages states to limit the time students spend on testing and diminishes the high stakes for underperforming schools.

You know how you say you hate something, but you REALLY don't hate it, but can't think of a better word? 

Yeah well not me my friends, I fucking HATE No Child Left Behind. And I don't care who knows it.

I had to watch kids with developmental and behavioral challenges leave high school with a "Certificate of Participation" instead of a diploma, simply because they could not pass the NCLB exit exams. They had accomplished all of the work, and passed the class room tests given by the teacher, but they simply could not get over that final hurdle. 

Many of these kids had no plans to go to college, but earning that degree was very important to them.

Seeing them walk off that stage clutching a useless piece of paper in their hands broke my damn heart.

So yes I am very glad that the guidelines have been changed.

I don't mind testing but when it destroys a student's confidence, or becomes the sole focus of a teacher's curriculum, then it is doing more harm than good.

Hillary Clinton's take on charter schools is definitely worth your time to read.

Courtesy of The Washington Post:  

Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them. And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education. 

So I want parents to be able to exercise choice within the public school system — not outside of it — but within it because I am still a firm believer that the public school system is one of the real pillars of our democracy and it is a path for opportunity. 

But I am also fully aware that there are a lot of substandard public schools. But part of the reason for that is that policymakers and local politicians will not fund schools in poor areas that take care of poor children to the level that they need to be. And you can get me going on this…. I mean, the corridor of shame right here in South Carolina, you get on there and you can see schools that are literally falling apart. I’ve been in some of those schools. I have seen the terrible physical conditions. That is an outrage. It is a rebuke to who we are as Americans to send any child to a school that you wouldn’t send your own child to. 

And so we’ve got a lot of work to do to make sure that public schools serve people, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also provide options within the system so that parents can find what they think might work best for their kid.

The Post goes on to say that Clinton was a one time advocate for charter schools, even praising them in her book "It Takes a Village."

However I don't think that this is another example of Hillary flip flopping, as much as it is an example of her views changing in response to new information.

When Hillary wrote her book in 1996, the charter school movement was really just taking off and a lot of people believed that it would help to improve public schools when new experimental techniques used in charter schools were then applied to schools everywhere.

Montessori schools are a good example of that.

However when George W. Bush used charter schools to help pressure and undermine public education that changed everything.

After all you are better able to demonstrate testing proficiency when you can weed out those with learning disabilities or disruptive behaviors.

Public schools do not have that option, nor should they. Therefore by comparison their test scores were considered sub-par, and they received a smaller allotment of money which could have been used to make improvements in their classrooms.

Clearly Hillary sees that and her opinions on supporting public schools are music to my ears.

After 21 years on the job Alabama's one time teacher of the year quits after being told she is unqualified.

Ann Marie Corgill

Courtesy of the Independent:  

A veteran Teacher of the Year in Alabama has resigned after 21 years in the classroom after local authorities told her she is unqualified to educate fifth graders. 

Ann Marie Corgill was told by the Alabama Department of Education that her qualifications were not up to scratch, despite being 2015 National Teacher of the Year and 2014-2015 Alabama Teacher of the Year finalist. She is also the author of teaching book called “Of Primary Importance”. 

Ms Corgill said she was tired of having to prove herself and did not want to pay more fees, and sent Birmingham City Schools a letter of resignation. In the letter, first obtained by Al.com, she wrote: 

“After 21 years of teaching in grades 1-6, I have no answers as to why this is a problem now, so instead of paying more fees, taking more tests and proving once again that I am qualified to teach, I am resigning.”

You know what, I don't even know enough curse words to express my anger over this.

What in the hell are we doing?

How can we have broken public education so completely that even gifted, experienced teachers can no longer function adequately in our classrooms?

This, THIS, is what the conservatives have been working towards all along.

They want to drive good teachers away, undermine public education until it is crippled, and then declare that the Department of Education has failed, and do away with it completely.

Despite the bullshit rhetoric about "fixing" education, this was the driving force behind No Child Left Behind. And the damage it caused, and the damage still being caused by those trying to modify it, is cheating our kids out of their rights as citizens to a free, and comprehensive, education.

Teaching is not a cookie cutter profession. These are not factory workers going through the same mundane tasks over an over for a paycheck.

They are intelligent, imaginative individuals, with skills and dedication who do best when they are allowed to experiment and think outside of the box.

That is how they keep the children engaged, and how they keep things fresh and non-repetitive for themselves.

The best teachers I have seen are the ones that rarely provide instruction the same way twice. They think of new and exciting ways to keep the material interesting and sometimes even entertaining.

Yet that diversity is exactly what is being punished in American classrooms today.

And you know what? That is fucked up.

After years of vilification and attacks on education, states are now scrambling to find teachers. No way to have seen that coming, right?

Courtesy of the New York Times:

In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers. 

Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers. 

At the same time, a growing number of English-language learners are entering public schools, yet it is increasingly difficult to find bilingual teachers. So schools are looking for applicants everywhere they can — whether out of state or out of country — and wooing candidates earlier and quicker. 

Some are even asking prospective teachers to train on the job, hiring novices still studying for their teaching credentials, with little, if any, classroom experience.

Yeah I think we all saw this coming.

First treat teachers like shit, attach federal funds to test scores and then blame the schools for their "failure to achieve," all while undermining the very idea of public education at every turn, and then wonder why you cannot find qualified educators anymore.

I swear this shit pisses me off like nothing else.

Senate passes bill to overhaul No Child Left Behind. What took so damn long?

Courtesy of The Hill:  

The Senate on Thursday passed an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind education law, an action that senators on both sides of the aisle agreed was long overdue. 

 Senators voted 81-17 to pass the Every Child Achieves Act, which transfers more decision-making power to state and local authorities. 

While No Child Left Behind was passed under former President George W. Bush, the weeklong debate in the Senate over changes to the law was among the least divisive of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) six-month tenure as majority leader. 

He touted the legislation as the latest example that his party has been able to get the Senate working again ahead of the 2016 elections. 

"The pundits told us it would never happen. Republicans and Democrats will never agree on a way to replace No Child Left Behind, they said. But a new Senate that’s back to work is proving them wrong," McConnell said.

I want very much to be very excited about this bill, however anything that Mitch McConnell brags about passing through the Senate makes my Spidey sense tingle. And not in a good way. 

However having said that ANY improvement to NCLB should be welcomed.

Perhaps the most articulate nine year old you will ever see speaks out against school testing in Florida.

Okay for the record I would just like to admit that I am not that articulate now much less than when I was in the fourth grade.

Her name is Sydney Smoot, and she is speaking in front of the Hernando County School Board. Here is more on her story: 

"This test defines me as a number," she said, holding up an index finger for emphasis. "One test defines me as either a failure or a success." 

She questioned the merit of the exam that has been subjected to little vetting: 

"Why am I being forced to take a test that hasn't even been tested on students in Florida?" 

And she had a particular objection that brought all her other ones to a head. 

Before taking the reading section of the FSA last week, she was required to sign a form that prohibited her from talking about its contents, even to her parents. 

Jennifer Smoot, her mother, said her daughter came home upset because she felt as though this form kept her from sharing the burden of her testing anxieties with her parents. 

"My daughter talks to me about everything," said Smoot, 38. "She was very upset."

I am a little late to this story as it happened over a week ago, but once I saw that video I knew I had to share it here.

As many of you know I am firmly against most of the standardized testing that resulted from No Child Left Behind, but I don't believe I ever expressed myself with near the eloquence of nine year old Sydney Smoot.

Take my word for it, this will not be the last time we hear from this young lady.

The propaganda against public education.

Courtesy of HuffPo and written by Diane Ravitch:  

A few years ago, when I was blogging at Education Week with Deborah Meier, a reader introduced the term FUD. I had never heard of it. It is a marketing technique used in business and politics to harm your competition. The term and its history can be found on Wikipedia. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The reader said that those who were trying to create a market-based system to replace public education were using FUD to undermine public confidence in public education. They were selling the false narrative that our public schools are obsolete and failing. 

This insight inspired me to write Reign of Error to show that the "reform" narrative is a fraud. Test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history for white students, black students, Hispanic students, and Asian students. Graduation rates are the highest in history for these groups. The dropout rate is at an historic low point. 

Why the FUD campaign against one of our nation's most treasured democratic institutions? It helps the competition. It makes people so desperate that they will seek out unproven alternatives. It makes the public gullible when they hear phony claims about miracle schools, where everyone graduates and everyone gets high test scores, and everyone goes to a four-year college. No such school exists. The "miracle school" usually has a high suspension rate, a high expulsion rate, a high attrition rate, and such schools usually do not replace the kids they somehow got rid of. Some "miracle schools" have never graduated anyone because they have only elementary schools, but that doesn't stop the claims and boasting. 

There is no evidence from any other nation that replacing a public system with a privatized choice system produces anything but social, economic, and racial segregation.

There is nothing that angers me quite as much as watching this undermining of our education system and the attacks on our teachers. 

The assault has come from numerous points of attack. Reducing taxes that fund education, promoting charter schools, insults leveled at the teaching profession, and of course NCLB and standardized testing, which has nothing to do with improving education, and everything to do with sabotaging and ultimately ending government run public education.

The only thing that will stop this, and it has been going on for decades now, is to provide our teachers with the freedom to actually teach. We need to provide the materials, and the training, and then sit back and watch the magic.

Some of the best teaching I have every witnessed was provided by teachers who were excited about their jobs, and could perform it without the administration breathing down their necks, and without the pendulum of constant, unnecessary testing hanging over their heads.

Public education was not broken, until those who claimed to be trying to fix it, broke it. 

Increase in children diagnosed with attention deficit disorders closely tied to schools that focus on test scores. In other words "No Child Left Behind" has resulted in fewer children left un-medicated.

The authors of a new book entitled "The ADHD Explosion" have made a rather startling discovery:  

Using Centers for Disease Control surveys, Hinshaw and Sheffler found that when rates of ADHD diagnoses are broken down by state, it turns out that there are dramatic discrepancies. Based on the most recent survey, from 2011, a child in Kentucky is three times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD as a child in Nevada. And a child in Louisiana is five times as likely to take medication for ADHD as a child in Nevada. 

And these states aren’t just outliers. The five states that have the highest rate of diagnoses — Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana and North Carolina — are all over 10 percent of school age children. The five states with the lowest percent diagnosed — Nevada, New Jersey, Colorado, Utah and California — are all under 5 percent. The disparity is even greater for kids prescribed ADHD medication. The same five states are at the top of the list, all of them with over 8 percent of kids getting medication. The states at the bottom of the list for medication — Nevada, Hawaii, California, Alaska and New Jersey — are all under 3.1 percent. 

The authors set out to look for factors that could account for those sharp discrepancies. 

“We thought it might have to do with the supply of providers — how many pediatricians or child psychiatrists in a given region — or the ways states supplement Medicaid,” explains Hinshaw. “It might have to do with advertising. But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that most kids first get noticed for ADHD in a classroom setting. So we wondered, are there policies about schooling that might be relevant?” 

What the team found was that high rates of ADHD diagnoses correlated closely with state laws that penalize schools when students fail. Nationally, this approach to education was enacted into law in 2001 with No Child Left Behind, which makes funding contingent on the number of students who pass standardized tests. In more recent years, similar testing-based strategies have been championed by education reformers such as Michelle Rhee. But many states passed these accountability laws as early as the 1980s, and within a few years of passage, ADHD diagnoses started going up in those states, the authors found, especially for kids near the poverty line. 

ADHD diagnoses of public school students within 200 percent of the federal poverty level jumped 59 percent after accountability legislation passed, Hinshaw reports, compared with less than 10 percent for middle- and high-income children. They saw no comparable trend in private schools, which are not subject to legislation like this.

I absolutely believe this to be true.  In fact I have seen it in action.

Focus on the test, and stress placed on teachers to make sure each child can finish the test within the time allotted, have resulted in these medical shortcuts which will see children with perfectly normal attention spans sent to pediatricians with teacher recommendations to be evaluated for ADHD or ADD.

And believe me many pediatricians have no problem simply prescribing the medications, even for kids who fall outside of the spectrum. What I don't think many realize, and I have seen many examples of this, is that children who take medications their entire lives have no problem turning to Oxycontin or PCP, or other mood altering drugs as teenagers or young adults.

In fact many of the prescription medications for ADHD have a very high street value, and kids have been known to shop them around in exchange for beer or pot money, or for something quite a bit stronger.

Just another way that George Bush has negatively impacted a generation of young Americans.

Texas, the birth place of "No Child Left Behind," dramatically cuts back on the number of standardized tests students must take. Is this the beginning of the end?

Courtesy of NBC News:  

The state that inaugurated the expansion of standardized testing in America’s schools 30 years ago and provided the model for the No Child Left Behind Act has now said enough is enough. 

Late Sunday night, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that cuts the number of standardized tests for the state’s 1.4 million high schoolers from 15 – the nation’s highest total -- to five. Gov. Rick Perry is expected to sign the bill within days. 

“Legislators heard their friends, neighbors and constituents,” said education historian and native Texan Diane Ravitch, a former testing proponent and adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush who has now become testing’s most prominent foe. “This is proof that democracy works.” 

Opponents argue that preparing for the exams consumes an increasing portion of the school year and that they don’t develop students’ critical thinking abilities. 

Texas is not the only state where expanded testing faces a backlash. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have received waivers from meeting the ambitious goals of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 law that helped spark an explosion of school testing nationwide. Eight more states have requested waivers. In November’s election, one of the nation’s foremost proponents of testing and accountability, Indiana public schools chief Tony Bennett, lost his job to a Democratic challenger after one four-year term in a “red” state.

I hear from teachers all of the time and the number one complaint that ALL of them have is that preparation for these standardized tests has completely taken over their curriculum and forced them to become a profession who focuses on test prep instead of actual learning.

As many of you know I worked in a Kindergarten room and even WE had to take a significant amount of time away from education in order to set up and prepare the children for these tests. And the stress put on teachers was nothing short of draconian, as the result could see funding cut or a bonus provided to the school and its teachers.

Now that the Iraq war is coming to an end the most egregious policy still remaining from the Bush administration is NCLB, and it is time to toss it aside and really improve our education system by empowering the teachers, funding the schools, and turn the focus to creating an environment that nurtures creativity and innovation and does NOT attempt to turn our children into uninspired cogs in a giant, and ultimately pointless, machine.

"I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me." One veteran teacher's resignation letter.

Here is his letter courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Mr. Casey Barduhn, Superintendent 
Westhill Central School District 
400 Walberta Park Road 
Syracuse, New York 13219 

Dear Mr. Barduhn and Board of Education Members: 

It is with the deepest regret that I must retire at the close of this school year, ending my more than twenty-seven years of service at Westhill on June 30, under the provisions of the 2012-15 contract. I assume that I will be eligible for any local or state incentives that may be offered prior to my date of actual retirement and I trust that I may return to the high school at some point as a substitute teacher. 

As with Lincoln and Springfield, I have grown from a young to an old man here; my brother died while we were both employed here; my daughter was educated here, and I have been touched by and hope that I have touched hundreds of lives in my time here. I know that I have been fortunate to work with a small core of some of the finest students and educators on the planet. 

I came to teaching forty years ago this month and have been lucky enough to work at a small liberal arts college, a major university and this superior secondary school. To me, history has been so very much more than a mere job, it has truly been my life, always driving my travel, guiding all of my reading and even dictating my television and movie viewing. Rarely have I engaged in any of these activities without an eye to my classroom and what I might employ in a lesson, a lecture or a presentation. With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core, along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education and particularly not at Westhill. 

A long train of failures has brought us to this unfortunate pass. In their pursuit of Federal tax dollars, our legislators have failed us by selling children out to private industries such as Pearson Education. The New York State United Teachers union has let down its membership by failing to mount a much more effective and vigorous campaign against this same costly and dangerous debacle. Finally, it is with sad reluctance that I say our own administration has been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns and needs of our staff and students by establishing testing and evaluation systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian. This situation has been exacerbated by other actions of the administration, in either refusing to call open forum meetings to discuss these pressing issues, or by so constraining the time limits of such meetings that little more than a conveying of information could take place. This lack of leadership at every level has only served to produce confusion, a loss of confidence and a dramatic and rapid decaying of morale. The repercussions of these ill-conceived policies will be telling and shall resound to the detriment of education for years to come. The analogy that this process is like building the airplane while we are flying would strike terror in the heart of anyone should it be applied to an actual airplane flight, a medical procedure, or even a home repair. Why should it be acceptable in our careers and in the education of our children? 

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

After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists. I feel as though I have played some game halfway through its fourth quarter, a timeout has been called, my teammates’ hands have all been tied, the goal posts moved, all previously scored points and honors expunged and all of the rules altered. 

For the last decade or so, I have had two signs hanging above the blackboard at the front of my classroom, they read, “Words Matter” and “Ideas Matter”. While I still believe these simple statements to be true, I don’t feel that those currently driving public education have any inkling of what they mean. 

Sincerely and with regret, 

Gerald J. Conti 
Social Studies Department Leader

This is, of course, one of many.  And there are sadly many more to come I am afraid.

I don't think I have ever seen a more accurate depiction of childhood in America today.

Gone are the imaginative romps enjoyed by yesterday's children.

Today's children are mesmerized by electronics. medicated into compliance, and tested to exhaustion.

The election is over Mr. President, so no more pussy footing around, it's time to talk education. You have some explaining to do!

Courtesy of Common Dreams:  

The current wave of school closings is latest result of bipartisan educational policies which began with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and have kicked into overdrive under the Obama administration's Race To The Top. In Chicago, the home town of the president and his Secretary of Education, the percentage of black teachers has dropped from 45% in 1995 to 19% today. After winning a couple skirmishes in federal court over discriminatory firings in a few schools, teachers have now filed a citywide class action lawsuit alleging that the city's policy of school “turnarounds” and “transformations” is racially discriminatory because it's carried out mainly in black neighborhoods and the fired teachers are disproportionately black. 

How did this happen? Where did those policies come from, and exactly what are they? 

Beginning in the 1980s, deep right pockets like the Bradley and Walton Family Foundations spent billions to create and fund fake “grassroots movements.” They churned out academic studies and blizzards of media hype, first for vouchers, later on for charter schools and what’s become a whole panoply of privatization-oriented “education reforms” ranging f rom teacher merit pay to common core curriculum and more. 

Those billions paid off with the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act which made the right wing corporate agenda of undermining and ultimately privatizing public education national policy. Though standardized test scores were long known to prove little aside from student family income, they suddenly became the gold standard for judging teacher & school performance. School districts were required to purchase & give dozens of costly meaningless tests and to publish lists ranking their own schools and teachers as “failing” when test scores were low, which again, was mostly wherever students were poor . 

Amid torrents of “blame the teachers” propaganda, so-called “failing schools” were required to hire expensive contractors with cockeyed “run the school like a business” remedies and more crackpot tests. Thus it was that NCLB s pawned almost overnight an entire industry of jackleg educational consultants and test suppliers guaranteed a market with dollars diverted from already tight public school budgets. Those industries attracted capital investors, and began doing what every other industry does in the US—make big campaign contributions to politicians to get sweeter contracts and more favorable regulation. When test scores still didn’t rise, NCLB required many schools to close, making openings for chains of charter schools, often highly profitable charter schools, bringing the blessings of “choice” and free market competition to the educational “marketplace.” 

It was an unequal sort of “competition” though, because charter schools have always been allowed to pick and choose their students, to turn away those with special needs, and to hire teachers and principals with little or no relevant training.

Now look you all know that I am a huge supporter of President Obama, but instead of doing away with the damaging policies of George Bush he seemed to only make them worse. Something I never thought was even possible.

Part of the problem is that it seems that the President has allowed the Republicans to define the conversation, and keep the focus on standardized test results that do NOT indicate actual student progress nor take into account poverty levels, learning disabilities, or cultural background.

And it has to STOP!

I can hear it now, "But Gryphen don't we WANT to get rid of bad teachers and under performing schools? And don't charter school and school vouchers offer us a viable alternative, and a way to force public schools to clean up their act?"

NO I don't, and NO they don't!

If you are one of the people who thinks like that perhaps you don't fully recognize the REAL agenda behind why the conservatives push for those two options so aggressively.

Here perhaps this report will open your eyes a little:

Rhode Island teacher, with sixteen years of experience, resigns while explaining what is wrong with education in America.

I don't often insist that people watch a video all the way through, but this time I will.

What this man says is VERY important, and needs to be heard by as many people as possible.

North Carolina teacher: "I quit!"

Courtesy of Diane Ravitch's Blog:

Let me cut to the chase: I quit. I am resigning my position as a teacher in the state of North Carolina—permanently. I am quitting without notice (taking advantage of the “at will” employment policies of this state). I am quitting without remorse and without second thoughts. I quit. I quit. I quit! 

Why? 

Because… 

I refuse to be led by a top-down hierarchy that is completely detached from the classrooms for which it is supposed to be responsible. 

I will not spend another day under the expectations that I prepare every student for the increasing numbers of meaningless tests. 

I refuse to be an unpaid administrator of field tests that take advantage of children for the sake of profit. 

I will not spend another day wishing I had some time to plan my fantastic lessons because administration comes up with new and inventive ways to steal that time, under the guise of PLC meetings or whatever. I’ve seen successful PLC development. It doesn’t look like this. 

I will not spend another day wondering what menial, administrative task I will hear that I forgot to do next. I’m far enough behind in my own work. 

I will not spend another day wondering how I can have classes that are full inclusion, and where 50% of my students have IEPs, yet I’m given no support. 

I will not spend another day in a district where my coworkers are both on autopilot and in survival mode. Misery loves company, but I will not be that company. I refuse to subject students to every ridiculous standardized test that the state and/or district thinks is important. 

I refuse to have my higher-level and deep thinking lessons disrupted by meaningless assessments (like the EXPLORE test) that do little more than increase stress among children and teachers, and attempt to guide young adolescents into narrow choices. 

I totally object and refuse to have my performance as an educator rely on “Standard 6.” It is unfair, biased, and does not reflect anything about the teaching practices of proven educators. I refuse to hear again that it’s more important that I serve as a test administrator than a leader of my peers. I refuse to watch my students being treated like prisoners. There are other ways. It’s a shame that we don’t have the vision to seek out those alternatives. 

I refuse to watch my coworkers being treated like untrustworthy slackers through the overbearing policies of this state, although they are the hardest working and most overloaded people I know. 

Obama administration encouraging states to opt out of NCLB.

Courtesy of MSNBC:

States are lining up to drop out of No Child Left Behind, the education initiative that was promoted as a historic achievement of the Bush administration. 

Since President Barack Obama announced last month that he would sign an executive order allowing states to request waivers from mandatory participation in the program, at least 27 have signaled that they will ask to opt out, and most others are reviewing their options. 

Obama said states could seek waivers as long as they adopt higher standards than those mandated under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as No Child Left Behind is formally titled. The Education Department said most states had already done that, presumably making them eligible for waivers.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan — who himself had to follow No Child Left Behind when he was chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools from 2001 to 2008 — isn't just offering the waivers. He's actively encouraging education officials to apply for them, he said, because "No Child Left Behind is fundamentally broken." 

"It's far too punitive, far too prescriptive," Duncan said. The 2002 law "led to a narrowing of the curriculum. None of those things are good for children, for education or, ultimately, for our country." In a letter to state education officials, Duncan cited "innovations and reforms" at the state and local level that "were not anticipated when the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was enacted nearly a decade ago."

That's why, he said in an interview with NBC News, "I'm actually giving away the power. ... We are giving the power to states and districts."

In my opinion there are still some very serious issues to be addressed concerning education in this country, but I am also very aware that those will not be dealt with as long as teachers are solely focused on meeting the rigid testing standards laid out in the NCLB program.

Removing that yoke from their neck should be the first step. And I have to say that simply handing the responsibility back to the individual school districts is an ingenious way to keep the Republicans from arguing against eventually doing away with NCLB altogether. (After all how could ANY Republican really argue for a Federal program versus a state solution?)

However my problem with Obama's Race to the Top program is that it encourages states and school districts to compete against each other for Federal dollars.

In my experience that is antithetical to the very thing that makes teachers tick. 

Teachers love to share their wealth of knowledge with other teachers, and they also love to learn new methods of teaching the same old subjects to their next class of students.  This inspires them and keeps things fresh and interesting.

The best teacher to have is an enthusiastic teacher in love with the idea of teaching. NOT a teacher working everyday to keep her job and worried that another state (I.E. another teacher) will get the funds that they so desperately need in THEIR schools. That kind of stress only further weighs down a professional who already carries the weight of her student's futures on her weary shoulders.

These amazing people need to be supported, not restricted. Admired, not undermined. And rewarded for their achievements, not castigated for failing to perform miracles.

The opportunity to learn is a gift, and for many people the opportunity to teach an even bigger gift.  Once the federal government understands that they will know how to address education in this country.

President Obama discusses new program called "Race to the Top" implemented to improve our public schools.

Providing incentives for schools to formulate new ides to improve education, and to identify successful methods currently being used, is EXACTLY the right way to improve education in this country.

A Federal mandate, like NCLB, that is forced on teachers, not only stifles enthusiasm for their job, it also destroys their ability to use their individual talents and creativity to keep the classroom an engaging place for children to learn.

Much like the children they teach, classroom teachers are also very unique individuals with differing skill sets and methods for inspiring their students.

Having worked in a classroom for several years I can tell you that a good, effective idea by one teacher was quickly adopted by others in the school. And the teacher who had the original idea felt proud that their fellow educators had enough confidence in their abilities to borrow freely from their lessons plans.

THAT is how innovation in our public school system works, and I am extremely grateful that we now have a President who recognizes that fact.

The one thing that the President is incorrect about is that George W. Bush deserves credit for No Child Left Behind. What Bush did to our public school system deserves nothing but condemnation from Americans, and certainly NOT praise!

The most important editorial on NCLB that I have ever read. And I urge you to do the same.

Courtesy of AJC:  

By Jim Arnold 

We’ve done it now. Eleven years we had to educate the public, to register our protests and do everything in our power to warn people what was coming, and we blew it. We knew the moment would eventually come and we hem-hawed, looked at the ground, kicked at the dirt with our shoes and failed to look the opposition in the eye and face them down. All of us saw this coming, but very few took a stand and now we – and our students – are paying the price. We could have been prophets but failed the test. 

We allowed the proponents of NCLB to control the discussion from the beginning. They wrote the language, sent out the media notices and explanations, wrote the definitions of AYP, Highly Qualified and leaned heavily on the fact that none of us would dare protest anything to do with a name that implies we would be providing a high quality education for every single child in America. They were right. We chose not to speak out, not to fight against a system we knew from the beginning would set us all up for failure, and instead, in our best Dudley DoRight impersonations we set about to change the way we taught and measured and tested and graded and thought. 

We knew from the outset that NCLB and its goal of 100 percent – every child proficient in every area as determined by a single test on a single day each year – was patently, blatantly and insidiously absurd, but we took no concerted action. We knew Adequate Yearly Progress was a sham, and we literally and figuratively rolled over and tried our best to meet whatever impossible goals they set for us and our students. We knew that Federal law in NCLB was a violation of Federal law in IDEA but we went along with the insanity of testing Students with Disabilities based on chronological age rather than by IEP. 

We learned very quickly and much to our chagrin that some student scores – usually the lowest ones – were counted not once, not twice, but often as many as three times, but we went along to get along. All of us were aware that Highly Qualified, for all the high rhetoric that went along with it, only served to make certification as much of a barrier as humanly possible for Special Education teachers regardless of degree or experience. It seems the teachers we needed most were subjected to the greatest roadblocks to reaching the nirvana of HiQ certification.

We tried our best to play the game but the game was rigged from the start. When the AMO’s were low it was pretty easy for most schools. When the AMO’s went up and more and more schools were labeled “failing” we looked around in a panic for help. Surely nobody believed a school deserved the failing label because two or three kids in a subgroup didn’t pass a test? Yes they did. Yes they still do. We let them make the definitions and apply the labels, even when we realized the absurdity of it all. 

We actually pretended to believe that it was important for us to make sure that every child was tested on those all important test days so none could escape the trauma we inflicted upon them. We even learned in some places to game the system and hold back those kids we feared might not pass the test or might raise those student numbers to create a subgroup in areas we really didn’t want to see a subgroup or, God help us, to cheat or to make sure that we could hold out two or three or four of “those kids” on test days so their poor scores wouldn’t have a negative effect. 

Oh sure, some of you stuck your necks out and said something to the effect of “NCLB forced us to take a closer look at ourselves, and we are better off for that” in spite of the fact that it was our students that were suffering the consequences. What balderdash. What hubris. Our kids were the ones whose education was stilted by our submission to the belief that one test could effectively distill and determine the depth and extent of an entire year of a child’s education. They are the ones whose time was wasted by “academic pep rallies” and “test prep” and by the subtle and insidious ways we told them the test was “important” and put pressure on them to “do their best because our school is counting on you.” They were the ones that did without art and music and chorus and drama because we increased the amount of time they spent in ELA and Math. 

They were the ones that had time in their Social Studies and Science classes cut back more and more so schools could focus on the “really important areas” of ELA and Math. They were the ELL’s that couldn’t speak English but still had to take the test. Their teachers were the ones that were told “your grading of the children in your classes doesn’t count any more because standardization is more important to us that the individual grades you provide.” This told them in effect that their efforts at teaching were important but only if they taught using “this” methodology or “this” curriculum, then, when things started to go badly, they were the first to be blamed for the failure of public education. They were told to teach every child the same way with the same material but make sure to individualize while you’re at it. Hogwash. 

After a couple of years of this insanity, the “NI” status began to take its toll. Someone somewhere invented the term “failing schools” and, unsurprisingly, the label stuck. Students were given the opportunity to transfer to more test-successful schools, but at a price. Schools that did not meet AYP standards, oddly enough, were often those with high minority populations and high poverty. Nobody seemed to notice the zip code effect that left predominantly white schools meeting AYP standards and minority schools caught by the “failing” label. Oh surely, we reasoned, our government would not want to put public education in a situation it could not win………..or would they? 

I struggled with the rest of you as to why NCLB would go to such great lengths to make public education appear to be such a failure, to set up a system that would guarantee failure for practically every public school as we advanced toward that magical 100 percent level and provide no tangible rewards for success and such punitive actions for not meeting arbitrary goals. On top of all of that, I failed to recognize why our nation’s legislators so nimbly avoided even the discussion of reauthorization to change what everyone knew was a failed policy. One day it finally hit me. 

They didn’t want to change the policy, because the policy was designed in theory and in fact not to aid education but to create an image of a failed public school system in order to further the implementation of vouchers and the diversion of public education funds to private schools. 

I am not usually a conspiracy theory guy, but this was no theory. These were cold hard facts slapping me in the face. We failed in our obligations to protect our students from one of the most destructive educational policies since “separate but equal.” We did not educate the public on the myth and misdirection of Adequate Yearly Progress, and we allowed closet segregationists to direct the implementation of policies that we knew would result in our being the guys in the black hats responsible for “the failure of public education.” 

Now we are paying the price. AYP is here to stay in one form or another, and the vast majority of our parents and public really believe the propaganda that it actually measures a school’s educational progress. If we try to convince them otherwise we are “making excuses.” 

Vouchers – especially for private and charter schools exempt from the same restrictive, destructive policies we are forced to endure – are a part of every legislative session in almost every state. High stakes testing for all public education students is considered a necessary reality and teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Student test scores will soon determine teacher pay in some places even with no data to support the correlation. Students that do not graduate high school in four years are labeled as dropouts, even if they graduate in nine or 10 semesters. 

Only first-time test takers are considered in the grading system for schools regardless of how many students ultimately pass the test. It will take years to undo the damage done to science, social studies, fine arts, foreign languages and other academic electives. Generations will not be enough to rid ourselves and our students of the testing mania neuroses created by our attempts to quantify the unquantifiable. 

I hope the generation of teachers and administrators that follows has learned something from the failure of our generation to ward off those determined to destroy public education. We didn’t stand up to be counted, we didn’t stand in the schoolhouse door and tell them they couldn’t do that to our kids, and we didn’t educate the public about what a gigantic failure another one size fits all education policy would be. In the words of that great educator and philosopher Jimmy Buffet: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” 

We have all been left behind. 

There is no more that I can add to this amazing, and extremely honest portrayal of what has happened to public education in this country.

However I urge you to spread far and wide these very important words from Mr. Jim Arnold, who served as both a Principal and Superintendent of schools in Georgia, and is sadly very well educated on the terrible damage that No Child Left Behind has inflicted on our country, our education system, and our children.

(H/T to Alaska Dispatch.)

Another reminder of why the GOP hates teachers and their unions so much.

From CNN:

A year earlier than usual, the nation's largest teachers union on Monday endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election in 2012.

The National Education Association, which represents 3.2 million teachers and administrators, approved the recommendation from its political action committee at its annual meeting in Chicago.
Obama "shares our vision for a stronger America," NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said in a statement issued by the group. "He has never wavered from talking about the importance of education or his dedication to a vibrant middle class."

Since taking office in 2009, Obama has championed education reform and used stimulus money to help keep teachers employed. Now he is calling for maintaining or increasing spending on education despite negotiating federal budget cuts.

However, not all of the Obama administration's education policies have pleased the union, particularly its support for charter schools and continued reliance on standardized testing to assess performance.

The NEA statement said the organization usually waits until the summer of an election year to endorse a candidate. This year, it did so earlier than normal "in order to provide early and strong support to help ensure the election of a candidate who is on the side of students and working families."

Of course it stands to reason that a union made up of educators would decide to throw their weight behind the candidate with the brains. Doesn't it?

I also have to add that I agree with the NEA's frustration over the fact that Obama supports charter schools and standardized testing as well, but I also know that he is our best hope for dumping NCLB, and getting our education system back to where it was before George Bush took a big steaming crap on it.