Schools That Hinder Opt Outs Are Participating in Their Own Demise

April 18, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Opt Out, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, private schools, privatization, protest, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers education, Opt Out, Pennsylvania, public schools, standardized testing, test refusal

You can’t be a public school and still ignore the will of the people.

That’s the problem at too many districts across the country where narrow-minded administrators are waging an all out war on parents opting their children out of standardized testing.

The federal government still requires all states to give high stakes tests to public school students in grades 3-8 and once in high school. So states require their districts to give the tests – despite increasing criticism over the assessments’ validity, age appropriateness, racial and economic bias and the very manner in which the scores are used to justify narrowing the curriculum, school privatization, funding cuts, teacher firings and closing buildings serving the most underprivileged children.

In response, parents from coast to coast continue to fight the havoc being forced upon their communities by refusing the tests for their children.

Yet instead of welcoming this rush of familial interest, at some schools we find principals, superintendents and every level of functionary in between doing whatever they can to impede parental will.

Most administrators don’t actually go so far as out right refusal of a parent’s demand to opt out their children.

That’s especially true in states where the right to opt out is codified in the law.

Three states – California, Utah, and Wisconsin – have enacted legislation permitting parents to opt their children out of standardized tests. However, at least five others, including my home of Pennsylvania, have laws respecting parents’ opt-out wishes for certain reasons. In others states there may not be specific legislation permitting it, but none have laws forbidding it either. At worst, test refusal is an act of civil disobedience like tearing down a confederate monument or freedom rides.

In Pennsylvania, the school code specifies that parents can refuse the test for their children for “religious reasons.” Those reasons and the religion in question never need be named. Citing “religious reasons” is rationale enough.

Consider:

“PA School Code Chapter 4.4(d):

(4) …If upon inspection of a State assessment parents or guardians find the assessment to be in conflict with their religious belief and wish their students to be excused from the assessment, the right of the parents or guardians will not be denied upon written request that states the objection to the applicable school district superintendent, charter school chief executive officer or AVTS director.”

So when a parent provides just such an objection, it’s there in black and white that administrators must comply with that request.

However, some administrators are trying to game the system. When the other students are taking the state standardized test, the opt out students are rounded up and forced instead to take a district created assessment that just so happens to look almost exactly like the test their parents explicitly asked they not be subjected to.

So in my state, some parents have opted their children out of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) or Keystone Exams, but administrators are requiring them instead to take an assessment they cobbled together themselves that closely resembles the PSSA and/or Keystone Exam.

They take a little bit from the PSSA, a bit from the Partnership for Assessment of Reading Readiness for College and Careers (PARRC) test, a question or two from the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and voila! A brand new Frankenstein’s monster of standardized assessment.

But that’s not all. Some districts go one step further. They tie the results of this bogus “district” assessment with class placement. The results of the faux test are used to determine whether students are placed in the remedial, academic or the honors class in a given subject (English Language Arts, Math or Science) in the next grade.

Does that violate the law? Parents did not want their children to be assessed with a standardized test, and that’s exactly what the school did anyway. The only difference is the name of the standardized test they used.

I am not a lawyer, but I’ve contacted several. The answer I’ve gotten is that this may not be technically illegal, but it does at least violate the spirit of the law.

Districts are given a certain latitude to determine their own curriculum and assessments. This kind of runaround is ugly, petty and possibly just on the line of legality.

But our administrators are not done. Not only are they requiring such students to take a cobbled together standardized assessment, when children are done, they are forced to do hours of test prep for the state assessment that their parents refused for them.

Imagine opting out of the PSSA and then being forced to spend that time preparing for that very test. Imagine refusing to allow your children to take the Keystone Exam but then having them forced to prepare for it instead.

Petty, small-minded, punitive and – in this case – possibly illegal.

The school code is specifically against this. From the same section (4.4):

“(d) School entities shall adopt policies to assure that parents or guardians have the following:

(3) …The right to have their children excused from specific instruction that conflicts with their religious beliefs, upon receipt by the school entity of a written request from the parent or guardians.”

Again, I am not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear that this, at least, is a violation of the law.

They can request their children not be given specific instruction – in this case test prep. Yet that’s exactly what administrators are doing anyway.

So what are opt out parents to do? Should they lawyer up?

Possibly. Though no one likes to have to take their own school to court. Any monetary damages thus recovered come from the collective pot that should go to help all students learn. It’s unfortunate that some administrators play so freely with taxpayer dollars when it would be a simple matter to safeguard them AND respect parental rights.

A better course of action may be for opt out parents in such situations to seek redress directly from the school board.

School directors are elected officials, after all. They may not be appraised of the actions of the administrators in their employ.

And that is really where the buck stops. If school directors don’t approve of this sort of chicanery, they can easily put a stop to it.

These are public schools. They are supposed to be run by the public. Our democracy is supposed to be what defines us. We are run by the people, for the people.

We’re not some charter school where school directors are appointed to their positions, hold their meetings in private and rarely if ever have to account for their decisions.

It’s shocking that in an age when public schools are often set against privatized ones that we’d allow such foolishness.

We need to set ourselves apart. Instead of denying parental requests, we should go out of our way to accommodate them.

Parents could, after all, remove their children and try their luck elsewhere.

At charter schools, they would probably get an even worse welcome. After all, most such schools pride themselves on their test scores and test prep curriculum having kicked out any students who don’t score well.

However, parents of means could enroll their children in private or parochial schools that are not required by law to even take these high stakes tests.

I’m not recommending that course of action. These schools are expensive, restrictive, insular and extremely racially and economically segregated.

But how short sighted must public school administrators be if they play these sorts of games with parents and children in just such an environment?

Any public school leader who wars against opt outs is participating in their own schools demise.

This is doubly so at schools serving high poverty populations.

Children of the poor and minorities historically get lower test scores than those from wealthier families. These tests are used to justify budget cuts and firing school staff – including these administrators.

Opting out of testing is one way to deny this data to the state so that they can’t use it against the school.

Certainly having high numbers of students opting out can, itself, become an excuse for punitive action from the state. But nowhere in the country has it ever actually happened.

State legislatures, too, are run by majority rule. The same with the federal government.

Our lawmakers have no authority to tell voters they can’t opt their children out of testing. It is the voters who are the boss.

We’d all best remember that.

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Diane Ravitch’s New Book is a Fun and Breezy Romp Through the Maze of School Policy

April 14, 2019 stevenmsinger Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Diane Ravitch, Education, Obama, Politics, Poverty, privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers book review, books, Diane Ravitch, education, education historian, Garn Press, history, public schools, schools, teachers, The Wisdom and Wit of Diane Ravitch

Imagine you could talk with Diane Ravitch for 10 to 15 minutes everyday.

That’s kind of what reading her new book, “The Wisdom and the Witt of Diane Ravitch”, is like.

You’ve probably heard of Ravitch before.

She’s the kindly grandmother you see on the news who used to think standardized tests and school privatization were the way to go but actually had the courage to pull an about face.

She’s that rare thing in public policy – a person with the honesty to admit when she was wrong — and even lead the resistance to everything she used to believe in!

Now she champions teacher autonomy, fair and equitable school funding and authentic public schools with duly-elected school boards.

Her new book is full of shorter pieces by the education historian from all over the mass media – The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Huffington Post and even her own blog.

You’ll find an article explaining why she changed her mind about school reform nestled next to a reflection on what it’s like to grow up Jewish in Texas. Here’s a succinct take down of President Obama’s Race to the Top next to an article extolling the virtues of student activism in Providence. Ever wonder what Ravitch would say to her mentor Lamar Alexander about our current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos? It’s in there. Ever wonder what books on education she would recommend? It’s in there.

This new book from Garn Press is more personal than anything I’ve seen from Ravitch on the shelves before. And that’s because it’s not part of a sustained argument like “The Life and Death of the Great American School System,” or “Reign or Error.” It’s a collection of vignettes taken from the last decade of her writing. These are flashes of inspiration, snippets of thoughts, bursts of criticism and humor.

They’re perfect for perusing and really quite addictive.

I found myself jumping from an article in the first 20 pages to one at the end to another in the middle. There’s no reason any of it needs to be read chronologically though they are organized in the order of publication.

It’s really a lot like talking to Diane, something that I’ve had the privilege to do on a few occasions. Like any conversation, topics come up organically and you go from one to another without rhyme or reason.

At least that’s how I read the book.

It would be perfect in your school’s teachers lounge. Educators could pick it up at lunch or during their planning periods and use it as a springboard to talk about almost any issue that comes up during the day.

Well, it would be perfect if we ever actually had that kind of time.

I found myself repeatedly interrupted when trying to read it. But that’s actually not a problem. Given the brevity of the articles and their impressive concision, it doesn’t matter if you have to put a bookmark in the middle of a chapter here or there. It’s easy to pick up the thread and continue later.

There are so many highlights, but one of my favorites is “Don’t Like Betsy DeVos? Blame the Democrats” where she writes:

“I contend that it is immoral, unjust, and inequitable to advocate for policies that hurt 95% of students so that 5% can go to a private school. It is even more unjust to destabilize an entire school district by introducing a welter of confusing choices, including schools that open and close like day lilies. Why don’t the advocates of school choice also advocate for funding to replace the money removed from the public schools?”

Or how about “Flunking Arne Duncan”? I must admit, the title alone made my heart give a little cheer. Ravitch gives the former Education Secretary the following report card which deserves to be blown up to poster size and displayed in every classroom in the country:

“Report Card: Arne Duncan
Fidelity to the Constitution                                       F
Doing what’s right for children                               F
Doing what’s right for public education                F
Respecting the limits of federalism                        F
Doing what’s right for teachers                               F
Doing what’s right for education                            F”

As a public school teacher, I must admit getting an inordinate amount of pleasure from Ravitch’s criticism of the fools and frauds writing school policy. But she has a lot to say on so many subjects – standardized testing, Common Core, even the basic greed underlying the whole political mess.

Consider this gem from “What Powerful and Greedy Elites are Hiding When They Scapegoat the Schools”:

“I have nothing against the wealthy. I don’t care that some people have more worldly goods than others. I understand that life’s not fair. I just harbor this feeling that a person ought to be able to get by on $100 million or so and not keep piling up riches while so many others don’t know how they will feed their children tonight.”

I could offer a dozen more quotes from the book. My copy looks like a rainbow with all the different colored highlights I’ve made through its 451 pages.

So if you want my advice, go out and buy “The Wisdom and Wit of Diane Ravitch.” It’s a fun and breezy romp through the maze of school policy.

Just keep a good supply of highlighters and bookmarks handy.

Standardized Testing is a Tool of White Supremacy

April 5, 2019 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Eugenics, Learning, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Racism, School Funding, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, White Privilege Buck v. Bell, Carl Brigham, education, Eugenics, history, Lewis Terman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Psychology, public schools, Robert M. Yerkes, SAT, SCOTUS, standardized testing, white supremacy

Let’s say you punched me in the face.

I wouldn’t like it. I’d protest. I’d complain.

And then you might apologize and say it was just an accident.

Maybe I’d believe you.

Until the next time when we met and you punched me again.

That’s the problem we, as a society, have with standardized tests.

We keep using them to justify treating students of color as inferior and/or subordinate to white children. And we never stop or even bothered to say, “I’m sorry.”

Fact: black kids don’t score as high on standardized tests as white kids.

It’s called the racial achievement gap and it’s been going on for nearly a century.

Today we’re told that it means our public schools are deficient. There’s something more they need to be doing.

But if this phenomenon has been happening for nearly 100 years, is it really a product of today’s public schools or a product of the testing that identifies it in the first place?

After all, teachers and schools have changed. They no longer educate children today the same way they did in the 1920s when the first large scale standardized tests were given to students in the US. There are no more one-room schoolhouses. Kids can’t drop out at 14. Children with special needs aren’t kept in the basement or discouraged from attending school. Moreover, none of the educators and administrators on the job during the Jazz Age are still working.

Instead, we have robust buildings serving increasingly larger and more diverse populations. Students stay in school until at least 18. Children with special needs are included with their peers and given a multitude of services to meet their educational needs. And that’s to say nothing of the innovations in technology, pedagogy and restorative justice discipline policies.

But standardized testing? That hasn’t really changed all that much. It still reduces complex processes down to a predetermined set of only four possible answers – a recipe good for guessing what a test-maker wants more than expressing a complex answer about the real world. It still attempts to produce a bell curve of scores so that so many test takers fail, so many pass, so many get advanced scores, etc. It still judges correct and incorrect by reference to a predetermined standard of how a preconceived “typical” student would respond.

Considering how and why such assessments were created in the first place, the presence of a racial achievement gap should not be surprising at all. That’s the result these tests were originally created to find.

Modern testing comes out of Army IQ tests developed during World War I.

In 1917, a group of psychologists led by Robert M. Yerkes, president of the American Psychological Association (APA), created the Army Alpha and Beta tests. These were specifically designed to measure the intelligence of recruits and help the military distinguish those of “superior mental ability” from those who were “mentally inferior.”

These assessments were based on explicitly eugenicist foundations – the idea that certain races were distinctly superior to others.

In 1923, one of the men who developed these intelligence tests, Carl Brigham, took these ideas further in his seminal work A Study of American Intelligence. In it, he used data gathered from these IQ tests to argue the following:

“The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it.”

Thus, Yerkes and Brigham’s pseudoscientific tests were used to justify Jim Crow laws, segregation, and even lynchings. Anything for “racial purity.”

People took this research very seriously. States passed forced sterilization laws for people with “defective” traits, preventing between 60,000 and 70,000 people from “polluting” America’s ruling class.

The practice was even upheld by the US Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision. Justices decided that mandatory sterilization of “feeble-minded” individuals was, in fact, Constitutional.

Of the ruling, which has never been explicitly overturned, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Eventually Brigham took his experience with Army IQ tests to create a new assessment for the College Board – the Scholastic Aptitude Test – now known as the Scholastic Assessment Test or SAT. It was first given to high school students in 1926 as a gatekeeper. Just as the Army intelligence tests were designed to distinguish the superior from the inferior, the SAT was designed to predict which students would do well in college and which would not. It was meant to show which students should be given the chance at a higher education and which should be left behind.

And unsurprisingly it has always – and continues to – privilege white students over children of color.

The SAT remains a tool for ensuring white supremacy that is essentially partial and unfair – just as its designers always meant it to be.

Moreover, it is the model by which all other high stakes standardized tests are designed.

But Brigham was not alone in smuggling eugenicist ideals into the education field. These ideas dominated pedagogy and psychology for generations until after World War II when their similarity to the Nazi philosophy we had just defeated in Europe dimmed their exponents’ enthusiasm.

Another major eugenicist who made a lasting impact on education was Lewis Terman, Professor of Education at Stanford University and originator of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test. In his highly influential 1916 textbook, The Measurement of Intelligence he wrote:
psych

“Among laboring men and servant girls there are thousands like them [feebleminded individuals]. They are the world’s “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” And yet, as far as intelligence is concerned, the tests have told the truth. … No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable voters in the true sense of the word.

… The fact that one meets this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods.

Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master, but they can often be made efficient workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding” (91-92).

This was the original justification for academic tracking. Terman and other educational psychologists convinced many schools to use high-stakes and culturally-biased tests to place “slow” students into special classes or separate schools while placing more advanced students of European ancestry into the college preparatory courses.

The modern wave of high stakes testing has its roots in the Reagan administration – specifically the infamous propaganda hit piece A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform.

In true disaster capitalism style, it concluded that our economy was at risk because of poor public schools. Therefore, it suggested circumventing the schools and subordinating them to a system of standardized tests, which would be used to determine everything from teacher quality to resource allocation.

It’s a bizarre argument, but it goes something like this: the best way to create and sustain a fair educational system is by rewarding “high-achieving” students.

So we shouldn’t provide kids with what they need to succeed. We should make school a competition where the strongest get the most and everyone else gets a lesser share.

And the gatekeeper in this instance (as it was in access to higher education) is high stakes testing. The greater the test score, the more funding your school receives, the lower class sizes, the wider curriculum, more tutors, more experienced and well compensated teachers, etc.

It’s a socially stratified education system completely supported by a pseudoscientific series of assessments.

After all, what is a standardized test but an assessment that refers to a specific standard? And that standard is white, upper class students.

In his book How the SAT Creates Built-in-Headwinds, national admissions-test expert, Jay Rosner, explains the process by-which SAT designers decide which questions to include on the test:

“Compare two 1998 SAT verbal [section] sentence-completion items with similar themes: The item correctly answered by more blacks than whites was discarded by [the Educational Testing Service] (ETS), whereas the item that has a higher disparate impact against blacks became part of the actual SAT. On one of the items, which was of medium difficulty, 62% of whites and 38% of African-Americans answered correctly, resulting in a large impact of 24%…On this second item, 8% more African-Americans than whites answered correctly…”

In other words, the criteria for whether a question is chosen for future tests is if it replicates the outcomes of previous exams – specifically tests where students of color score lower than white children. And this is still the criteria test makers use to determine which questions to use on future editions of nearly every assessment in wide use in the US.

Some might argue that this isn’t racist because race was not explicitly used to determine which questions would be included. Yet the results are exactly the same as if it were.

Others want to reduce the entire enterprise to one of social class. It’s not students of color that are disadvantaged – it’s students living in poverty. And there is overlap here.

Standardized testing doesn’t show academic success so much as the circumstances that caused that success or failure. Lack of proper nutrition, food insecurity, lack of prenatal care, early childcare, fewer books in the home, exposure to violence – all of these and more combine to result in lower academic outcomes.

But this isn’t an either/or situation. It’s both. Standardized testing has always been about BOTH race and class. They are inextricably entwined.

Which leads to the question of intention.

If these are the results, is there some villain laughing behind the curtain and twirling the ends of a handlebar mustache?

Answer: it doesn’t matter.

As in the entire edifice of white supremacy, intention is beside the point. These are the results. This is what a policy of high stakes standardized testing actually does.

Regardless of intention, we are responsible for the results.

If every time we meet, you punch me in the face, it doesn’t matter if that’s because you hate me or you’re just clumsy. You’re responsible for changing your actions.

And we as a society are responsible for changing our policies.

Nearly a century of standardized testing is enough.

It’s time to stop the bludgeoning.

It’s time to treat all our children fairly.

It’s time to hang up the tests.

NOTE: This article expands upon many ideas I wrote about in an article published this week in Public Source.

Sell Your Soul to the Testocracy: Kamala Harris’s Faustian Teacher Raises

March 28, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Budget, California, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Obama, Politics, privatization, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, Teachers, Unions Arne Duncan, bargain, Catherine Brown, Center for American Progress, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, Democrat, Election, faust, Kamala Harris, Politics, President, teacher salary, testocracy

I love the idea of Kamala Harris’ plan to give teachers a pay raise.

But once we get past ideas, it’s way more troubling.

The California Senator and Democratic Presidential hopeful is proposing a $13,500 pay increase for the average teacher, with the exact number based on the size of each state’s pay gap.

That’s $315 billion more over a decade through federal matching funds, which amounts to a 23 percent salary increase for most educators.

Yes, please!

I could certainly use a raise.

But as Joe Moore said, “You can’t trust a promise someone makes while they’re drunk, in love, hungry, or running for office.”

And Harris IS running for office.

With this policy she’s wooing the national teachers unions and filling the neoliberal seat left by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

I love my union, but its leadership is like a college kid during spring break – ready to jump into bed with anyone who says the right words.

The fact of the matter is this plan also is favored by the people out to destroy my profession from the inside out.

Arne Duncan likes it.

Yes, THAT Arne Duncan!

Obama’s first Education Secretary. The guy who thought Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans because it allowed the government to close the public schools and replace them with charter schools.

The man who held federal grant money hostage unless schools enacted his unproven and disastrous corporate driven education reforms.

The man who encouraged pushing out teachers of color who had four year education degrees in favor of mostly white Teach for America temps with a few weeks crash course training.

The man who encouraged a rapid increase in high stakes standardized testing, narrowed curriculum, let class sizes balloon and decreased authentic lessons.

THAT Arne Duncan wrote this about Harris’ plan on Twitter:

“Radical idea: pay the professionals we entrust to teach, nurture and mentor our children a better salary!”

How to reconcile the two?

I draw your attention to what he said on a recent book tour:

“If we were willing to invest in high-quality early childhood education, if we’re willing to pay great teachers and great principals significantly more, the benefits to our society, the benefits to our economy, the benefits to our democracy I think would be extraordinary…

[But] Money is never enough. So you’ll never hear me say, it’s only about money. For me it’s always about your high expectations as well as high support. And we have to hold ourselves accountable for great results. When schools aren’t working, we have to be willing to challenge the status quo. So investment is part of it, but high expectations have to go with that, and we have to hold ourselves accountable as educators for results, absolutely.”

So for Duncan this plan is entirely consistent with corporate education reform.

In fact, it makes sense as a continuation of those policies.

When privatization cheerleaders like Duncan talk about “high quality teachers” and “accountability” what they really mean are strings attached.

In this case, they probably mean merit pay – giving bonuses to teachers whose students get high test scores.

It’s a terrible idea because it encourages bad behavior from teachers, administrators and districts, which in turn hurts kids.

Having all your teachers fight over the rich white kids who get the highest test scores doesn’t help the struggling students. It just means fewer educators will want to teach the underprivileged because they can’t take the financial hit that comes with it.

The result is test prep all day, every day.

I want a raise, but not if it means I have to bastardize my own profession down to that!

And it’s not just Duncan who loves this idea.

Catherine Brown, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), actually helped Harris write this proposal.

“It could be transformative in terms of how we think about elevating and modernizing the teaching profession and the federal role in doing so,” Brown said.

CAP is a neoliberal think tank that worked closely with the Obama and Clinton administrations. And Brown is also the co-author of “The Progressive Case for Charter Schools”.

Any plan to raise teacher salary that is consistent with increased privatization is inherently suspect.

You can’t champion authentic public schools and public school teachers while also pushing for more institutions run without the same transparency, democratic government, and enrollment standards. If you think schools should be able to cherrypick which students to accept, they should be run by appointed bureaucrats, and it’s fine to cut student services while pocketing the profits, you aren’t a friend of public education.

In an article she co-wrote published by CAP called “Fact Sheet: Yes, Increase the Salaries of All Teachers,” she made it clear that merit pay is a good idea.

She wrote:

“…there is still debate surrounding whether all teachers need a raise, or if it is enough to make changes for a select group of teachers through differentiated or merit-based pay. While differentiated and merit-based pay can help alleviate some specific teacher shortages, such as those in subjects or schools that are high-needs, they are not a substitute for higher base pay.”

Ultimately, Brown comes out in favor of an across the board salary increase for teachers, but in her view merit pay is part of that solution.

This is a backdoor for the same snake oil the privatizaters have been selling for years.

As education blogger Peter Greene points out, the language used in Harris’ proposal is right from the neoliberal playbook. It is full of the same euphemisms and code words that have signaled school privatization, high stakes testing and merit pay.

Consider this gem:

“Every child deserves a world-class education, regardless of their ZIP code. Of all in-school factors that impact their success, there’s nothing more important than our teachers.”

“World class education” and “regardless of ZIP code” mean charter schools galore. And the only “success” these folks are interested in is high test scores.

Or this:

“Our plan will include a multi-billion dollar investment in programs that help elevate the teaching profession and support principals and other school leaders. This includes high-quality teacher and principal residencies early-career induction programs that pair new teachers with mentors and master teachers, career ladder models that allow for advancement opportunities for teacher leaders, and “Grow Your Own” programs that help increase teacher diversity.”

Greene says that the term “Career ladders” is a red flag because it usually denotes career stagnation. It’s code for adding more duties and responsibilities on teachers without actually furthering their careers.

If I’m honest, these are all red flags.

As much as I want a raise, I’m doubtful Harris’ plan would actually accomplish much other than selling my soul to the testocracy.

Ultimately that’s what this is – a Faustian bargain.

We need to invest in greater per pupil spending and let that translate into higher teacher salaries.

We need equitable and sustainable funding formulas that aren’t tied to testing or that don’t open the door for privatization.

And most of all, we need an understanding of the real challenges in education and not a piece of parchment where teachers are supposed to sign in blood.

School Accountability Begins With the People Who Make the Rules: A Code of Conduct for Politicians and Test Makers

March 21, 2019March 22, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, edtech, Education, Learning, Parents, Pennsylvania, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM #FairFundingPA, Code of Conduct, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, high stakes testing, politicians, Politics, public schools, school funding, schools, standardized testing, teachers, teaching to the test, test makers, Test Prep, test-based accountability

Standardized testing is all about accountability.

We’ve got to keep schools accountable for teaching.

We’ve got to keep students accountable for learning.

It’s kind of a crazy idea when you stop to think about it – as if teachers wouldn’t teach and students wouldn’t learn unless someone was standing over them with a big stick. As if adults got into teaching because they didn’t want to educate kids or children went to school because they had no natural curiosity at all.

So we’ve got to threaten them into getting in line – students, teachers: march!

But that’s not even the strangest part. It’s this idea that that is where accountability stops.

No one has to keep the state or federal government accountable for providing the proper resources.

No one has to keep the testing companies accountable for creating fair and accurate assessments.

It’s just teachers and students.

So I thought I’d fix that with a “Code of Conduct for Politicians and Test Makers.”

After all, that’s what we do when we want to ensure someone is being responsible – we remind them of their responsibilities.

You see, the state and federal government are very concerned about cheating.

Not the kind of cheating where the super rich pay off lawmakers to rig an accountability system against the poor and minorities. No. Just the kind of cheating where teachers or students try to untie their hands from behind their backs.

They’re very concerned about THAT.

When you threaten to take away a school’s funding and fire teachers based on test scores, you tend to create an environment that encourages rampant fraud and abuse.

So the government requires its public servants to take on-line courses in the ethics of giving standardized tests. We have to sit through canned demonstrations of what we’re allowed to do and what we aren’t allowed to do. And when it’s all over, we have to take a test certifying that we understand.

Then after we proctor an exam, we have to sign a statement swearing that we’re abiding by these rules to ensure “test security.”

This year, for the first time, I’m supposed to put my initials on the answer sheets of all of my students’ Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests to prove…. I don’t know. That I was there and if anything went wrong, it’s my fault. Burn the witch. That sort of thing.

Even our students have to demonstrate that they’re abiding by the rules. Children as young as five have to mark a bubble on their test signifying that they’ve read and understood the Code of Conduct for Test Takers.

I still don’t understand how that’s Constitutional.

Forcing children to sign a legal document without representation or even without their parents or guardians present – it sure looks like a violation of their civil rights.

But that’s what accountability looks like when you only require certain people to be accountable.

So back to my crazy idea.

Perhaps the corporate flunkies actually designing and profiting off these tests should be held accountable, too. So should lawmakers requiring all this junk.

Maybe they should have to sign a “Code of Conduct for Politicians and Test Makers” modeled after the one the rest of us peons have to use to sign our lives away.

Here’s how it might look:

CODE OF CONDUCT FOR POLITICIANS AND TEST MAKERS:

Do…

-Listen to the complaints, concerns and criticisms of parents, teachers and students about the questions and assessments you’re creating.

–Ask advice from education researchers and all stakeholders to ensure the questions you’re designing are backed up by psychological, neurological, sociological and all associated research on child development.

-Read each question you create carefully to ensure it is not simply multiple choice and instead assesses deeper understanding of concepts and skills. Also be sure that all open ended items and writing prompts allow for a multitude of answers and don’t simply ask the test taker to guess what the test maker is thinking.

-Be careful when writing your questions to make sure you have NOT left misspellings or grammatical mistakes in place that would unnecessarily increase confusion for test takers and thereby invalidate the results.

–Check and double check to make sure you have created a fair and accurate assessment before giving it to students to evaluate their learning.

-Report any suspected cheating to a certified watchdog group and the media if you find any evidence or have any suspicion that anyone has created test items purely to enrich the corporation you work for or the privatization-testing-prison industrial complex.

-If you’re a lawmaker who’s voted for annual testing, take the assessment annually yourself to prove that it is an adequate test of basic student knowledge of which as a duly elected representative you should clearly pass. Publish your score prominently in the media to prove the test’s efficacy.

DO NOT…

-Have notes in your possession from special interests such as (but not limited to) the testing corporations, the publishing industry and/or the ed tech industry before, during or after voting for legislation that promotes the very same standardized testing and testing remediation on which these industries profit.

-Have any (approved or otherwise) electronic devises that tabulate previous test questions and prescribe reusing those that have resulted in answer curves consistent with previous tests thereby continuing the trend of selecting against students of color, the poor and other groups and/or subgroups.

-Share inside information about the test or previous test questions with anyone that you do not also make freely available to the public. It is not your job to create a remediation market and/or cash in on the testing apparatus you are creating.

-Dissuade students from talking with others about questions after the test. They are human beings with rights. It is perfectly natural for them to talk and harmless for them to do so after a testing session is over.

-Take notes on individuals criticizing or opting out of testing with the purpose of punishing them for their dissent. This is a democratic process and you will welcome discussion, criticism and dissent.

-Use the bubbles in the answer booklet for anything at all. In fact, throw them away. It’s 2019. Surely we can find a better way to assess children than multiple choice questions answered by filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper with a number 2 pencil!

–Conduct an online testing session unless you are 100% positive that the information input by the students and collected about the students is secure, will be secure and cannot be shared with advertisers, corporations or any other entity, and only with a certainty that this data will not be put in any database in a manner that could identify individual test takers or otherwise violate privacy laws.

-In fact, you know what? Don’t use standardized tests at all to assess student learning – especially not connected to high stakes. Instead rely on classroom grades and teacher observations for student assessment. Use indexes and audits of school resources to determine whether they are doing their best to teach students and whether lawmakers have done enough to ensure they are receiving fair and equitable resources.

What do you think? Would any of them sign off on this?

Who’s Afraid of Public Schools?

March 16, 2019March 16, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, college, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Grit, Learning, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, White Privilege cheating, college, college admissions, College Cheating Scandal, Donald Trump, education, George W. Bush, Operation Varsity Blues, parents, Politics, public schools, schools, Students, teachers

Public schools are the bogeymen of American life.

We so often hear the bedtime story of “Failing Schools” that it’s no wonder some folks will do anything to ensure their kids get in elsewhere.

And let’s be honest. It’s the same impulse behind the latest college admissions cheating scandal.

A group of wealthy – though not too wealthy – parents thought their children should be able to enroll in the most prestigious schools.

So they bribed college admissions officers, cheated on standardized tests or paid coaches or other officials to accept their children as college athletes even if their kids had never played the sport.

We see the same kind of thing everyday in public schools – a confederacy of white parents terrified that their kids might have to go to class with black kids. So they dip into their stock portfolios to pay for enrollment at a private or parochial school.

Or they take advantage of a tax scholarship or school voucher to avoid an institution with low test scores by enrolling in one where students don’t have to take the tests at all.

Or they cross their fingers and enter their kid in a lottery to a charter school praying their precious progeny will escape the horrors of being treated just like everyone else’s kids.

And they call it a meritocracy!

What a joke!

They pretend that their children have earned special treatment.

WRONG.

No child deserves favoritism – paradoxically – because all children do!

There are really two important but related points here:

1) The children of the privileged don’t deserve a better education than anyone else’s.

2) Children who come from wealthy families (and or from privileged social circumstances) don’t do anything to distinguish themselves from the underprivileged.

But these nouveau riche parents tried to bribe the way forward for their kids anyway even though to do so they had to launder the money through a fake “charity.” They didn’t care that doing so would earn them a tax deduction and thus result in even less money for the underprivileged. They didn’t care about the underlying inequalities in the system. No. They only wanted their children to remain in the class of America’s chosen few.

And the best way to do that is with cold, hard cash.

America doesn’t run on Dunkin. It runs on greenbacks. Dinero. Swag. Bling. The prosperity doctrine made physical, quantifiable and mean.

No one really denies that there are two Americas anymore. We just lie to ourselves about how you get placed in one or the other.

And that lie is called excellence, quality, worth – the ultimate in class war gaslighting.

It’s a deception that this scandal has shattered to pieces.

The privileged don’t earn their privilege. It’s not something they possess on the basis of intelligence or hard work shown through test scores. They don’t have it because of drive, determination or grit – once again shown through test scores. They have it based on wealth – the kind of wealth that buys time and resources to either pass the tests or bribe the gatekeepers to change the scores.

Think about it.

George W. Bush got into Yale and Harvard and graduated with a 2.35 GP A. Why? Not because he had the grades and demonstrated his worth. He was a legacy. Like at least one third of all admissions to Ivy League schools, he got in purely because he had family who graduated from there.

You think Donald Trump threatened the College Board not to release his grades because they were all A’s!?

According to one account, his scores were merely “respectable.” Yet he still dropped out of the prestigious Fordham University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years based on family connections and the reputation of his father, Fred Trump, one of the wealthiest businessmen in New York at the time.

Moreover, his kids, Don Jr. and Ivanka, were both enrolled at Penn around the same time as their father made hefty contributions. They began classes in 1996 and 2000, respectively, just as the university and its private Manhattan clubhouse received more than $1.4 million in pledged donations from Trump, the school newspaper reported.

This is not merit. This has nothing to do with what these people deserve. It is money – a pure transaction, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

The only thing that separates what the Trumps and the Bushes did with this latest scandal – the so-called Operation Varsity Blues – is the amount of wealth involved.
If you’re super rich, you can get away with it. If you’re just rich, you’d better not get caught.

And if you’re poor or middle class, you’d better stay in your lane.

But there shouldn’t be any lanes on this highway. Or at least they should only be in place to maximize fairness and student success.

We sneer at the idea of Affirmative Action but only because it’s directed at people of color. No one says anything about the real Affirmative Action that’s been in place since before our country even began – the system of reciprocity and privilege keeping wealthy white families in positions of power like Lords and Ladies while the rest of us serfs scramble for their leavings.

All children deserve the same opportunities to succeed. All children deserve the chance to get an excellent education. All children should attend a first class school filled with highly educated and experienced teachers who can draw on plenty of resources, wide curriculum, tutoring, counseling and support.

And the only way we’ll ever achieve that is through a robust system of public schools.

I’m not saying they’re perfect. In many neighborhoods, they’ve been sabotaged and surgically dismantled, but that’s a problem with an easy solution. Invest in public schools!

Because the stated purpose of public education, the reason it exists at all, is equity.
The alternatives – private and charter schools – are essentially unequal. That’s their raison d’être – to create a market that justifies their existence.

In order for charter and private schools to be a thing, there must be schools that don’t otherwise meet students’ needs. There must be an unreasonable demand that schools indoctrinate students into parents’ religious beliefs. There must be schools that aren’t as well funded or that have to meet ridiculous federal and state mandates.

The result is a two-tiered system. Schools for the haves and for the have-nots.
It’s an apparatus that perverts the public to make room for the private.

In the public system, students are segregated into communities based on race and class and then their community schools are funded based on what their parents can afford. The rich shower their children with the best of everything. The poor do what they can.

Then the federal government pretends to hold everyone “accountable” by forcing students to take standardized tests that merely recreate the economic and racial disparities already present in their districts and neighborhoods. In turn, this provides the justification for charter and voucher schools that further erode public school budgets and increases the downward spiral of disinvestment.

Meanwhile, few notice how the equity built into authentic public schools gets left behind by those enrolling in privatized alternatives. No more open meetings. No more elected school boards. No more public comment or even a voice in how the money is spent.

So long as there are two Americas, the fear of being in the wrong one will motivate the privileged to cheat and steal their way to the top. They will horde resources and wealth for themselves and their children while denying it to others.

It is a self-perpetuating system – a loop that we’re all caught in.
We must break the chain. We must recognize our common humanity and stop the zero sum game.

And perhaps the best way to begin is by supporting authentic public schools and not privatization.

We have been taught to fear public education, because it is really our only hope.

Pam Harbin Wants to Go From Pittsburgh School Board Watchdog to School Board Member

March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, bloggers, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Feminism, Labor, Learning, LGBT, Local Control, Network for Public Education, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, school closings, School Funding, School to Prison Pipeline, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, Teachers, Unions, voting Allegheny County, Allegheny County Democratic Committee, education, Education Rights Network, Election, Evolve Coaching, Great Public Schools-Pittsburgh, Journey for Justice, Local Task Force on the Right to Education, Network for Public Education, One Pennsvlvania, Pam Harbin, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, school board, teachers, voting

My friend Pam Harbin is trying to undergo a startling metamorphosis.

She wants to transform from an education activist into a Pittsburgh School Director.

Now that Board President Lynda Wrenn is stepping down after 4 years, city voters in District 4 will have to decide whether Harbin can make the change. The election is on May 21.

Residents in parts of Squirrel Hill, Point Breeze, Shadyside and North Oakland already know Harbin as a fierce warrior for children’s civil rights, the plight of disabled kids and authentic public schools.

I’ve known Pam, personally, for years in my own role as an education activist. Though I don’t live in the city, I’ve participated in numerous collective actions to fight for the schools all our children deserve. And right beside me in every case – often in front of me – was Pam.

I may not live in the district, but I wish I could vote for her. Harbin is an amazing leader with boundless energy, piercing intelligence, a deep knowledge of education policy, an advanced degree in finance and marketing, and an impressive track record of education justice achievements.

“I am deeply concerned for our system of public education,” she says. “The status quo isn’t working for all children. Thankfully, there are many people here in Pittsburgh and across the country who are fighting for investment in, and transformation of, our public schools. Unfortunately, their efforts are hindered by the well-funded organizations who fight for public school disinvestment, privatization, and for the elimination of teachers’ right to unionize.”

For the past 12 years, Harbin has been at the forefront of every major battle for the future of Pittsburgh’s public schools and the rights of its students.

Harbin was instrumental in pushing city school board directors to enact a suspension ban from Pk-2nd grade for minor non-violent conduct. She successfully fought to stop the district from implementing a physical restraint protocol that wasn’t trauma informed. She successfully fought against a policy that would have allowed school police officers to carry guns. She supported a successful Sanctuary Schools Policy for immigrant students. She also supported changes to the districts policies that would better welcome and include Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ students, including a change that allows students to use the bathroom that best fits their own gender identity.

Harbin and her coalition of local activists even made national news when they stopped the district from contracting with Teach for America, stopped the closing of 10 schools (after 23 were previously closed), pushed the board to hire a new Superintendent using an inclusive process that relied heavily on community input, and led the fight for a Community School Policy and the creation of 8 Community Schools.

Harbin has two challengers in the election: Anna Batista, a corporate consultant at Highstreet Consulting and Ashley Priore, a 19-year-old first year student at the University of Pittsburgh studying Business and English, who started a successful after school chess program for girls.

But despite facing a crowded field, Harbin has earned every organizational endorsement she has sought thus far, including the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, the Young Democrats of Allegheny County, the Stonewall Democrats and the Network for Public Education—an organization that frequently reposts my own writing as an education blogger and which is on the frontlines of education justice nationwide.

Harbin is one of the most experienced education leaders ever to run for school board in the city. She co-founded the Education Rights Network (ERN), a parent-led organization working for fully resourced, inclusive and quality education for students throughout Pennsylvania. The ERN is part of One Pennsylvania, an organization that unites low income and working class activists to tackle the fundamental economic justice and political problems of local communities.

“Our members are workers, students, parents, seniors, people with disabilities, and retirees who are excited to learn, collaborate, and build power,” she says. “We follow the money, confront the power, and make the change.”

ERN is a member of Great Public Schools Pittsburgh, a coalition of community, faith, and labor organizations working together to create sustainable public schools in Pittsburgh—an alliance which Harbin also helped to found in 2013. Great Public Schools is affiliated on the national level with the Journey for Justice Alliance, the Dignity in Schools Campaign, and the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools.

Harbin is also a member and past Co-Chair of the Pittsburgh Local Task Force on the Right to Education (LTF), a parent-majority organization that works with administrators of Pittsburgh Public Schools and community agencies to improve services for students with disabilities.

And she serves on the board of directors and was past President of Evolve Coaching (formerly Arts for Autism Foundation of Pittsburgh), supporting individuals with disabilities and their communities through education, employment, and the arts.

No one else in the race—and maybe in the whole city—has a resume like Harbin’s.

Harbin believes her years of leadership for and service to Pittsburgh students and families have provided her with the needed foundation for a transition from community leader to school board member. She has attended or streamed more than 2,000 hours of school board meetings. She has served on Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) district-wide advisory committees, including the Community Schools Steering Committee, Envisioning Educational Excellence Advisory Committee, Parental Involvement Policy Committee, Excellence for All Steering Committee, and the Special Education Delivery Model Advisory Committee. And through these many committees and organizations Harbin has helped more than 100 individual families secure an IEP or a 504 plan for their children—in part because she understands better than most the byzantine world of public school special education services.

No one is better suited to this position than Harbin. I literally wish we could clone her and have her fill every vacancy on the board. She is that qualified, that experienced, and that effective.

If this sounds a bit like a love letter, it kind of is.

I have many fond memories of fighting the power alongside Pam Harbin. I remember organizing events through Yinzercation with Pam, even canvasing local candidates door-to-door with her and my (then) 9-year-old daughter. No matter what, you could always count on Pam to be there for children.

“When our public schools are strong, our children and community thrive,” she says. “We have many great Pittsburgh Public Schools, teachers, and programs. But, in each school, there are children who can’t excel because their individual needs have not been met. We must do better.”

“We must remove the barriers that keep all of our children from fulfilling their dreams. This requires transformational, sustainable change in policy and practice at the local, state, and national level.”

If anyone can make that change happen, it’s Harbin. As someone who has a degree in finance, who is an experienced negotiator and a proven coalition builder, she is uniquely qualified to do so from within the board as she has been successful doing so from outside of it.

She has an ambitious set of goals and priorities if elected:

-Strengthening relationships between all stake-holders with an emphasis on child wellness.

-Defining success beyond standardized test scores to include authentic education practices, addressing trauma, disengagement, hunger, the quality of school food programs, the condition of our buildings and bathrooms, and children’s need for exercise and play.

-Achieving smaller class sizes and a smaller ratio of kids to adults in each building with more teachers, counselors, social workers, paraprofessionals, nurses, librarians, and other staff that keeps the building functioning at its best.

-Restoring funding to art, music, physical education, and other programming that keep kids wanting to come to school.

-Stopping criminalization and over-policing of students, and stopping the use of ineffective punishments that keep children away from their learning and put them on the track to drop out, to jail, and to poverty.

-Intentionally recruiting, retaining, and supporting educators of color and those who identify as LGBTQ.

-Working to make teacher mentoring, new teacher induction, and professional development better to make the very best use of teachers’ time and address key gaps in preparation to teach the wide spectrum of students in the district.

-Making teacher evaluation fair and consistent, not based solely on test scores or value added models.

-Ensuring teachers (and all school staff) are well paid, treated fairly, and valued for the critical work they do for children every day.

-Protecting collective bargaining rights so teachers (and all staff) have a voice to improve their schools – because teaching conditions are students’ learning conditions.

-Investing in the proven Community Schools model and work collaboratively with community partners to bring resources to each school.

-Working at the state level to force our legislators to finally provide adequate, equitable, and sustainable funding for public education and stop efforts to dismantle public education through vouchers and other privatization schemes.

-Building coalitions to improve the flawed state Charter School Law – Charter Schools must have more accountability for the delivery of education to all students, including disabled children, English Language Learners, and kids who are homeless or who are in foster care.

I could literally go on about Pam for another 10,000 words. Easy.

But let me close with this.

Harbin began her journey as an education leader when she started advocating for her own children at their first elementary school—Liberty elementary in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She found that she could make a difference for a few children at a time by throwing herself into volunteer work at the school.

But then she realized that if she wanted to make a difference for more than just a few children that she needed to work with others. Indeed, to do this work effectively Pam has had to work with people of different backgrounds, races, opinions and ideologies. She has had to listen to others, to compromise, to build bridges, and to prioritize common goals in each of her coalitions. In short, she gets things done.

And she’s been doing that for more than a dozen years.

Not because she has no choice. Not because anyone is paying her to do so. Not because doing so is bringing her any riches or fame.

But because it has been the right thing to do.

And that’s the best endorsement I can imagine.

NOTE: Special thanks to Professor Kathleen M. Newman who helped edit this article.

Click HERE to join Pam’s campaign!

I Used to be a Reporter. Now I’m a Teacher. I’ve Become What I Used to Observe

February 28, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Journalism, Labor, Learning, Media, Politics, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Students, Teach for America, Teachers, Unions #LetTeachersTeach, careers, changing jobs, education, Education Advocate, educators, Journalism, media, news, reporters, Sell Out, Teacher Appreciation Week, teachers, teaching

A long time ago, in a newsroom far, far away; your humble narrator was a respected journalist.

Today I am a beloved school teacher in a suburban middle school.

Okay. That may be laying it on a bit thick.

Like any human being whose job it is to get children to do their best and learn something, I’m beloved by some and beloathed by others. And if I’m honest, when I was a reporter, I was never all that respected. But I did win several state journalism awards.

The point I’m trying to make is that like a caterpillar into a butterfly or a tadpole into a frog, I made a startling transformation in career paths that flies somewhat in the face of popular wisdom.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “There are no second acts in American Lives.” Well, I’m on my third or fourth act and nowhere near ready for the curtain to come down yet.

It’s shocking how far I’ve come, though there’s a surprising amount of overlap between my two professions. In fact, the biggest difference is one of orientation.

I used to get up at 4 a.m., weave into the newsroom and type away for a few hours about the previous night’s school board or city council meeting before my deadline came down, the presses rolled and the morning edition went on sale.

Now I get up at 5 a.m., hobble into the classroom and go to meetings, grade papers or otherwise get ready for a 7-hour invasion by 12- and 13-year-olds, followed by more meetings and papers and planning.

I used to go into the classroom to interview teachers and students about special lessons, state and federal programs or standardized tests.

Now I’m in the classroom questioning myself about my students and what works best to help them learn, trying to navigate the state and federal programs so they get the best return and bang my head against the wall about the constant standardized tests.

I used to independently bebop all over my coverage area, asking questions, doing research, discovering things that many people would rather remain secret.

Now I independently plan my lessons, ask my students questions, do research on best practices and discover things about my children and their lives that many people would rather remain secret.

You’ve heard the old chestnut about education being a career for those unable to act. I’m living proof that it’s a lie.

As a journalist, I reported on. As a teacher, I do.

In my former job, I told. In my current one I show.

Perhaps that’s why I now find it so strange that many of my former colleagues have gone into public relations, communications or have become policy analysts.

I’m not surprised. I can’t say I didn’t know that that door was always open. But it’s peculiar.

In the newsroom, we all heard the stories about grizzled newspapermen and women with shelves stuffed full of awards and prized Rolodexes bursting with hard-earned sources who gave it all up for a 9-5 desk job writing the very press releases we disdained.

We all had friends who were making bank managing people like us and trying to get us to write what the company wanted or spin the story in the direction the advertisers liked.

There is no scorn, no disgust, no derision to match that of a journalist for a corporate sellout, and that’s because in our hearts we all secretly wondered if it wasn’t the better deal.

Every good reporter – like every good teacher – is a radical at heart.

You don’t get into either field to support the status quo. You want to rock the boat. You want to shake things up. You want to change the world for the better – all from the comfort of your swivel chair behind your computer screen or from the well worn tread of your classroom carpet.

Journalists live for the scoop, the big story, the article that shouts off the front page above the fold and which has everyone talking. Teachers live for the student epiphany, the moment the light comes on behind a child’s eyes, the transformation from ignorance to knowledge and – dare I say – wisdom.

But being a press agent or policy hack has none of that splendor.

You have to give it up – all for the right to have a chance at a life.

I loved being a reporter. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I got to do things, see things, talk to people, be there for things that I never would have been able to access otherwise. But I could barely pay my bills.

I was dirt poor in the newsroom. We all were.

We worked 50-60 hours a week, had no time for a second job, no time for a social life, no time for a family or kids, and we wanted more.

So I understand the allure of the steady paycheck and becoming a housebroken professional communicator of someone else’s message.

But being a teacher is different.

You still don’t get paid much. You still work long hours – though maybe not quite as long. But you can get that second job – often in the school, itself, tutoring students or in a summer or after school program.

And you get union protections that I only dreamed about as a reporter. A safe workspace, clean and tidy, no outrageous demands (or at least an upper limit on them), and a schedule you can predict and plan a life around.

Best of all, you still get to keep your idealism intact. Or you can try to keep it as you dodge this directive and that unfunded mandate and that deeply racist policy passed down from above.

Don’t get me wrong. Becoming a teacher was hard work. I didn’t go about it the easy way – no Teach for America, one-foot-in/one-foot-out, cheating for me. I dove in head first.

I went back to college and took an intensive, accelerated masters program designed exactly for people changing careers. To get there, I had to swallow a few prerequisites I’d missed in college the first time. Then they placed me in a high school where I watched and then took over multiple classes – all while enrolled in education courses at night and in the summers.

By the time it was all over, I still had the most important things left to learn – (1) whether I could actually teach a full schedule, and (2) whether I liked doing so.

For me, the answers were unequivocally positive. I took to it like I’d taken to journalism. I needed lots of fine tuning, but the basics came naturally. And I loved every exhausting minute of it.

I regret nothing about becoming a teacher. It’s the best job I’ve ever had and am ever likely to have.

As a journalist, I got to rock whole communities with exposes about corruption. As an educator, I get to impact individuals.

I no longer get to be the talk of the town, but I get to change lives all the same – one person at a time.

And there’s something deeply satisfying about it – to look in another person’s eyes and see the need right there in front of you, and to be able to heal it even a fraction of the way well.

This world is hard. It takes people, chews them up and spits them out. There is so rarely a helping hand, a smile, understanding. But to be able to offer your hand, to be able to share a smile, to attempt to understand – that’s pure magic.

When the day is done, I know it was well spent.

I’ve come a long way from the newsroom. And in doing so, I’ve broken journalism’s number one rule – don’t become the story.

I no longer report on the action.

I participate in it.

What a way to make a living!

Still can’t get enough Gadfly? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Tying Kids’ Lunch Money to Test Scores? It’s No Crueler Than High Stakes Testing

February 23, 2019February 23, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, ESSA, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM Accountability, Alan Clark, Arkansas, charter schools, cruelty, education, free school lunches, high stakes testing, incentives, Politics, teachers

UPDATED

Most people agree that the best way to get kids to read isn’t by threatening to take away their lunch.

But an Arkansas state Representative is threatening to do just that – sort of.

Rep. Alan Clark, a West Memphis Republican, proposed a bill that would cut “Lunch Funding” for impoverished children in state schools where students struggle with standardized reading tests.

However, he’s not proposing we take away kids’ food.

If passed, the bill would reduce a district’s National School Lunch funding – a state mechanism that distributes extra resources to schools with high concentrations of students who qualify for free lunch programs – if student test scores don’t rise over a period of time. This would cut things like professional development and tutoring.

However, this has been confused with the federal program of the same name and drawn almost universal condemnation.

“I would never starve kids,” Clark said. But he would starve their schools of resources.

Either way, his proposal is obviously unfair.

Only a monster would think you can incentivize reading comprehension by threats and coercion.

It’s like saying “You’d better understand this complex puzzle OR ELSE!”

Learning doesn’t work that way.

But Clark sees things from a different perspective – that of business and industry. He told KTHV, a state television network:

“In most businesses I would be laughed at for suggesting such a small goal. But sadly many educators act like I have asked them to storm the beaches at Normandy… It appears I have much more faith in our schools than many of our educators do.”

This is what happens when you elect people without empathy or intelligence to public office.

I wonder if Clark would do a better job representing the people of his state if they threatened to lower his salary based on his popularity polls.

It says a lot about us that people react so viscerally to the inaccurate idea that Clark is suggestion we withhold food from bad test takers. That’s unthinkable. But it isn’t really that much more cruel than the way we actually treat students.

Our entire federal education policy is based on just such inhuman treatment of children.

After all, we still hold kids, schools and teachers “accountable” by student test scores. The consequences though aren’t an empty belly. They’re crowded classrooms and fewer tutors.

In every state of the union, students are required to take high stakes standardized tests in reading and math. If they don’t do well, we take away their resources.

Sure, we don’t deny them food, but we deny them many other things they need to learn.

We lower funding to their schools so that they have larger class sizes, fewer teachers, narrowed curriculum, etc. We threaten to withhold their diplomas and any chance of ever earning more than minimum wage. In many cases we tie teachers salaries, reputations and even employment to these same scores. Sometimes we even take away their parents right to govern their children’s schools so that all administrative decisions are made by state flunkies. Or we force their authentic public schools to become charter institutions so that spending decisions happen behind closed doors without accountability and even whether a student can enroll or not becomes a decision of the private management company and not simply something that is the students’ by right of living in the district.

It may not be as severe as the idea of Test Scores for Food, but it’s the same in kind.

In both cases, we tell kids – “Increase test scores, OR ELSE!” It’s just a difference of consequence.

Call me crazy, but that’s nearly as cruel and wrongheaded.

Keep in mind, all of this takes for granted that standardized tests are adequate and fair assessments of student learning in the first place. This has never been proven. In fact, it has been cast in serious doubt after more than a century of academic study. Ask anyone to narrow their thinking down to four prepackaged choices and you’ll find them trying to guess what the test-maker wanted more than what the truth is. Critical thinking, analysis, innovation – these escape any multiple choice exam.

But even if we go with this empty assumption, it flies in the face of everything we know about the way human beings acquire knowledge and demonstrate skills.

When kids struggle with learning, you can’t get them to do better with threats. Or at least you can only do that if those children are doing poorly on purpose.

Kids who just aren’t trying hard enough might be incentivized by threats. But even then it transforms learning into a means to an end. Once you do that, you destroy their natural curiosity. Learning will never again be an end in itself. It will be a menial task you only do to get something else that you really want.

However, in most cases kids don’t struggle because they’re just lazy. They don’t need an incentive. They need help. They need resources.

It’s no wonder that children in rich and middle class neighborhoods have less trouble getting higher test scores. They have lower class sizes, more teachers, wider curriculum, more extra curricular activities, access to tutors, counselors, nurses and after school programs.

Poor kids don’t. THAT’S why they struggle.

And what do we do when that happens? We take away the meager resources they have!

If a teacher tried any of this crap in her classroom, she’d be fired for dereliction of duty – and she’d deserve it!

Just imagine if you told the kids who were struggling in your class that they didn’t deserve tutoring. Instead you were going to give extra help to the kids who got the best scores on the exam!

And if the struggling children continued to do poorly, you took away their desks. Now they had to sit on the floor!

THIS is the kind of thing we’re doing to our children nationwide.

It’s called TEST AND PUNISH, and it’s federal policy – often backed up by state and local law.

Moreover, it’s supported by both Republicans and Democrats alike.

We may not be denying poor kids a meal, but we are denying them an equal opportunity at an education just the same.

It’s way past time that we wake up and see that.

We can point and jeer at what we thought this regressive Arkansas nitwit was doing, but we’re really pointing and jeering at ourselves.

NOTE: An earlier version of this story – like many in the state and national press – wrongly suggested that Clark wanted to withhold lunches from poor children based on test scores.

Rahm Emanuel’s Non-Apology Apology for Being a School Privatization Cheerleader

February 10, 2019 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Arne Duncan, Bernie Sanders, Betsy DeVos, California, capitalism, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Cory Booker, Credibility, Democrat, Democrats for Education Reform, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Obama, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, principals, Racism, Rahm, Republican, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, small class size, Social Justice Unionism, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, union busting, Unions, voting charter schools, Chicago, Chicago Schools, Chicago Teachers, Democrats, education, Local Control, neoliberal, Politics, Privatize, public schools, rahm emanuel, rebranding, Republicans, schools, unions

Rahm Emanuel’s recent op-ed in The Atlantic may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

The title “I Used to Preach the Gospel of Education Reform. Then I Became the Mayor” seems to imply Emanuel has finally seen the light.

The outgoing Chicago Mayor USED TO subscribe to the radical right view that public schools should be privatized, student success should be defined almost entirely by standardized testing, teachers should be stripped of union protections and autonomy and poor black and brown people have no right to elect their own school directors.

But far from divorcing any of this Reagan-Bush-Trump-Clinton-Obama crap, he renews his vows to it.

This isn’t an apologia. It’s rebranding.

Emanuel had been White House Chief of Staff at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first term. He’s a former U.S. Representative, and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Yet he’s persona non grata.

Now that the extremely unpopular chief executive has decided not to seek re-election, he’s trying to secure his legacy – to make sure the history books don’t remember him as the Democrat In Name Only (DINO) mayor who closed an unprecedented number of schools serving mostly minority students while catering to the will of rich investors. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the lord on a hill whose own children went to private school while he cut services and increased class size for black and brown kids. He’s trying to save a series of abysmal policy failures so that he and his neoliberal pals like Cory Booker and Arne Duncan can still hold their heads high in Democratic circles. In a time when authentic progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have won the heart of the party, he wants to ensure there’s still room for that old time corporate education reform he is infamous for.

Like I said – dumb.

To quote the Principal in Billy Madison:

“…what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

If only he’d respond like Madison:

“Okay, a simple ‘wrong’ would’ve done just fine, but thanks.”

But like that straight man school administrator in an Adam Sandler movie, I’m going to give you the long answer. I’m going to explain why what Emanuel said was supremely stupid.

He begins the piece with a lengthy description of how he got one over on those darn teachers unions.

He wanted what was best for children, but those pesky teachers just wouldn’t do it until he twisted their arms and got them to play ball.

And keep in mind – this is the softer, gentler Emanuel who wants you to like him! This is the Emanuel who’s trying on progressive clothing to look more appealing!

Hey, Rahm, attacking working people while casting yourself as a savior is so two years ago. We’ve had a conservative Supreme Court hobble unions’ ability to stop free riders and a teacher uprising since then. Union educators from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Los Angeles, California, have gone on strike demanding Republican and Democratic chief executives like yourself make positive change for children.

No one’s buying your fairytales anymore.

But it leads into a series of important points he wants to make:

“For most of my career, I preached the old gospel of education reform. But now research and experience suggest that policy makers need to embrace a new path forward and leave the old gospel behind. Principals, not just teachers, drive educational gains. The brain-dead debate between charter and neighborhood schools should be replaced with a focus on quality over mediocrity. To get kids to finish high school, the student experience should center on preparing them for what’s next in life. Finally, classroom success hinges on the support that students get outside school. If other cities follow Chicago’s lead in embracing those ideas, they’re likely to also replicate its results.”

Oh and what results those are! But we’ll come back to that.

He reasons that principals drive educational gains. In fact, this is his a-ha moment. Don’t focus on teachers, focus on principals.

He pats himself on the back for raising principals’ salaries and recruiting only people who think and believe just like him. Then he didn’t have to watch over them so closely and they were even promoted to higher administrative positions.

Wow. What an innovation! Stack your school system with yes-people and your initiatives will get done. Great. No room for diversity of thought. No one who thinks outside of the box. Just functionaries and flunkies who do what you say.

This is sounding like a great case for progressive education reforms already! If you’re a fascist dictator.

Next comes my favorite – a further commitment to school privatization hidden behind the flimsiest rechristening in history.

Stop talking about charter schools vs. authentic public schools, he writes. Talk about quality schools vs. mediocre ones.

What bull crap!

Imagine if pirates were robbing ships on the high seas. Would you talk about good pirates and bad pirates? Imagine if vampires were attacking people in the night and draining their blood. Would you talk about good vampires and bad vampires?

I mean Dracula did suck Mina dry, but he spends the rest of his nights reading to orphan children. Long John Silver may have stolen hundreds of chests of gold from merchant ships, but he donates every tenth doubloon to fighting global warming!

Hey, Rahm, you can’t escape from the argument of whether school privatization is good or bad. Charter schools drain funding from authentic public schools and give it to private investors. They allow unscrupulous operators to cut services and pocket the profits. They increase segregation, decrease democracy and transparency, give choice mainly to business people who get to decide if your child is allowed to enroll in their school – all while getting similar or worse results than authentic public schools.

If you stopped taking corporate money for one second, maybe you could understand this simple point – no system will ever be fair that allows theft and then protects the thieves.

But on to your next point. You want to focus the student experience on what comes next in life. You want to focus on jobs and career readiness.

This is just dumbing down what it means to get an education. Going to school shouldn’t be reduced to a career training program. If we only teach kids how to manufacture widgets, what will they do when the widget factory closes?

We need to teach them how to think for themselves. We need to offer them real opportunities for self-discovery and challenge them to think deeply through an issue.

When kids graduate, we don’t want to have simply made a generation of workers. We need them to be thinking adults and citizens who can participate fully in our democratic process and help lead our country toward a better and brighter future – not just learn how to code.

Finally you talk about the support students get out of school. That’s stupid because…

Actually it’s not.

You’ve got a point there. We do need to support programs to help students succeed outside the classroom – summer reading, after school tutoring, etc. However, making kids sign a pledge to go to college in order to be eligible for a summer job? That’s kind of cruel when many have no way to pay for college in the first place. Moreover, it completely ignores the huge section of children who have no desire to go to college and would rather go to career or technical schools.

And that brings me to his dismal record of failure described by neoliberals as success.

Emanuel pushed forward a policy that in order to graduate, Chicago seniors must prove that after 12th grade they’re going to college, trade school, an internship, the military or would otherwise be gainfully employed. OR ELSE they can’t get a diploma!

Rahm’s all about adding more hoops for poor minority kids to jump through. Very rarely is he about providing any help for them to make the jump.

He’s a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps Democrat. Or what we used to call – a Republican.

Emanuel wants to tout his record as “proof” that his methods worked.

Let’s look at them.

He has closed 50 public schools – 46 of which serve mostly black students. Southside residents had to resort to a month-long hunger strike to keep their last neighborhood school open. He laid off hundreds of teachers and staff – many just before school opened. Yet he always had money for state of the art charter schools like the $27 million new charter school for the University of Chicago as part of the Obama Presidential Library. In addition, his economic policy consisted of closing public health clinics for the poor and installing red light cameras to increase fines – none of which actually boosted the economy.

And then we get to the scandal that made a third term as mayor impossible. Emanuel actually covered up the police killing of unarmed black teen, Laquan McDonald, so it wouldn’t hurt his re-election campaign.

In October of 2014, Officer Jason Van Dyke shot the 17-year-old 16 times. Most of those bullets went into the teenager after he was already flat on the ground and the officer was at least 10 feet away.

Emanuel quickly issued a $5 million settlement to McDonald’s family on the condition they keep quiet about the incident. It wasn’t until after Emanuel had won re-election, that an independent journalist put two-and-two together and asked for the officer’s dashcam video to be released. It took the full power of the media and a lawsuit to accomplish this resulting in charges against Van Dyke for first degree murder. Just last year the officer was found guilty of second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, but was found not guilty of official misconduct. He was sentenced to 6.75 years in prison.

This is not a sterling mayoral record. It is not a proven record of success.

He says graduation rates are up as are rates of Chicago students who go on to college. He neglects to mention that they’re up nationwide. He neglects to mention that the quality of education these kids receive is often watered down to whatever will help them pass the federally mandated standardized test. He neglects to mention the loss of teacher autonomy, and the rise in class size.

Face it. Emanuel is a crappy mayor. Chicago and the nation will be better if he fades into the sunset.

His political career was backed by the same big money conservatives that back Republicans like Chris Christie, Mitt Romney and Bruce Rauner. He was a puppet of charter schools, hedge fund managers and the Koch Brothers.

In fact, his corruption was so bad that during the 2016 primary, he became an issue for Democratic Presidential contenders.

Bernie Sanders actually called him out in a tweet saying: “I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don’t want the endorsement of a mayor shutting down schools and firing teachers.”

Emanuel had endorsed Hilary Clinton, and her education advisor Ann O’Leary wrote in a private email to senior campaign staff that this might actually hurt the candidate’s primary chances. She wanted Clinton to distance herself from the troubled mayor or at least explain how she differed from his troubled policies.

They eventually settled on saying nothing. That didn’t backfire at all!

Look. Democrats need to learn the exact opposite of the lesson Rahm is selling here.

Corporate education reform is poison. School privatization is not progressive. High stakes testing is not progressive. Hiring like-minded flunkies to run your schools is not progressive. Closing black kids’ schools is not progressive.

Emanuel has learned nothing. Have we?

gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

Standardized Testing