Education Reform as the New Misogyny: A Reader | the becoming radical

http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/education-reform-as-the-new-misogyny-a-reader/

Peter Greene: How to Always Have Ineffective Teachers

Peter Greene: How to Always Have Ineffective Teachers dianeravitch.net - Peter Greene says that corporate reformers have discovered the secret to generating an endless supply of "ineffective" teachers: just keep proclaiming that teachers are ineffective if their students get low scores. Available on the App Store.

How the government is stealing public servant pensions « Education Votes

http://educationvotes.nea.org/2014/06/18/how-the-government-is-stealing-public-servant-pensions/

How the government is stealing public servant pensions

Posted In: Educator Voices, Retired Educators, Uncategorized

Posted June 18, 2014

Tags: Government Pension Offset, GPO/WEP, Social Security, Social Security Fairness Act of 2013, Windfall Elimination Provision

by Tim Reed

Educators, firefighters, police officers, librarians, nurses and other public employees already contribute up to ten percent of their salary towards their pensions, and many do not even get Social Security. Despite this, the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP)  penalize people who have dedicated their lives to public education and other public service careers by taking away benefits they have EARNED.

Luckily, Democrats and Republicans in both the Senate and House of Representatives are working together to address these troubling provisions. The Social Security Fairness Act of 2013 has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) as HR 1795. On the Senate side, Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK), Dean Heller (R-NV), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have introduced the same bill as S 896.

Take Action ›

Urge your Members of Congress to repeal the GPO and WEP! Click here ›

GPO reduces public employees' Social Security spousal or survivor benefits by two-thirds of their public pension — nine out of ten people lose their entire spousal benefit, even though their spouse paid Social Security taxes for many years. WEP reduces the earned Social Security benefits of an individual who also receives a public pension from a job not covered by Social Security — hard-working people lose a significant portion of the benefits they have earned themselves.

What this means, in real terms, is that public servants such as teachers, firefighters and police officers are losing the benefits they earned through a lifetime of public service. Loss of benefits can result from moving from private to public employment and vice versa or moving between states that have different GPO/WEP rules.

GPO/WEP does nothing more than punish those who have dedicated their lives to serving their communities. Take Heidi from Maine, for instance:

My husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain cancer. After surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, his sight was affected so he could no longer drive or read. Therefore, he could no longer work as a real estate appraiser. We lived on my teacher retirement pension, my small Social Security benefit ($250 a month before Medicare), and his Social Security check of $1,600. It was an adjustment having one income totally lost, but with careful management and no unforeseen unexpected expenses we could do it.

My husband lost his battle in April. Within two weeks of his death his Social Security benefit no longer was coming. After a phone interview with a Social Security representative, I found out that I would see none of it. Now my income was almost cut in half again. Trying to deal with his death was compounded immeasurably by this huge loss financially. I still wonder how I am going to make it. My husband worked all his life and paid into Social Security. He was in the Marines and the Army and was a Vietnam vet. I worked as a teacher of young children most of my life as well as other jobs to earn my Social Security benefit. The GPO and the WEP are devastating to me. What can I do to help get these repealed?

Not only does this policy devastate families of veterans, educators, and other public servants, but it is also having a negative impact on attempts to recruit the best and brightest from the private sector into teaching careers, like Carrie from California:

After graduating from college, I went to work in corporate America. I worked my way into management and was making three times what I do now as a school teacher. For twelve years I was in a rewarding position, doing the "right" thing in life, making a good salary, and was very proud of what I did for a living. Due to company management downsizing, I was forced to make a decision to move or demote. I chose to leave the company and go back to school to get a teaching credential.

To this day, I believe that it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I believed (and still do) that I could make a difference in students' lives. Now, I find out that my financial reward for all these hard years of honest work is to have my Social Security benefits significantly cut each year that I teach. This is a true example of the government making it "easier and better" not to go into public service. There is something wrong when our country needs good, qualified, devoted teachers, and then takes away the money they earned before they decided to become good, qualified, devoted teachers. Some of the best teachers we have are those who have brought all their prior experience, travels, knowledge, training, and skills to the classroom. Why are we penalizing these great teachers?

Until they hear a chorus of educators and public servants demanding change to these provisions, legislators will continue to balance the budget on the backs of retirees. Email your elected officials today and urge them to repeal the GPO and WEP!

More information:

• NEA letter the the Senate Subcommitee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy, June 5, 2014
• NEA letter to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, May 15, 2014

New legislation would repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), which penalize people who have dedicated their lives to public service by taking away benefits they have EARNED.

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If the Problem Is Child Poverty- Union Busting and Common Core Aligned Tests are the Wrong Response

Why is it that we refuse  to look at this issue in this country?   If the Problem Is Child Poverty- Union Busting and Common Core Aligned Tests are the Wrong Response withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com - o hear them say a peep about1. The children in Bronx schools who start crying Friday afternoon because they are afraid they won't eat over the weekend 2. The tens ( and possibly hundreds) of thousands of children in the Bronx sleeping on couches or doubled up in beds because many families in the borough can't afford their own apartments. Available on the App Store.

Khan Academy and the Google Art Project

Good luck to those who think art can or will ever be taught by something other than a human being.    Khan Academy and the Google Art Project khanacademy.org - From Khan Academy Co-Deans for Art and History, Beth Harris and Steven Zucker: You may have been wondering what Smarthistory has been up to since we joined Khan Academy in October. We've had to keep this hush-hush…but we can now announce that we have contributed more than 100 videos to the unbelievably great, second iteration of the Google Art Project: Available on the App Store.

Writing Expert: Computer Scoring by PARCC-Pearson Tests Is Fundamentally Flawed

Why is Silicon Valley in such a hurry to automate education?   Writing Expert: Computer Scoring by PARCC-Pearson Tests Is Fundamentally Flawed dianeravitch.net - Les Perelman, who was in charge of MIT'sWriting Across the Curriculum program, wrote this opinion piece for the Boston Globe. Perelman said that student essays written for the PARCC test, created by Pearson, would be scored by computers. Unfortunately, the computer scorers are unable to detect the meaning of language. Instead, they rely on length, grammar, and other measurable elements. Available on the App Store.

Ending Child Poverty in the US: Financially Prudent, Morally Just by Zach McDade

Interesting suggestions.    Ending Child Poverty in the US: Financially Prudent, Morally Just by Zach McDade talkpoverty.org - More than one in five children in the US lives in poverty: that's 790,000 children in New York, 429,000 in Chicago, and 125,000 in Washington, D.C. In all, there are 16 million poor children. Child poverty is also rising, up six percentage points since the turn of the century. Available on the App Store.

When Arne Duncan Brought His Snake Oil to Charleston

When Arne Duncan Brought His Snake Oil to Charleston dianeravitch.net - When Arne Duncan went to South Carolina, he probably expected to meet the usual compliant, uninformed business crowd. But Patrick Hayes of EdFirstSC was waiting to meet him, hear him, and ask questions. And Hayes is neither compliant nor uninformed. Available on the App Store.

Fire Weingarten Before She Does More Damage

AFT president need to go.    Fire Weingarten Before She Does More Damage booksareenough.wordpress.com - AFT President Randi Weingarten just said that Common Core- if done right- will help kids… 1. Develop relationships Available on the App Store.

Dave Cunningham to Editorial Writer: You Were Wrong to Vote Against School Budget

Dave Cunningham to Editorial Writer: You Were Wrong to Vote Against School Budget

Michael Dobie, an editorial writer at Long Island's Newsday, wrote an opinion piece in which he explained with a certain amount of embarrassment why he voted against the school budget for the West Babylon public schools, where his daughters attended, graduated, and went on to outstanding colleges.
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/06/16/dave-cunningham-to-editorial-writer-why-you-were-wrong-to-vote-against-school-budget/

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The Crucible | Out of the Cave

http://davidsudmeier.com/2014/06/16/the-crucible/

The Crucible

Arthur Miller's play The Crucible survives to this day as a metaphor for accusations without merit that damage reputations and lives. The advertisement that appeared this week in USA Today after the Vergara decision contained such an accusation, which might as well have been of witchcraft and evil spells cast upon students by malevolent kindergarten teachers. The same organization that created that ad had another rejected by the Chicago Tribune, because it conflated teacher unionism with racist segregationist attitudes a la George Wallace. Teachers can likely expect a continued barrage of similar ads in the media, funded by privatization interests.

Maintaining a sense of dignity depends on the deference and support shown to you by society in light of your contributions. When major media publications accept ads portraying student feet protruding from a garbage can, and accuse teachers of placing students in that demeaning position, they accept hate speech as a legitimate source of income. Teacher sensitivity to outright lies is less a product of being targeted for criticism—that's part of life in the public sector— than it is due to the duplicity of the bad actors that create those lies. They demonize teachers on the one hand and extend the other for profits to be earned by displacing unionized teachers with ill-trained, easily controlled dupes working in charter schools, among their many crimes. The "Center for Union Lies" does not criticize teachers; it intentionally distorts and mischaracterizes their achievements to enable corporate gain.

When you deprive teachers of dignity and meaning in their work, you strike a blow against public education. Of course, that is exactly the point for some. For others, it is "collateral damage" that must be accepted to improve instruction and raise test scores. If test scores rise, then education must be improved. If living and breathing teachers who will demand immediate compensation can be replaced with technology that raises test scores on tests written by testing companies whose shareholders seek short-term profits…well, all the better.

What is lost if public education is lost? Just as terrorism is a front in the war for the soul of Islam, attacks on public education—one of the sources of our common good— constitute one front in the war for the soul of democracy. Democracy can withstand challenges from without which are obvious and overt; whether democracy can withstand challenges from within is unknown. Dismantling public institutions encourages individualism and loss of community. That loss of community opens a democracy to manipulation and exploitation by powerful  corporations.

Still, we teachers as a group fail to see the forest for the trees. We imagine that what we experience in the form of attacks by individuals and organizations on teachers and education is somehow unique and unrelated to other events. We feel our institution being assailed, and we forget that there are others in the public service enduring similar mistreatment.

How have we ended up in this situation? Corporatists have built a myth of excellence and efficiency in the private sector, and a specter of malfeasance and incompetence in public institutions. Their tactics include attacks on public institutions, accompanied by demands for firings and accountability measures. They then demand new "standards" for performance that are clearly impossible to reach, and place blame on those same institutions when they fail to attain them and attempt to cover it up. Finally, they seek to withdraw financial support from those institutions, citing the failures they themselves engineered. This has happened in education with NCLB and RttT, and will occur with CCSS, if it is not more widely abandoned. It has happened as well with the Veterans Administration. The VA (underfunded and overwhelmed by demands resulting from the Iraq/Afghanistan debacle) was accused of not providing timely care for those who deserved better. The solution? A standard was set that could not be met, a 14-day window for care, and accountability measures for not achieving success. When that couldn't be accomplished, managers found ways of lying to make it appear that things were fine. Uncovered, the VA was again blamed for incompetence. Calls were made to privatize an institution that attempts to fulfill a public obligation to those who have stood in the line of fire for us all.

We teachers can easily comprehend what VA employees face. Our experiences are not unique; they are part and parcel of a wider attack on democracy. The sooner we accept that and coordinate our actions with other institutions that are also suffering, the sooner we will begin to turn the corner. We become powerful when we recognize our community, and weak when we abandon it. Badass Teachers know what it means to acquire community; we need to remind our colleagues of the role their unions need to play in preserving, protecting, and extending that community of public service employees. NEA and AFT have accomplished much in the past, but are only lately stepping up to the plate on this issue. They can do much more, and will need grass roots support to do so.

We are not just educators. We are warriors for democracy, and we fight a dangerous opponent. We fight for free, fair and appropriate public education, just as our brothers and sisters fight battles for better public health care, better public transportation, and improved public security. Part of our fight is to act with dignity and demand dignified treatment from society. We need to build a new myth of the public employee, one that recognizes our commitment to service and champions our achievements in creating community.

Arthur Miller is calling to us now.

© David Sudmeier, 2014

How Bill Gates pulled off the Common Core revolution | Tampa Bay Times

http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-common-core-revolution/2183554

How Bill Gates pulled off the Common Core revolution

The pair of education advocates had a big idea, a new approach to transform every public school classroom in America. By early 2008, many of the nation's top politicians and education leaders had lined up in support.

But that wasn't enough. The duo needed money — tens of millions of dollars, at least — and they needed a champion who could overcome the politics that had thwarted previous attempts to institute national standards.

So they turned to the richest man in the world.

On a summer day in 2008, Gene Wilhoit, director of a national group of state school chiefs, and David Coleman, an emerging evangelist for the standards movement, spent hours in Bill Gates' headquarters near Seattle, trying to persuade him and his wife, Melinda, to turn their idea into reality. Their appeal was to the same Gateses whose foundation has awarded a $100 million grant to the Hillsborough County public school system to help improve student achievement.

Coleman and Wilhoit told the Gateses that academic standards varied so wildly between states that high school diplomas had lost all meaning, that as many as 40 percent of college freshmen needed remedial classes and that U.S. students were falling behind their foreign competitors.

The pair also argued that a fragmented education system stifled innovation because textbook publishers and software developers were catering to a large number of small markets instead of exploring breakthrough products. That seemed to resonate with the man who led the creation of the world's dominant computer operating system.

Wilhoit later got a call: Gates was in.

What followed was one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn't just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make changes.

Bill Gates was de facto organizer, providing the money and structure for states to work together on common standards in a way that avoided the usual collision between states' rights and national interests that had undercut previous efforts dating from the Eisenhower administration.

The Gates Foundation spread money across the political spectrum, to entities including the big teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — groups that have clashed in the past but became vocal backers of the standards.

Money flowed to policy groups on the right and left, funding research by scholars of varying political persuasions who promoted the idea of common standards. Liberals at the Center for American Progress and conservatives affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council who routinely disagree accepted Gates money and found common ground on the Common Core.

One 2009 study, conducted by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute with a $959,116 Gates grant, described the proposed standards as being "very, very strong" and "clearly superior" to many existing state standards.

Gates money went to state and local groups, as well, to help influence policymakers and civic leaders. And the idea found a major booster in President Barack Obama, whose new administration was populated by former Gates Foundation staffers and associates. The administration designed a special contest using economic stimulus funds to reward states that accepted the standards.

The result: Within just two years of the 2008 Seattle meeting, 45 states and the District of Columbia had fully adopted the Common Core State Standards.

The math standards require students to learn multiple ways to solve problems and explain how they got their answers, while the English standards emphasize nonfiction and expect students to use evidence to back up oral and written arguments. The standards are not a curriculum but skills that students should acquire at each grade. How they are taught and materials used are decisions left to states and school districts.

The movement grew so quickly and with so little public notice that opposition was initially almost nonexistent. That started to change last summer, when local tea party groups began protesting what they viewed as the latest intrusion by an overreaching federal government — even though the impetus had come from the states. In some circles, Common Core became known derisively as "Obamacore."

Since then, anti-Common Core sentiment has intensified, to the extent that it has become something of a litmus test in the Republican Party ahead of the GOP's 2016 presidential nomination process. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education has received about $5.2 million from the Gates Foundation since 2010, is one of Common Core's most vocal supporters. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who, like Bush, is a potential Republican presidential candidate, led a repeal of the standards in his state. In the past week, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican and former advocate of the standards, signed a law pulling her state out, days after South Carolina's GOP governor, Nikki Haley, did the same.

Some liberals are angry, too, with a few teacher groups questioning Gates' influence and motives. Critics say Microsoft stands to benefit from the Common Core's embrace of technology and data — a charge Gates vehemently rejects.

In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans. It's up to the government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation, he said.

Gates grew irritated in the interview when the political backlash against the standards was mentioned.

"These are not political things," he said. "These are where people are trying to apply expertise to say, 'Is this a way of making education better?'

"At the end of the day, I don't think wanting education to be better is a right-wing or left-wing thing. We fund people to look into things. We don't fund people to say, 'Okay, we'll pay you this if you say you like the Common Core.' "

Whether the Common Core will deliver on its promise is an open question.

Tom Loveless, a former Harvard University professor who is an education policy expert at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, said the Common Core was "built on a shaky theory." He said he has found no correlation between quality standards and higher student achievement.

"Everyone who developed standards in the past has had a theory that standards will raise achievement, and that's not happened," Loveless said.

Jay Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, says the Gates Foundation's overall dominance in education policy has subtly muffled dissent.

"Really rich guys can come up with ideas that they think are great, but there is a danger that everyone will tell them they're great, even if they're not," Greene said.

EAA chief John Covington resigns | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

http://www.freep.com/article/20140616/NEWS01/306160149/EAA-Covington-resign

EAA chief John Covington resigns

The head of the state's controversial reform school district announced his resignation today.

John Covington, the chancellor of the Education Achievement Authority since 2011, said he is stepping down immediately to care for his ill mother and do consulting work.

"It has been a tremendous honor and a most humbling experience to serve as the chancellor of the EAA and be part of this tremendous work," Covington said in a news release. "The EAA was created to transform traditional education for students who – for far too long – were left with an egregious education gap. The EAA is working. Students are taking responsibility for their education and they are preparing to become 'Next Generation Ready.' "

The EAA board formally will accept Covington's resignation at its meeting Tuesday. It is expected to appoint an interim chancellor and launch a search for a permanent replacement.

■ Related: EAA denies chancellor is using 'chauffeured car service'

■ Related: Controversy swirls around EAA even as lawmakers try to expand it

■ Related: EAA takes student-centered approach to teaching in the classroom

The EAA was created with the goal of turning around the worst-performing schools in the state and began with 15 schools in Detroit. Speculation has swirled in recent weeks that Covington may be leaving, as a bill that would allow the system to expand has stalled in the state Legislature and some critics have raised questions about student performance in the district and its finances.

"It's not a tremendous surprise that he's resigning given the complete lack of leadership on his part, in addition to the multitude of problems that have resulted on his watch: plummeting enrollment, stagnating MEAP scores, chaotic finances," said State Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods, an outspoken critic of the EAA.

Gov. Rick Snyder issued a statement this afternoon saying he appreciated Covington's work.

"Dr. Covington embraced the tremendous challenge of building such a school district," he said. "His student-centered approach, with individualized learning plans, longer school days and longer school years allowed children to make great strides. With passion, he built a solid foundation for the work of the EAA to continue and thrive, helping thousands of our young people now and into the future."

Covington has a 4-year contract worth more than $1.5 million including salary and bonuses.

The district, which opened in 2012, has been mired in controversy since Snyder first announced its creation in 2011. A Free Press report in April showed overall enrollment dropped 25% after the EAA's first year, and past MEAP scores showed most EAA students either weren't showing improvement or were getting worse, despite internal testing showing students making big gains. The district lost roughly a third of its teaching staff in its first year.

Earlier this year, state Superintendent Mike Flanagan announced he was terminating an exclusive contract with the EAA because he believes there should be multiple options for placing the worst-performing schools.

Making it easier to fire teachers won't get you better ones - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-schneider-vergara-teachers-20140610-story.html

Making it easier to fire teachers won't get you better ones

Tuesday's ruling by Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu, which held that California's contract with teachers violates the state's constitutional guarantee to an equitable education, is certain to set off legal battles across the nation. Explaining his ruling, Treu wrote that inequities in teaching quality, which disproportionately affect low-income and minority students, "shock the conscience." And he's right. They do. Yet his ruling will do nothing to solve the problem.

Teachers stall out not because they stop caring but because they lack guidance and support. -  

In challenging tenure, seniority-based layoffs and the teacher dismissal process, the Vergara suit was, its backers claimed, an effort to guarantee "an effective teacher in every classroom." The implication is that teachers are wholly uninterested in professional growth. Protected as they are by unions and collective bargaining agreements, teachers are likely to simply settle in and stop trying once they are awarded tenure.

Research does indicate that, though teachers tend to improve by leaps and bounds in their first few years on the job, they often plateau after that. And supporters of the Vergara suit would like the public to believe that there is a simple reason for this: job security. If it were easier to fire teachers, they reason, classroom educators would be motivated to continue growing over the full arc of their careers. Our most senior teachers would be our best teachers.

That logic, however, is deeply flawed. Teachers stall out not because they stop caring but because they lack guidance and support. Engaged in difficult and demanding work, even gifted teachers need relevant, robust and continuous professional development opportunities. But very few get it, particularly in schools serving high-needs students. As a result, most teachers realize only a fraction of their full potential.

Making it easier to fire teachers — even if we imagine that such powers will be deployed judiciously by school administrators — will do little to ensure an effective teacher in every classroom. Instead, it will further erode trust between teachers and school administrators.

If professional development is so unsupported, one might ask, why do teachers grow so much in those first few years? Because at first they're learning job basics: how to fill a whole hour of instructional time, for instance, and how to keep students from chatting in class. And they're also building up a store of knowledge and materials: content expertise, lesson plans and assessments.

What they aren't learning, though, is how to go beyond those basics.

Sure, many teachers do. They work relentlessly and read widely. They attend workshops and engage with colleagues. They experiment in their classrooms and evaluate the results, keeping what works and tossing out or improving on what doesn't. They carefully, and constantly, observe their environments.

But there's a lot stacked against them. American educators teach an average of 25% to 30% more hours than their counterparts in other industrialized nations, leaving little time for anything beyond treading water. They receive little guidance about what they should read or what new techniques are of the greatest value. Professional development is often problematic, delivered too infrequently, too generally and conveying ideas of questionable merit. And standardized accountability testing tends to discourage even the mildest forms of experimentation.

In short, the problem isn't that teachers don't care. It's that they work in a field with little support for professional growth.

Instead of working to erode collective bargaining agreements or promoting other policies that assume teacher negligence — like test-based accountability — we should be channeling our energies into building teacher capacity. And this work starts not with teachers but with those who employ them. Schools and districts need to transform themselves from administrative units into learning organizations, carving out more time during the school day for teachers to collaborate, observe one another and work with experts. They should expand coaching and mentoring programs and develop partnerships with scholars at local colleges and universities. The possibilities are as exciting as they are numerous.

Such work, of course, is not easy. But it has the potential to do something that current reform efforts have failed to do: produce teachers who grow every year, across their whole careers, and who feel ever more effective and more valued. Equally important, such a vision might put an end to the constant cycles of aggressive and interventionist reform, based largely on unfounded assumptions.

Instead of imagining a world in which teachers are easier to fire, we should work to imagine one in which firing is rarely necessary. Because you don't put an effective teacher in every classroom by holding a sword over their heads. You do it by putting tools in their hands.

Jack Schneider is an assistant professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts and the author of "From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse: How Scholarship Becomes Common Knowledge in Education." He is a native of Los Angeles.

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times