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common core
Near Silence on Education at First Democratic Debate
Oct 18, 2015
None.
Null.
Nada.
That's how many questions CNN anchors asked presidential hopefuls about America's public schools at the first Democratic Debate.
Imagine if Anderson Cooper and the company had remained silent on Climate Change. The candidates would have brought it up anyway. Bernie Sanders mentioned the environmental threat when asked about national defense.
Imagine if moderators had no questions about gun violence. Candidates competed with each other to demonstrate which took a stronger stance against the National Rifle Association.
Imagine if no one asked about finance reform. At that stage, each candidate tried to position himself or herself as the new sheriff of Wall Street.
But when it comes to one of the most important issues of the day—our children's struggling schools—the media apparently thought the viewing public was uninterested.
Admittedly, Hillary Clinton and Sanders briefly brought it up when asked about other things.
Clinton said we need universal pre-kindergarten and good schools, but she neglected to describe what those good schools would look like.
It's almost like saying nothing at all. Everyone wants good schools—even dunderheads like Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Donald Trump! However, their ideas of good schools differ greatly from those of most parents, teachers, and students. McCarter schools for the poor and Cadillac campuses for the rich aren't exactly what real progressives have in mind.
And universal pre-k? Great! But that's kind of the flavor of the month. Who disagrees that we should help toddlers prepare for school? It's like asking, "Who wants ice cream?" in a room full of little kids on a hot day. EVERYONE wants ice cream - even the kids who are lactose intolerant!
Sanders took a second in his diatribe about social services to mention the need to fund schools. However, he didn't say a thing about equity or whether that funding would have strings attached. President Obama talked about funding schools, too, when he ran for president in 2008. Once he got into office, those education dollars came at the cost of accepting untested and developmentally inappropriate Common Core State Standards. Equity meant closing poor schools to save them.
I wonder if CNN would have felt more pressure to ask even a single token education question if the largest national teachers' unions had not already endorsed Clinton. The American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.5 million members, and the National Education Association, representing 3 million members, have both backed Clinton.
Well, leadership has. Member outreach, polling, and even voting by the organization's largest representative boards have been almost entirely absent.
But now that teachers have been pigeonholed in Clinton's camp, what's the point of asking education questions? In the public eye, educators have already chosen their candidates. Why would they need to hear Clinton's thoughts on education policy? Why hear her opponent's thoughts? Their minds are made up.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to run roughshod over teachers' concerns. For 7 years, education professionals from all walks of life have complained about the administration's failing school policies and its buffoonish education secretary Arne Duncan. But now that Duncan is leaving, the President replaces him with John King, an ex-New York State Commissioner of Education who enraged parents so much that he ran out of the state on a rail.
The media just doesn't care about public education. Nine times out of ten if they even print a story about schools, it's a puff piece spin doctoring a school reform policy that isn't working, never has been working and is - in fact - making things much worse for our nation's students. Otherwise, it's an expose of how teachers can't make these horrendous policies work, so it's their fault. don't even glance at the ballooning child poverty rate - that's completely irrelevant to the issue of all these lazy teachers who can't be fired because we'd have to prove they're bad first.
And what of the candidates? Do they care about public education?
The Democrats say they do and then zip their lips. They might make positive noises about preschools or universities, especially regarding funding, but they have next to nothing to say about K-12 schools. When the issue arises, they deflect to toddlers or the college campus.
Meanwhile, Republicans can't contain their glee about mentioning teachers during debates and stump speeches. They want prospective voters to know that conservative types like them want to punch teachers in the face. During the first Republican debate, at least half of the candidates in that crowd boasted how much they stood up to the teacher's unions.
And so there you have it, folks. That's what passes for a substantive Democratic debate of all the day's important issues. Now, voters can make an informed decision in the primaries. There will be a few more debates, but they'll probably be no different than this one.
And if you care about public schools, if you have children in the system, or derive your livelihood from it, or even if you just don't want to live in a society of uneducated dummies - you'd be better served using Tarot cards to determine where the Democrats stand on this issue.
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As the School Year Ends, Public Education is in Doubt
School is out for the summer, and kids are overjoyed. But across the country, the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.
Where will public schools be in a year?
Jun 22, 2015
School is out for the summer, and kids are overjoyed. But across the country, the future of public education is in serious jeopardy.
Where will public schools be in a year?
Here is a quick primer on some of the key issues that relate to the fundamental question: Will America maintain or destroy that most basic democratic institution, the public school?
Are Public Schools "Failing"?
The idea that public schools have "failed" and that private market solutions are the answer to this problem is the heart of a campaign promoted by rightwing foundations, particularly the Bradley Foundation, over the last 30 years.
Recent cuts in school budgets by Bradley-supported politicians, including Wisconsin's Scott Walker, is creating more "failure."
As Wisconsin Public Education Network director Heather DuBois Bourenane observes, "The entire myth of the "failing school" depends on a refusal to acknowledge the ways that poverty impacts local communities, and how austerity policies and years of underfunding have led to the crises we see now."
New reports show that most states continue to put less money into public schools than they did before the recession, and about half put less money into schools that serve low-income students than schools that serve the wealthy.
"We can point to countless success stories of districts that adopted community schools models or established practices that help meet the needs of the whole child (with wrap-around services, peer tutoring, family-focused resources, etc.) Bourenane adds.
"Many of the schools labeled as "failing," in fact, can produce evidence of enormously successful programming and gains in student growth, but might not rank highly when standardized test scores are the primary criteria for success of their vulnerable student populations."
Opt-Out Meets #BlackLivesMatter
This year, the nationwide movement to opt out of standardized tests grew to become a massive phenomenon--especially on the East Coast. One in six students in New York refused to take standardized tests in 2015, The New York Times reports, "more than double and possibly triple the number who did so in 2014."
When large numbers of New York students were labeled "not proficient" on statewide tests--including kids in well funded suburban schools--a massive walkout ensued. Parents rebelled against a plan to tie teacher evaluations to test scores, and the threat of labeling schools as "failing" based on new, tougher standards.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has derided parents whose kids opt out of standardized tests as a bunch of "white suburban moms who -- all of a sudden -- their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn't quite as good as they thought."
But a broad and diverse opt-out movement is picking up steam all across the country. "We've had requests from all fifty states for our opt-out guides," says United Opt-Out co-founder Tim Slekar.
In Seattle, teacher-author Jesse Hagopian, who helped organize the successful MAPS test boycott at Seattle's Garfield High School, is leading a multiracial coalition of parents, teachers, local civil rights groups, and students who see the stripped-down, test-focused education as bad for all kids--including low-income kids and kids of color.
That's a big deal, because national civil rights groups have taken a position against opt-out, on the theory that kids of color need standardized tests to determine whether schools are failing kids who have been underserved.
Jesse Hagopian articulates a different view:
"The idea that our school system implements standardized testing in the early grades to make students "career and college ready" (in the language of the Common Core standards) is an utter absurdity--especially when you consider that one of the most popular career choices for a 5-year-old is being Spider Man."
"And yet high-stakes are attached to the the MAP test--already in kindergarten!--using it as an arbitrator of who will be placed on the advanced track," Hagopian writes.
"[T]he Opt Out movement is a vital component of the Black Lives Matter movement and other struggles for social justice in our region," adds Gerald Hankerson of the Seattle/King County NAACP. "Using standardized tests to label Black people and immigrants 'lesser,' while systematically under-funding their schools, has a long and ugly history in this country,"
Since standardized tests have been used to label students, teachers, and schools as "failing," and to trigger the take-over of public schools by private operators, the opt-out movement is focused on taking back local, democratic control of the schools.
As Slekar puts it: "We are not an anti-testing movement, we are a revolutionary movement against the corporate takeover of education."
Common Core Bait and Switch
As education writer and Public School Shakedown contributor Jeff Bryant writes, Common Core has become a toxic issue for Republican presidential candidates thanks to Tea Party opposition. Chris Christie is the latest candidate to turn his back on the national standards he once supported.
Democrats, on the other hand, have been busy mounting a dubious defense of Common Core, Bryant points out. But the issue of the standards themselves is a big distraction.
The real question on Common Core is not whether national educational standards are a socialist plot, as the Republican base seems to think, or whether they are doing wonders for kids, as the Democrats claim, with little real evidence. The real question is whether public education for all kids, especially poor kids, is adequately supported.
It doesn't help when assessments tied to the Common Core are used to label schools as "failing," fire teachers, shut down schools, and hand them over to private charter-school operators.
This test-and-punish approach, not the national standards, is the real threat to public education.
Charter Schools: From Good to Bad
This year marked the beginning of the great unraveling of the for-profit mass charter movement.
There were the financial scandals: We learned that Ohio poured millions into charter schools that don't exist. Across the country, there was story after story about charter school waste, fraud, and abuse.
And then there was the failure to produce results: in New Orleans, data show that the big claims about improved outcomes in a school district that went all-charter right after Katrina don't hold water.
Given these terrible results, Jeff Bryant has called for a national moratorium on charter schools.
Charter schools were first conceived decades ago as a progressive education innovation. Small, alternative schools, schools for the arts, and language immersion schools flourished and provided experimental models that traditional public schools could adopt.
But big charter-school chains like Rocketship have taken over in urban areas including Milwaukee and Washington, DC, and lobbied for new laws that exempt them from school-board oversight, as they drain public education dollars out of local districts.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed taking away the cap on private charter schools for the entire state of New York, selling charters as the solution to "failing" public schools.
That plan ran into a major speed bump in New York, when parents rejected the idea that their children had suddenly become a lot less smart, and have not been eager to embrace the charter school "solution".
"It's really shock doctrine--where blow something up and then come in and say we need to fix this," Slekar says about the combination of tests that show mass "failure" and the charter-school expansion.
Nowhere is this more evident than in New Orleans, the nation's first all-charter school district, which just happens to be hosting the National Charter Schools conference next week. Stay tuned for more reporting from the Progressive on that.
Vouchers
School vouchers started in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 25 years ago as a "ticket out" for poor kids who could use the money spent to educate them in public school to attend private schools.
Today, a new sector of cheap, fly-by-night academies has popped up to take advantage of school vouchers.
Despite poor results, Republicans in Wisconsin have expanded the voucher program statewide, and the school voucher concept has spread to thirteen states and Washington, DC.
More than 75 percent of new voucher recipients are families that never sent their kids to public schools. School vouchers drain money from the public school system to provide a straight subsidy for private school parents who get a break on tuition.
I wrote about the shocking state of Milwaukee's voucher schools in crumbling office buildings, strip malls, and former car dealerships last year
I watched an eighth-grade science class learning creationism, and observed a school where kids are learning the Bob Jones curriculum.
An anti-intellectual current is part of the attack on schools.
Last fall, in Colorado, students walked out of Jefferson County schools over a rightwing revision of the AP history curriculum.
Attacks on teachers and schools
Likewise, the attacks on teachers we've seen from the likes of Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal draw on a deep strain of cultural antipathy toward education. Whether they are busting teachers unions, replacing professional teachers with Teach for America volunteers, or doing away with certification requirements so anyone can teach, there is a concerted attack on this female-dominated profession.
Defending Schools Drives Electoral Victories
One year ago, Ras Baraka, a high school principal and member of the Newark City Council, won election as mayor of Newark despite massive opposition from Chris Christie and the hedge fund managers and corporate education "reformers" who want to turn over more public schools to corporate charter school chains. On her blog, Diane Ravich quoted supporters who called it "the most important election in the nation regarding the future of public education."
This year, the Los Angeles school board elections pitted charter-school advocates against public-school proponents, and the results were mixed in the school district with the nation's largest number of charter-school students. "The billionaires dropped a few million into the L.A. race, principally to defeat [public-school defender] Bennett Kayser," Diane Ravitch pointed out. They succeeded in replacing him with charter founder Ref Rodriguez, but charter proponent Tamar Galatzan also lost her seat to a retired public school teacher.
Tom Wolf beat Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett in a race that focused on Corbett's failed educational "reforms." The new state budget in Pennsylvania includes more funding for schools that serve the neediest kids. Wolf has also signaled that he is ready to to end Pennsylvania's charter-school expansion.
In the California race for state schools chief, Tom Torlakson beat Marshall Tuck despte millions of dollars in support for Tuck from the charter school industry.
Now what?
In 2016, one of the biggest national political questions in the presidential election was what to do about public schools.
Will the rightwing assault on education succeeed, based on decades of propaganda funded by the Bradley foundation to spread the message that "public schools have failed"?
Or will Democrats and Republicans alike take a stand for public education?
A lot will depend on how much pressure a growing pro-public-school movement can put on the candidates.
All across the country, there are real signs of hope.
Superintendents, school boards, and administrators of local public schools have been writing letters and testifying against the privatization and defunding of public education.
Parents are engaged as never before.
Communities, from urban mostly black and brown districts to conservative, rural areas, are rising up against budget cuts and the threat of school closures.
"It's not too late," one impassioned letter from a group of school superintendents declared, urging citizens to stand up and resist the defunding of public schools and their privatization.
Let's hope they are right.
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Testing, Anxiety, and the ABC's: Kindergarten Under Common Core
New report finds Common Core mandate that kindergarteners learn to read forces 'inappropriate' instruction, blocks experiential learning, and causes harmful anxiety among children
Jan 13, 2015
The widely adopted standard that kindergarteners must learn to read has led to inappropriate drilling and excessive testing in place of important experiential learning, finds a new report published Tuesday by a panel of education experts.
The report, Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose (pdf), put forth by early education groups Defending the Early Years (DEY) and the Alliance for Childhood, debunks the thinking behind the Common Core State Standard (or CCSS) that children as young as 4 or 5 must be able to "read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding."
Report authors Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon say they could find no research to support the controversial guideline. Alternately, studies show that children exhibit greater gains from active, play-based learning experiences--the same activities that are being pushed out to make room for more academic instruction.
From the report:
As children engage in active learning experiences and play, they are talking and listening all the time. They attach words to their actions, talk with peers and teachers, learn new vocabulary and use more complex grammar. As they build, make paintings, and engage in imaginative play, they deepen their understanding of word meanings. As they listen to and create stories, hear rich language texts, sing songs, poems and chants, their foundation for reading grows strong.
Further, the authors note that many kindergarten-age children are not developmentally ready to learn to read and thus, the Common Core is setting "unrealistic goals" and forcing educators to use "inappropriate methods," such as drilling and excessive testing, to accomplish them.
The report cites a recent DEY survey of early childhood teachers (preschool to grade three) which found that 85 percent of the public school teachers who responded said that they are required to teach activities that are not developmentally appropriate for their students.
"When children have educational experiences that are not geared to their developmental level or in tune with their learning needs and cultures, it can cause them great harm, including feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and confusion," the report notes.
The authors cite a recent email from a concerned parent, who wrote:
My 5-year-old son started Common Core Kindergarten this year in California. Even though it's only been two months he is already far behind. His teacher asked, "What kind of preschool did he go to -- it must have been a lot of play." Of course it was a lot of play! That's what I wanted for him! She warned me he would probably be getting some "area of concern" grades come November... [W]e are required to do ... [worksheets] four nights a week. It's the same boring thing over and over again. (Especially the reading homework)... I know he's not stupid but I'm being told in not so clear terms that he is. It's very disheartening.
For kindergarten alone, there are more than 90 standards under the Common Core that young children are expected to meet. Some form of the standards have been adopted in 46 states as well as the District of Columbia.
"It puts an emphasis away from a child-centered curriculum, away from children and teaching and onto these requirements that are externally imposed," said Nancy Carlsson-Paige.
Under the Common Core standards, all children are expected to achieve the same benchmarks by the end of each school year. However, according to research, children in low-income and underserved communities do not receive the same educational resources that are given to their peers from wealthier communities.
"Attention to the Common Core is a diversion from addressing the underlying issues of economic inequality that contribute to the achievement gap between low-and high-income students," the authors note.
Among the recommendations put forth, Defending the Early Years and Alliance for Childhood are calling for an end to the high-stakes testing of children up to third grade. The groups are also calling for the withdrawal of the kindergarten standards from the Common Core until they are rethought along appropriate developmental lines.
The two groups released the video below to promote their research and are asking other critics of the Common Core to share their recommendations with the hashtag #2much2soon.
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