Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé

Roxana Marachi, a professor at San Jose State University in California, wrote an open letter to the State Board of Education. She warned them that the results of the Smarter Balanced Assessments, which will be released today, are not valid or reliable or fair. “False data are false data. Period. And to compare future results with current 2015 scores as “baseline” would be just as fraudulent as it would be to promote the 2015 scores as somehow valid.”

Students who are English learners will be harmed significantly by these tests, since SBAC itself predicted a failure rate of 90%, she writes.

These tests violate the most basic principles of the the American Psychological Association:

“We know from decades of research that beliefs matter in student learning and motivation. Without an understanding that the scores are meaningless, students will be likely to internalize failing labels with corresponding beliefs about their academic…

There has been much discussion about the sharp decline of SAT scores. Some (including its sponsor, the College Board) attribute the decline to an increase in the number of test-takers. Others say that the decline can be attributed by the increased diversity of the test-takers, meaning that when more low-scoring students take the tests, the scores go down.

Carol Burris took the time to review the data and come up with a data-driven discussion of what really happened.

The bottom line, she writes, is that the score decline was large and significant:

SAT scores for the Class of 2015 were the lowest since the test was revised and re-normed in 2005. The score drop in one year was 7 points — a drop that Inside Higher Ed characterized as significant.

She says there was very minimal increase in the number of students taking the tests.

Between 2014 and 2015:

11…

Learn how the Waltons–the billionaires who own Walmart–are trying to replace public schools with privately managed charters and vouchers and to eliminate teachers’ unions. Learn how the people of Arkansas said no and defeated them in the state the Waltons think they own.

This article, by Kali Holloway, describes how the billionaires got beaten in their attempt to privatize all of Arkansas’s public schools.

This past January, nearly 60 years after Arkansas’ first desegregation efforts, the state board of education dissolved Little Rock’s democratically elected local school board, the most racially inclusive and representative of its majority-black constituency in nearly a decade. In making the decision, the state overruled widespread public outcry to take control of the largest school district in the state. Two months later, Walton Family Foundation-backed lobbyists launched a brazen legislative push to allow for broader privatization — or put bluntly, “charterization” — of schools across Arkansas…

Zahira Torres and Howard Blume wrote a blockbuster assessment of John Deasy’s tumultuous tenure as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School
District. Being good reporters, they bent over backwards to tell this sordid tale without rendering judgment. But the facts they present are damning. They were largely gathered from Deasy’s travel and expense records, which the reporters obtained by a Freedom of Information request.

1. He had a heavy travel schedule, which took him away from the district for 200 days. His travels interfered with his responsibilities.

“At key moments of tumult in the district, the records show, Deasy was simply not in town….

“The beginning of the end came a year ago, just before the school year started. Deasy was in New York to discuss challenges threatening education reform.

“Back at home, the city’s public schools were in disarray. By the time Deasy returned for the first day…

While there has been much talk about the racial achievement gap in test scores, there has not been sufficient attention paid to the racial gap in wages.

A new study by professors at the City University of New York finds that unionization is a successful strategy in reducing the racial wage gap.

This bears directly on educational outcomes, because children from economically secure families are likelier to be more successful in school than their peers who live in poverty.

A study released on Friday, noting the gains made by black union workers in New York City, said that raising the rate of unionization among black workers across the country would help narrow the racial pay gap.

The study, conducted by two professors affiliated with the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the City University of New York, which issued the report, described high unionization rates for black…

You are surely familiar with Sheri Lederman. She is a fourth-grade teacher in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, whose “growth” scores dropped inexplicably from 14 of 20 to only 1 of 20 in a single year, causing her to be labeled “ineffective” on that measure. The score was assigned by a computer, which compared the growth of students in her class to avatar students in other parts of the state. The assumption is that children are inanimate objects that can be shaped and compelled to increase their standardized test scores. The computer is, in this case, at odds with Sheri’s principal, superintendent, parents, and former students.

Sheri’s husband Bruce Lederman is a lawyer. They decided not to accept this slap in the face to a teacher who had served with distinction for nearly 20 years. Bruce sued and the case was recently heard in state supreme court in Albany.

In 1975, New York City’s government teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. The city’s leaders appealed to the Gerald Ford administration for financial help. President Ford said no.

The New York Daily News published a headline on its front page that was immediately iconic:

FORD TO NYC: DROP DEAD

Today the same newspaper published an editorial with the same sentiment, this time directed at the parents of the 220,000 children who refused the state tests.

The editorial argues that the parents have been manipulated by the teachers’ union, which is not only false but implies that the parents are dupes.

The editorial claims that the state must stand by the Common Core standards, which (they say) were “developed over many years by the nation’s top education experts.” Would the editorial board please tell us how many years they consider “many,” like two? Would the editors please name the nation’s “top…

Washington State’s Supreme Court ruled that charter schools are unconstitutional.

“After nearly a year of deliberation, the state Supreme Court ruled 6-3 late Friday afternoon that charter schools are unconstitutional.

“The ruling overturns the law voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated, schools.

“Eight new charter schools are opening in Washington this fall in addition to one that opened in Seattle last year…

“Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote that charter schools aren’t “common schools” because they’re governed by appointed rather than elected boards.

“Therefore “money that is dedicated to common schools is unconstitutionally diverted to charter schools,” Madsen wrote.

“The ruling is a victory for the coalition that filed the suit in July 2013, asking a judge to declare the law unconstitutional for “improperly diverting public-school funds to private organizations that are not subject to local voter control.”

The Background:

The state held four referenda on…

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) is playing a very sick power game. He claims to offer a public high school at Dyett for a year, but not the one the community wants and needs. His PR department has presented this to the media as a  so-called compromise.

The corporate media controlled by the billionaires’ private club, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, will support the so-called compromise. This has been Rahm’s usual method-of-operation for years. Corporate media in Chicago, especially the Tribune News Media Services which includes WGN radio and television, is controlled and extreme. One of its editors recently wrote of her desires was to see a Katrina type of storm that would destroy Chicago ,except her exclusive area, and leave a wake of bodies floating outside her window.

Go to #FightForDyett and #WeAreDyett to understand that people have resorted to a hunger strike, intentional starvation…

Vicki Cobb, noted author of science books for children, here reviews the powerful video “Education, Inc.”

She writes:

“The American Revolution ultimately came together with the widespread distribution of a pamphlet that spoke truth about power.

“The American Revolution ultimately came together with the widespread distribution of a pamphlet that spoke truth about power. [Now] is the start of a public awareness campaign to take a close look at the school reform movement through a modern day equivalent of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense — an hour-long documentary called Education, Inc. It is not something that the billionaires behind the so-called reform movement want you to see.

“The brilliant award-winning film-makers, Brian and Cindy Malone, navigate their way through a complex and seemingly diabolical scheme to “reinvent” education where school reform is sold through a sophisticated advertising smoke screen touting “choice” for children. How do they expose what’s really happening?…