“Over the past 15 years, a dangerous hijacking of public education has taken place. Some of the catchphrases used to justify this are “accountability,” “failing schools,” “school choice,” “fire the ‘bad teachers’,” “the teachers unions,” ad nauseum. In reality, these have all misleadingly been used to promote one ultimate agenda: privatization of public education.”
Mark J. Castellano, president of the Lee County Teachers Association, explains in this post that the Lee County school board defended a love of learning when it took a stand against the testing frenzy that has engulfed our schools.
He writes:
“Our state and our nation have become obsessed with standardized testing of students in public schools. Obsessed to the point it has changed what our public schools should be: strongholds of learning.
“Schools are places where children are meant to learn that reading, writing, math, science, music, art, and all fields of study are valued. These are the roads they can safely travel to achieve what they dream of becoming, of doing. They should be able to discover the outlet that will allow them to become more than “productive citizens,” but people with a passion, and contributors to our communities, our nation, and our world.
Peg Robertson, a mother and teacher, responds to those who tell the Lee County Board of Education to be reasonable and to rescind their historic vote to opt out of testing. Peg wants them to stand strong and defend the children. She is one of the founders of United Opt Out.
She writes:
“As this common core and high stakes testing war comes to a head I am watching lots of folks trying to mediate and ask folks to be reasonable. They want to talk about all the harm that could come to our schools should we refuse these tests or refuse test prep common core curriculum. When I hear this my hair stands on end. Number one. Don’t flipping tell me to be reasonable. Don’t insult me – as a professional – my first job is to do NO HARM. THAT IS REASONABLE.
California’s governor stands up to confront the billionaire oligarchs who are out to destroy democratic public education by challenging the validity of the Vergara verdict and appealing the case to higher courts.
LOS ANGELES (CBS / AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown appealed a court ruling that struck down tenure and other job protections for California’s teachers, setting himself apart from leaders in some other states who have fought to end such protections or at least raise the standards for obtaining them.
Attorney General Kamala Harris filed the appeal late Friday in a Los Angeles County court on behalf of the governor and the state.
The move came a day after Superior Court Judge Rulf Treu finalized his June ruling that found five laws violated the California Constitution by depriving some of the state’s 6.2 million students of a quality education. He’d earlier said the system “shocks the conscience.”
The governor’s one-page notice of appeal said that under the state’s constitution “the important issues presented in this case — if they…
Tom Torlakson, State Superintendent of Schools in California, issued a statement today declaring his decision to seek appellate review of the Vergara decision. Torlakson is a veteran educator. His opponent Marshall Tuck immediately attacked Torlakson. Tuck, a former investment banker, was active in the charter school movement. Tenure is not the only or the most important issue that divides them. Tuck’s penchant for privatization would undermine public education across the state.
I know Tom Torlakson well. He is humble, knowledgeable, and understands schooling. I hope the voters of California are wise enough to re-elect him.
Tom Torlakson said today:
Friends,
Earlier today I issued a statement regarding my decision to seek appellate review of the Vergara case, which has drawn considerable public attention in recent weeks.
Here is the complete text of my public statement:
“The people who dedicate their lives to the teaching profession deserve our admiration and support…
How the fake education reformers, private-sector Charter schools fools the public repeatedly with help from the media. Are you one of those who are easy to fool?
The media loves the story of miracle schools. Imagine that! A school where 90% or more pass the state tests! Where 100% graduate. Where 100% are accepted into four-year colleges. Michael Klonsky once said to me, miracles happen only in the Bible. When the subject is schools, miracle claims should be carefully investigated.
With that caution and skepticism in mind, we turn again to a post by a researcher who works for the New York City Department of Education and must remain anonymous. This is the same researcher who chastised the media for ignoring attrition rates at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools. In posting that article, I failed to capture the links to documentation (a terrible oversight, I admit). I include his/her links at the bottom of this article.
Ed Reformers Are Most Like (a) Pinocchio (b) Beavis:
Getting to the Bottom of the Reformer Distaste for Honest Analysis
Chris Roberts, a new teacher in Ohio, was attracted to the message of StudentsFirst. He was impressed by what he read and by “Waiting for Superman.” He joined and was invited to apply for their Teachers for Transformation Academy. He was offered a stipend of $5,000 to be StudentsFirst Teacher for Transformation Fellow in Ohio. But in his fourth year of teaching, he had an epiphany. He realized that StudentsFirst was wrong about everything that mattered to him as a teacher. He turned down their offer and the $5,000. And he wrote an eloquent letter to explain why.
This is a small part of a powerful letter:
“Now after four years in the classroom, my view of education has changed. Now, I am not so convinced that the StudentsFirst agenda is what is best for students. Those “older teachers” whom I felt didn’t deserve the seniority protections were actually some…
Education Next is a journal that strongly promotes the privatization of public education based upon standardized-test-driven outcomes. The folks at EdNext really love charters and vouchers that drain *authentic* public schools of their funding all the while escaping the “accountability” so-called “reform” demands of those flunky, traditional public schools.
The EdNext editor-in-chief is Paul Peterson. He happens to be fond of charters, vouchers, and parent trigger laws.
In April 2014, Peterson and two others published a book entitled Teachers Versus the Public. That ought to tell you something about Peterson’s opinion of career classroom teachers.
Ironically, it seems that the “public” has spoken: Peterson’s book is a dud.
That doesn’t mean he is finished pushing his privatizating, “blame the traditional teachers” message via his EdNext survey, which was begun in 2007– the year that George W…
In October 2013, the Seattle Times announced that it had “sought” a grant from the Gates Foundation for a year-long “project” in partnership with Solutions Journalism Network– a blog called the “Education Lab”:
Education Lab, a partnership between The Seattle Times and Solutions Journalism Network, will explore promising programs and innovations inside early-education programs, K-12 schools and colleges that are addressing some of the biggest challenges facing public education.
As part of a “Q and A” on the grant money and the project, Seattle Times offers the following:
The project has received $530,000 in foundation funding — $450,000 from the Gates Foundation and $80,000 from the Knight Foundation, a foundation that supports…
The art of manipulation and fooling people has become an industry of deception.
For instance, Katie Couric interviews Melinda Gates about the Gates Foundation’s pledge to donate $1 million to DonorsChoose. Melinda Gates says that million will go to help teachers.
To discover the obvious, The Journal.com reports “Public school teachers spent $1.6 billion of their own money on classroom supplies and gear in the 2012-2013 school year.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates contribution represents only 0.625 percent of what public school teachers spend annually on classroom supplies and gear. But that $1 million from Bill and Melinda will buy good press and PR worth a lot more—another agenda that will destroy the public schools.
To discover the real agenda of Bill and Melinda Gates, let’s look at how much they spent to destroy the public schools through the rank and yank agenda of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) that Bill Gates was promoting before there was a CCSS.
Bradley County News reportsthe Gates Foundation contributions during the time frame of consideration and development of the Common Core initiative.
Counsel of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO):
2009–$9,961,842
2009–$3,185,750
2010–$743,331
2011–$9,388,911
National Governor’s Association (NGA):
2008–$2,259,780,Mark Tucker’s NCEE:
2009–$1,500,000
Total: $27,000,000
Then Mercedes Schneider at deutsch29 reveals: “The Gates amounts are even higher than for NGA. Prior to June 2009, the Gates Foundation gave $47.1 million to CCSSO (from 2002 to 2007), with the largest amount focused on data “access” and “data driven decisions” … In total, the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS–NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners – have taken $147.9 million from Bill Gates.
Next,The Washington Post reports that “The Common Core standards were developed in 2009 and released in 2010. Within a matter of months, they had been endorsed by 45 states and the District of Columbia. At present, publishers are aligning their materials with the Common Core, technology companies are creating software and curriculum aligned with the Common Core, and two federally-funded consortia have created online tests of the Common Core.”
The Washington Post also reported, “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.”
You may also want to know who the 24 people were who wrote the Common Core Standards: Altogether, 24 people wrote the Common Core standards. None identified himself or herself as a classroom teacher, although a few had taught in the past (not the recent past). The largest contingent on the work groups were representatives of the testing industry.Diane Ravitch.net
A brief timeline might help reveal what is really going on:
First—Bill Gates spends $47.1 million to promote the CCSSO before there was even a CCSSO. The goal of the CCSS is to use standardized tests to rank and then yank (fire) teachers in addition to closing democratically run public schools and turning our children over to private-sector, corporate run Charter schools.
Second—In 2009, 24 people, mostly non-educators who were representatives of the testing industry, wrote the Common Core Standards that Bill Gates spent more than $200 million promoting and supporting to develop this untested theory that has an agenda to fire teachers and replace public schools with corporate—mostly for profit—charter schools.
Third—There’s the Economic Policy Institute (EPI): The EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986. EPI believes every working person deserves a good job with fair pay, affordable health care, and retirement security. To achieve this goal, EPI conducts research and analysis on the economic status of working America.
The EPI says, “There is broad agreement among statisticians, psychometricians, and economists that student test scores alone are not sufficiently reliable and valid indicators of teacher effectiveness to be used in high-stakes personnel decisions, even when the most sophisticated statistical applications such as value-added modeling are employed.”
Conclusion: There is no evidence that the results of the Bill Gates developed and promoted Common Core standardized tests will improve the schools or help children learn—none. But there is evidence that standardized tests do little to nothing to help children learn. In addition, during the years that Bill and Melinda Gates spent more than $200-million to punish teachers through his CCSS rank and yank agenda that will destroy the public schools, teachers spent more than $11 billion to help children learn—and Bill and Melinda Gates think they can dig themselves out of their $200-million+ dollar hole with a $1-million dollar bribe.
Who do you trust more to teach your children—Bill and Melinda Gates or public school teachers?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Decades ago in one staff meeting at the high school where I was teaching, we were told that for education to work, all the stakeholders—teachers, students and parents—had to be involved.
Here’s the TSP equation: T + S + P = E [which means: Teachers + Students + Parents = Education]
To define this formula further and add responsibility as a factor, let’s look at the results of the 1966 Coleman Report. In the 1960s, James Samuel Coleman, PhD, and several other scholars were commissioned by the US Department of Education to write a report on educational equality in the US. It was one of the largest studies in history, with more than 650,000 students in the sample. The result was a massive report of over 700 pages. A precise reading of the Coleman Report reveals that student background and socioeconomic status are much more important in determining educational outcomes than are measured differences in school resources.
Coleman explained, “differences in school facilities and curricula, which are made to improve schools, are so little related to differences in achievement levels of students that, with few exceptions, their efforts [or the effects of different classes or curricula] fail to appear in a survey of this magnitude.”
The Coleman report identified 14 correlates of elementary and secondary school achievement, six of which are related to school: curriculum, teacher preparation, teacher experience, class size, technology, and school safety. The remaining eight correlates are categorized as “Before and Beyond School:” parent participation, student mobility, birth-weight, lead poisoning, hunger and nutrition, reading in the home, television watching, and parent availability.
The study concluded that the negative impacts on school achievement of single-parent homes, poverty in the minority communities, food insecurity, parent unemployment, child care disparities, substantial differences in children’s measured abilities as they start kindergarten, frequency of student absences, and lack of educational resources and support in the home “account for about two-thirds [66 percent] of the large difference … in NAEP eight-grade reading scores.” Coleman Report at Encyclopedia.com
Then there are student test scores. From the Economic Policy Institute—Problems with the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers—we learn: “Student test score gains are also strongly influenced by school attendance and a variety of out-of-school learning experiences at home, with peers, at museums and libraries, in summer programs, on-line, and in the community. Well-educated and supportive parents can help their children with homework and secure a wide variety of other advantages for them. Other children have parents who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to support their learning academically. Student test score gains are also influenced by family resources, student health, family mobility, and the influence of neighborhood peers and of classmates who may be relatively more advantaged or disadvantaged.
“Only about 4% to 16% of the variation in a teacher’s value-added ranking [from the results of standardized tests] in one year can be predicted from his or her rating in the previous year.”
What does the education equation look like once we add the responsibly factor?
T [33; 4 to 16] + S + P [66; 84 to 96] = Education
Explained: The Teachers one child has K through 12 are responsible for about 33 percent of what a child learns in school in addition to being responsible for about 4 to 16 percent of the results on standardized tests. This means, if a student has 43 teachers K to 12, each teacher would be responsible for about 0.76 percent of a child’s education and even less for the results of standardized tests.
Students + Parents [and other out of school factors] are responsible for about 66 percent of the results of a child’s education in addition to being responsible for 84 to 96 percent of the results on standardized tests.
How can Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and President Obama—and all the other fake education reformers—justify firing teachers based on the results of standardized tests and stripping teachers of their Constitutional due process rights as a public employee when each teacher is only responsible for less than 1 percent of a child’s education K to 12?
_______________________
Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 