We need a radical change in the way we rate our schools

You know, buy a house near a Level 1 school and pay $20K more for not much of a house. 

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." -- John Dewey

Watching my 2-year-old granddaughter, Izzy, learn is one of the great pleasures in my life. Whether she's helping her grandma cook up some eggs, finding a worm while digging on the lawn, pedaling a trike, or stomping around with a tap dancer at a recent birthday party, it's a joy to actually watch her grow and develop physically and intellectually at the moment it's happening.

It's authentic learning. No standardized testing required.

I bring this up once more after reading about another CPS plan to tweak the way the system rates its schools; i.e., Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, etc...  in a high-stakes competition where the loser may have their school closed. I always thought these ratings were more for the benefit of realtors than educators. You know, buy a house near a Level 1 school and pay $20K more for not much of a house.

The new tweaked plan will be presented at Wednesday's first meeting of the mayor's newly-appointed school board.

According to Chalkbeat:

Chicago Public Schools has proposed tweaking its school rating policy to reflect how well elementary schools prepare students for high school and how well high schools help students plan life after graduation — and the district also will finally grade dozens of specialty high schools that had lacked rating systems.

CPS says its School Quality Rating Policy (SQRP) is "a five-tiered performance system based on a broad range of indicators of success, including, but not limited to, student test score performance, student academic growth, closing of achievement gaps, school culture and climate, attendance, graduation, and preparation for post-graduation success."

To tell you the truth, I don't care that much whether or not the board tweaks or doesn't tweak. Neither do I care what indicators they add or take away behind student test scores -- the only ones that really count in the current system.

I certainly don't know what is meant by "post-graduation success." Success at what? Do schools even track their former students to find out if they have been successful (as good, productive citizens, small-d democrats, parents, lovers, artists, poets, scientists, athletes...)?

This whole approach to rating schools and pitting them against one another should be dumped as it does great harm to children and educators and hits especially hard at communities of color which have been devastated by mass school closings.

But there is one part of the current policy I especially take issue with. I don't like the language of preparation and how it's used in its narrowest form. The purpose of current schooling, it seems, is to prepare the student for the next grade, the next school, college, job training and then life. What that language misses is the value of authentic learning ("education is life") and the relationship between school, teacher, student, parent and society. Children learn best when they are engaged with other children and adults in important, meaningful, enjoyable work. Adults do as well.

If by preparation we mean preparing students to be good citizens and active participants in a democratic society, then I am down with it. If it's simply job training for prep for the next round of testing, then I'm not.

Yes, schools do it differently and some do it better than others. But current standards and tests don't seem to get at that. What the scores do reflect much more, is poverty.

I wish the new school board the best of luck in their effort to save and transform CPS. The mayor couldn't have picked a better group to take on this enormous task. I hope the board includes in its agenda, plans for a radical change in the way we evaluate schools.

Duncan: 'This is not about me.'

Edweek's Alyson Klein interviews Arne Duncan. She asks some good questions about the current contending ESEA bills in the House and Senate, but get's back mostly his usual string of empty cliches.

But then she cuts to the chase.

Under both bills the Secretary of Education would be prohibited from interfering with standards, evaluations, and more. How might that hamstring you or your successor? What do you expect would happen to the federal role?

This really isn't about me. What you want is you want whoever the next person ... the next 20 secretaries, you want them to be able to administer and implement the law. So I think there's some common sense middle ground that we can get to.

But since Duncan will become the first ever Ed Sec to be officially banned from interfering in school business, I'd say, it is, at least in large part, about him. And he's earned it.

Experts fly into town to make the necessary "tweaks"

"If it's something that's not working, then what are the tweaks that need to be made." -- Expert Jonathan Brice, heads the Office of Student Support and Safety in Baltimore City Public Schools

All the king's men...

Chicago's new schools chief, J.C. Brizard has assembled a team of "experts" from across the land to help him figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The fall in this case is 15 years of mayoral control under Daley and his "miracle" makers -- Vallas, Duncan, and Huberman.

As far as I can tell, Brizard's list of "experts" is devoid of any Chicago classroom teachers and is mainly limited to middle bureaucrats, academics, and management types from various districts.

"It's like a forensic audit of the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning," said Robert Peterkin, professor emeritus at Harvard Graduate School of Educationthe advisory team's chairman. 

Yes, forensic. That's the word I was looking for:

 (f-rnsk, -zk) -- Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law:

It's like on T.V. Examining the body, looking for clues to use in arguments over who committed the crime. It sure doesn't sound like Brizard is really interested in really transforming teaching and learning. No, of course not. He admits it's actually about imposing the Common Core Curriculum on the district by the required 2014 date. How do do it without any teacher input. Isn't that always the challenge?

Brizard's team, includes Brice; Jaime Aquino, a former bilingual teacher who worked in the New York City school system with Brizard then went to Denver and is now the deputy superintendent of instruction at Los Angeles Unified School District; Washington, D.C., lawyer Maree Sneed, whose firm advises school districts; and Timothy Knowles, director of the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute,

Common Core Curriculum Coalition

Who's on board?

What brings liberal policy wonks together with corporate reformers and right-wing think tankers -- Linda Darling-Hammond, to Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., to Randi Weingarten, to Chester Finn, to Kati Haycock, in common cause? Why it's common core curriculum of course. This broad coalition is now represented as a list of signers on a statement drawn up by the Shanker Institute, the AFT's think tank. Missing as one might expect are Deb Meier along with many of the sharpest standardized testing critics. Diane Ravitch's name is also conspicuous in its absence. On the other side, where's the charter school and voucher organizations? I guess, since they're excluded from all such requirements, they probably couldn't care less.

I haven't seen anything like this since the bipartisan coalition behind NCLB during the early days of the Bush era. But there are so many conditions and escape routes written into the statement just to get some of the big-name skeptics on all sides to stick their big toes into the common core water--an obvious case of same bed -- different dreams. A lot like No Child. 


The framers of Common Core, including the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, purposely left things vague and voluntary--and that's good. But lurking behind the scenes of course is Arne Duncan's test-and-punish, Race To The Top,  federal funding reform strategy. Voluntary is never really voluntary these days. Is it? And how can you have a national curriculum without national, high-stakes, standardized testing?

Look out, kids.

Critical Voices

Go to the blog site of the Forum For Education and Democracy this morning, and you will find important and provocative posts by three of the nation's more thoughtful educators and social justice activists.

Pedro Noguera, "Obama has a Long Way to Go on Education Reform", offers some praise for the president for keeping education high on the nation's policy agenda for speaking up on behalf of undocumented immigrant students. But Noguera doesn't let Obama off the hook.

There is no reason to believe that simply by raising standards, academic performance among students will increase, followed by higher graduation and college attendance rates. The hundreds of schools that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has labeled "dropout factories" are unlikely to be transformed simply because the bar has been raised.

Noguera takes Obama to task for being "boastful" and overstating the impact of Race To The Top. He argues that NCLB need to be trashed rather than tweaked or renamed.

There's a lot more that Noguera could have added in his critique of Obama-style school reform, starting with the whole approach of placing the burden for global economic and military hegemony on the schools--Obama's "Sputnik moment."

But much of which Pedro leaves out is then picked up by Jan Resseger, "Sad, Sad School Reform" and Forum director, George Wood, "Putting the 'F' Word Back in Education."   Resseger unpacks the myth that private operators are a key to turning around "failing schools."

It has become the vogue in today’s school reform, a movement driven by billions of federal stimulus dollars from the U.S. Department of Education, to assume private companies can operate schools better than public school districts...Privatization does not guarantee a school’s success and reliance on contractors is not a district-wide panacea. School reform in 2011 will continue to depend on dedicated educators creating communities where students are cared for and nurtured.

Wood, a high school principal in his other life, calls on educators to recapture the part of schooling that made learning fun and engaging.

 I am not calling for a return to the “good old days,” a time when some children were consigned to less-demanding classes and other children were not even allowed through the school house door.  But I do think we have lost something in our unending quest of lofty standards, more rigor and higher test scores. That something is the joyfulness of play, and the creativeness of curiosity.  We have separated our children from the very world that sustains them.  They will be poorer intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually for it.

I'm putting all three posts on my student's reading list.

Rahm wants Chicago to be first with Common Core Standards

But he's blowing smoke


Rahm Emanuel says that if elected Mayor, he will impose a new math and English language curriculum on Chicago’s public schools by the end of his first term. I'm not sure that Rahm even knows what the word "curriculum" means. It's obvious that he has some of Arne Duncan's guys feeding him bits and pieces of education jargon to toss around during the campaign and to his credit, he's been first out of the gate on ed issues leaving all the other candidates to respond to him. Hopefully this will change in the coming months.

Here's 10 thoughts I had after reading the NYT piece:

1. Rahm is blowing smoke. He needs a real educator atop the system to help schools develop curriculum. But I wonder if any of the other candidates have the courage to really take him on on this.

2. Common Core is not Rahm's idea. It's part of the "blueprint" currently being pushed by Duncan around the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind. It comes out of meetings of the National Governors Assoc. and state ed chiefs. But it's been met with strong resistance because, among other reasons, it appears to be code language for more standardized testing. It also presages an unprecedented expansion of the DOE's power over local schools. So far, that power has been used mainly to test and punish.

3. Which standards does Rahm want to impose? How about the Texas curriculum standards that excluded teaching about Thomas Jefferson and any mention of the word slavery and pushed the theory of Intelligent Design over evolution.

4. Common Core is really a multi-billion-dollar bone thrown to the large textbook and testing companies.

5. Standards should be developed by educators and not demagogic politicians who know or care nothing about child development, teaching literacy or authentic learning and assessment.

6. Rahm's claim of being the first throws him into conflict with own his machine ally, Mayor Daley. What makes him think he can do in one year what Daley couldn't do in 15 years? Every time Rahm says anything about education he has to beg forgiveness from Daley whose endorsement he needs for a successful campaign.

7. Rahm is promising to impose a new curriculum in one year without any consultation with educators or the teachers union. This is a recipe for even more division, chaos and resistance in the schools. How is he planning to implement the new curriculum? He will have to re-train thousands of teachers to deliver and assess this new pre-packaged curriculum at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars plus thousands of hours of training and planning time away from the classroom. That should make his pals in the consulting business very happy but no one else.

8. Rahm's version of standard core curriculum means a total revision of all the state's standardized tests. Expensive plus no way to accurately compare progress with previous years.


9. The whole idea behind Common Core standards is to eliminate the unevenness nationally between states. For Rahm to boast that he will make Chicago "the first city" to adopt the curriculum and to claim that “no one else has taken on the initiative” misses the point. If Chicago is the only one, then its standards aren't "common." Are they? It's also not true. Several cities have launched Common Core Standards initiatives. I think Suwanee, GA. may have been the first.

10. Instead of promoting Common Core, our new mayor should call for a Chicago Education Summit in collaboration with the CTU and other stakeholders in public education. It should bring together teachers, parents, students, community organizations, foundations, local school coulcils and the business community to draft a new education plan. A major part of the summit should include panels of teachers to design the Chicago Curriculum with input from national experts in reading, math/science, the arts, etc... Former mayor Harold Washington's call in 1987 for an Education Summit could serve as a model.

Standard Deviations

Arizona State prof, David Berliner gets all bell-curvy on us in today's Answer Sheet. But his conclusions are unmistakable and inarguable. If you want to be successful in school and in life, don't be both poor and go to school with other poor kids. The combined effect is devastating. But if you come from a wealthy family and attend a school with other wealthy kids, your life chances are enhanced greatly. While good teachers and schools can and do play a vital role, the compound affect of poverty, segregated schools and housing, on average, have a much more powerful affect on student learning than anything that may happen inside the classroom.  I'm sure the "no excuses" crowd will go ballistic over this.

It is not pleasant to contemplate, but when poor children go to public schools that serve the poor, and wealthy children go to public schools that serve the wealthy, then the huge gaps in achievement that we see bring us closer to establishing an apartheid public school system. We create through our housing, school attendance, and school districting policies a system designed to encourage castes—a system promoting a greater likelihood of a privileged class and an under class.

Of course there are schools (mainly small) and groups of students who continue to beat the odds. In most cases they become the focus of media attention and benefit from the kindness of wealthy patrons, power philanthropists, and an effective PR campaign. But on the whole, Berliner's equations hold up. It's not about "excuses." It's about an increasingly two-tiered system of education.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Stewart vs. Lewis in run-off for CTU president

"You don't make radical changes in times of trouble," Stewart told the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday.
But Lewis posed this question: "And exactly what has this experience gotten us?"

Does free speech stop when the bell rings?

"When you teach young people who are very close to voting age that the government gets to decide what they can criticize, you shouldn't be surprised that we get damaged citizens," he said. "Too many (school officials) see student expression as a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to teach." (Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center)

"Even though I believe their voices have to be heard, they have to be disciplined for their infractions." (Joyce Kenner, principal, Whitney Young Magnet High School)

Texas school board approves new "standards"

"I have let down the students in our state," said board member Mary Helen Berlanga (D). "What we have done today is something that a classroom teacher would not even have accepted," she said, sweeping a pile of history books from her desk onto the floor. (Washington Post) 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

L.A. Supt. Ray Cortines as he cuts more days from school year

"Our people will be asked to do more with less." (L.A. Times )

Herman Brewer, acting president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League

"These folks who have known nothing but prosperity are now in shock because all of a sudden the crisis they have generally associated with poor communities -- with the city of Chicago -- has hit them," Brewer said. "Our funding formula has created disparities so acute, people are starting to see it now." ("Layoffs could top 20,000 in school districts" Sun-Times)

FairTest's Lisa Guisbond & Monty Neill

George W. Bush’s education secretary, Margaret Spellings, often said we need to give state tests every year, because otherwise we would have no way of knowing if students were falling behind. But that’s hogwash, as any teacher, student or parent could have told her.In the classroom of any reasonably competent teacher, student progress is being evaluated constantly, each time he or she looks at classroom work, not to mention frequent quizzes, papers, projects, and discussions. (The Answer Sheet)

Dumb & a moron, both...

Look, down here there are these groups from the far left. Whatever we do, they want to make it look like we are dumb morons. They're very effective, dadgummit. Jefferson's name was taken out of a list of Enlightenment philosophers in world history because he didn't fit the period of the Enlightenment. (Texas school board member Don McLeroy in Globe & Mail)

Nell Noddings makes sense of national standards

"Differentiate, don't standardize"

Educator and ed philosopher Nell Noddings says that national standards have been tried many times before, under different and have never worked to improve teaching/learning.

We do not need to standardize. We need to differentiate—to offer a greater variety of courses—and we should work on the quality of these courses. They should not be shabby, dead-end courses for those thought to be incapable of the long-favored academic courses. Rather, they should represent a genuine democratic respect for all the interests and talents required in the contemporary work world. (Edweek)