The Sad Status Quo of Education

With a nod to Education Notes On-line, from the blog, Seattle Education

by Sue peters

The current crowd of ed reformers like to dismiss any of us who disagree with their agenda as “defenders of the status quo.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am not a defender of the status quo in public education – because the status quo is currently “No Child Left Behind” and its insidious spin-off, “Race to the Top.”

In fact, I decry the state of public education in this country right now, because a beleaguered, underfunded system has been disparaged and ravaged even further this last decade by damaging policies based on failed concepts pushed by those who want to privatize our public schools.

I do not support the status quo because the status quo is teacher bashing. I don’t support the demonizing of teachers and belittling or weakening of the profession.

The status quo is standardization and high-stakes testing which narrows curriculum and kills all creativity and joy for learning and teaching.

It is “merit pay” which lashes teacher evaluations to student test scores, and which repeated studies and common sense show doesn’t work.

It is data-manipulation to create the illusion of ed reform “success.” (See: “Standards Raised, More Students Fail Tests.”

It is the re-segregation of public schools, exacerbated by the growth of charter schools.

It is overpaid, revolving school superintendents or chancellors with no ties to the local community, often no background in education, and no plans to stick around. That is the Broad Foundation model and the cause of the recent outcry in New York when Mayor Bloomberg chose a publishing executive with no background in education to be the chancellor of New York’s schools.

The status quo is national public education policy largely determined by unelected billionaires with zero expertise in education. “Venture philanthropists” Eli Broad and Bill Gates spend millions shaping public education policy. Formers staffers from the Gates Foundation now seed the Obama Administration’s Department of Education.

“Two of Duncan’s top aides, Chief of Staff Margot Rogers and Assistant Deputy Secretary James H. Shelton III, came from the [Gates] foundation and were granted waivers by the Administration from its revolving-door policy limiting involvement with former employers.”– “Bill Gates’ School Crusade,” July 15, 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek.

Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and former chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, are both former members of the Broad board of directors. The “Broad Prize for Urban Education” is a trophy and large cash sum awarded annually by the private Broad Foundation to school districts performing to its liking. In its 2009-10 Annual Report, Broad boasts that the trophy itself “resides at the U.S. Department of Education.”


You couldn’t ask for a better symbol of the infiltration of private corporate interests into federal government.

Have Mr. Broad or Mr. Gates been elected to public office, or to direct education policy? Do either have any expertise or experience in public education? No and no. Do either seek genuine parent input? No.

The status quo is Astroturf ed reform groups springing up like toadstools in the night, heavily funded by the same “venture philathropists” looking for a “return on their investment” and pushing the same corporate ed-reform agenda. Washington D.C. ex- school chancellor (Michelle Rhee’s new organization is apparently backed by the same wealthy interests. These organizations lobby for an ed reform agenda that we parents have no say in or may even oppose. But they have resources and media access at their disposal that ordinary parents don’t have. This is not a democratic dialogue about our children’s future when the main stakeholders — we the parents – are largely shut out of the debate.

I do not defend the current trend of sending recent college grads with just five weeks’ training and just a two-year commitment to teach in our nation’s most struggling schools which already suffer from high teacher turnover. But that is the model for Teach for America, Inc. a multimillion-dollar enterprise that is now funded by the Obama government to the tune of $50 million-plus and is arguably de-professionalizing the teaching profession.

Five weeks training does not make these uncredentialed grads “highly qualified,” despite the recent shenanigans by Congress.

I do not support the status quo that punishes teachers, principals and schools with mass layoffs, firings and closures because of student test scores, rather than addressing why some children are struggling and how else one might measure a child’s abilities and a teacher’s worth.

I do not support the status quo which is the mindset of the corporate ed reformers that schools should be run like businesses. Schools are not businesses. Their goal is not profit. The strongest schools are communities, more like families, and need to be cooperative, creative, engaging and nurturing environments.

I do not support the status quo of shameful attacks by the media on teachers and schools and the one-sided cheerleading for charter schools that fails to acknowledge the genuine proven limitations of these schools — their failure to serve children with special needs, the high attrition of kids (even a Geoffrey Canada Harlem Children Zone apparently booted an entire class of kids from a charter school because they weren’t deemed likely to do well on tests. (See: “The Myth of Charter Schools,” Brookings Institution, Nov. 11, 2010.)

I do not support the status quo which makes celebrities and “super(wo)men” out of spotlight-seeking figures like Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg, and Arne Duncan, while all the real work is being done quietly by the thousands of anonymous teachers, principals, educators, parents and students, who suffer through reform after reform, trend after trend, searing budget cuts, and still manage to go on and offer a good education to many children in this nation without any national recognition.

I do not support a status quo that cuts so much from school budgets that the PTAs are left fundraising for such essentials as teachers and books, and school communities that do not have these extra resources suffer the most.

I do not support the status quo of education policies being driven by Wall Street interests and not by what’s in the best interests of our children.

I do not support mayoral control, abolishing of school boards, quashing of parent voices and end-runs around democracy.

I do not defend the federal government imposing its edicts on local school districts, suppressing local autonomy and skirting the edges of Constitutionality, which is what Race to the Top essentially does.

The research comes on the heels of a recent pledge by President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, to use $5 billion of the $100 billion in federal stimulus funds for education to press states on charter schools. “States that don’t have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application” for federal grant money, Duncan said in a call with reporters last week. Currently, 10 states lack laws that allow charter schools, and 26 others cap their enrollment.” — from: “Charter Schools Might Not Be Better,” U.S. News & World Report, June 19, 2009.)

No, I reject this status quo.

What I support and call for is: the long-term personal and professional investment in every child –which takes time and commitment, as has been demonstrated in Everett, Washington. It’s not flashy, doesn’t require expensive high-tech products, just good old-fashioned follow-up with kids, mentoring and genuine support. And an engaging curriculum.

I support small classes sizes that allow greater one-on-one interaction. I call for the parents’ voices to be the loudest in the discussion of how to run our schools. I support autonomy for schools, teachers and principals who know their communities best, and who can ensure their children are doing well, learning what they need to know and able to graduate.

I call for creative teaching, rich, varied curricula that include the arts and music and languages, science, physical education. I call for safe, decent well-maintained buildings and healthy school meals.

I call for an honest dialogue about the ravages of poverty on our nation’s children. We need to acknowledge the shameful fact that 21 percent of our children live in poverty, and that inequities in academic results are largely determined by income and home life of the child. This is not an excuse, it is a fact, and to expect teachers and schools alone to correct the deep and damaging inequalities of our society is irrational.

I call for an overhaul of school district administrations, to pare them down to the essentials, make them efficient and serving the interests of the school communities, not the whims of private foundations or vendors of standardized tests, text books or online learning products.

I call for the hiring of school superintendents and chancellors who have a local connection and commitment to the community they must serve which will in turn lead to greater accountability. I call to retain democratically elected school board members who must answer to their constituents and oversee the superintendent, and a paid position for school board so they can do their job thoroughly and well.

Public education is an integral ingredient in creating an informed public and a strong democracy. I believe we must keep our public schools free of private and political agendas and manipulations, strengthen our schools, not close them down, stop punishing and start nurturing.

If you agree that our nation needs a new vision for public education, I invite you to join a forum of parents from across the nation who are launching a new organization, Parents Across America, in New York on Feb. 7. Our keynote speaker will be education historian Diane Ravitch. The event is free and open to the public. It starts at 6 p.m. and will held at: PS/IS 89 – Liberty School, 201 Warren Street, New York, N.Y. 10282.

Help bring parents’ voices to the education debate and support progressive, positive, constructive education reforms that work.

http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/why-i-am-not-a-defender-of-the-status-quo-in-education-because-the-status-quo-is-failed-ed-reforms/

New analysis challenges Gates study

From the Washington Posts Answer Sheet

By Valerie Strauss

Last month, a Gates Foundation study was released and said to be evidence of the validity of “value-added” measures to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers by using students’ standardized test scores. But a new analysis of that report concludes that the substance of the report doesn’t support its conclusions.

The report released last month was called “Learning About Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project,” by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation officials Thomas J. Kane and Steven Cantrell.

They used data from six major urban school districts to examine correlations between student survey responses and value-added scores computed both from state tests and from higher-order tests of conceptual understanding. Kane and Cantrell concluded that the evidence suggests that value-added measures can be constructed to be valid; others described the report as strong evidence of support for this approach.

But Economics Professor Jesse Rothstein at the University of California at Berkeley reviewed the Kane-Cantrell report and said that the analyses in it served to “undermine rather than validate” value-added-based measures of teacher evaluation.

The review by Rothstein, who in 2009-10 served as senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is being published today by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Education.

The MET report uses data from six major urban school districts to, among other things, compare two different value-added scores for teachers: one computed from official state tests, and another from a test designed to measure higher-order, conceptual understanding. Because neither test maps perfectly to the curriculum, substantially divergent results from the two would suggest that neither is likely capturing a teacher’s true effectiveness across the whole intended curriculum.

By contrast, if value-added scores from the two tests line up closely with each other, that would increase our confidence that a third test, aligned with the full curriculum teachers are meant to cover, would also yield similar results.

The MET report considered this exact issue and concluded that “Teachers with high value-added on state tests tend to promote deeper conceptual understanding as well.” But what does “tend to” really mean?

Rothstein’s reanalysis of the MET report’s results found that over 40 percent of those whose state exam scores place them in the bottom quarter of effectiveness are in the top half on the alternative assessment.

“In other words,” he said in a statement, “teacher evaluations based on observed state test outcomes are only slightly better than coin tosses at identifying teachers whose students perform unusually well or badly on assessments of conceptual understanding. This result, underplayed in the MET report, reinforces a number of serious concerns that have been raised about the use of VAMs for teacher evaluations.”

Put another way, “many teachers whose value-added for one test is low are in fact quite effective when judged by the other,” indicating “that a teacher’s value-added for state tests does a poor job of identifying teachers who are effective in a broader sense,” Rothstein wrote.

“A teacher who focuses on important, demanding skills and knowledge that are not tested may be misidentified as ineffective, while a fairly weak teacher who narrows her focus to the state test may be erroneously praised as effective.”

If those value-added results were to be used for teacher retention decisions, students would be deprived of some of their most effective teachers, Rothstein concluded.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/research/new-analysis-challenges-gates-.html?wprss=answer-sheet