Tag: education

Categories
Featured

Reopening School

What to make of the debate on how to open schools?

On the one hand, we have the president and Betsy DeVos, who seem to be ignoring most of the health information contained in a report, which was marked “For Internal Use Only”, that had more sensible guidance for schools and even urged districts in communities where the virus was spreading more rapidly to have classes conducted entirely online, who are urging all schools to open five days per week with all students in the building.

On the other hand, we have education and health professionals who are urging caution because,well, we are still in the midst of the first wave of a global pandemic and conditions in the United States are getting worse, much worse, by the day.

Every teacher in this country understands that students need to be in school. It is key for a child’s social, educational and emotional development. We all know that. The issue is not that we need to open, but how to open safely and create an environment where every child can learn. The evidence does suggest that younger people are not impacted to the same degree as older people and that they don’t spread it at the same rate. We get that too.

What we also know, though, is that enclosed, poorly-ventilated spaces in which people are talking are prime breeding grounds for the virus. Yes, the guidelines call for students to wear masks, but students do not always do what they are told to do, and since they won’t be mandatory for the children, there’s little a teacher can do if a child refuses to wear one or puts the mask below their nose or chews a hole in it where their mouth is. And parents who need to work might give their feverish child a fever reducer and send them on their way so the parent can go to work. Hallways are crowded places. Teenagers like to hug, and more, in various areas of school buildings.

This is why teachers are pushing back against reopening plans that do not take into account their concerns about workplace safety. Many teachers have complicated health issues or are worried about bringing the virus back to their homes where their children, elderly parents or other adults with health concerns live. Teachers are also concerned that cash-strapped school districts will not be able to fully meet the guidelines that are meant to insure that schools open safely, or to invest in distance-learning software or protocols that will enable all students to thrive whether they are in the classroom or at home. Federal and state governments have been defunding education for decades. We are now seeing a literal struggle over the life and death of schools and their staff.

In short, this is a far more complicated answer than what the president and Secretary DeVos want to hear. The president is concerned about his reelection prospects given that adults can’t go back to work if they have to stay home and take care of children who are on alternate day schedules or have decided that their child will stay home rather than go into schools where the danger is real. Secretary DeVos is supporting the president’s proposal to strip already cash-starved public school districts of federal funds if they don’t fully open, despite the health risks.

America’s public school teachers already know that they are not as valued as they should be, are not paid commensurate with their educational levels and value to society, and are seen as union saps who slavishly toe the NEA/UFT line. The president went so far as saying that history teachers especially seek to propagandize students and teach them to hate America. None of this is in any way accurate
but, there is a sizable chunk of people in this country who believe it.

The difference now is that teachers are being asked to put their health and lives at risk. Even in districts that will have students alternate days or weeks, teachers are expected to be in classrooms every day. The best science we have now says that the virus thrives in poorly ventilated, enclosed rooms where people are exposed to each other for lengthy periods of time while talking, coughing, sneezing, or singing. In short, your child’s classroom. This is the part of the discussion that the president and Secretary DeVos have ignored or minimized. Yes, school is about student learning, but it’s also about teachers who make sure that the classroom is safe and secure.

For all of the planning, my sense is that schools will be shut down again because this virus is not going away. Students will test positive. Teachers will test positive (is this the point at which the lawsuits begin?). Communities will be justifiably angry and scared. Maybe this happens in October or maybe it happens when the flu starts to mingle in around November or December.

We have one chance to get this reopening right. Let’s make sure we do just that.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Featured

Silence On Education

For all of the stories I’ve read about online schooling and how difficult it is to entertain and engage children of all ages while being quarantined in one’s home, I still don’t get the sense that we are talking about education, and how profoundly the system must change in the post-pandemic United States.

What this crisis has uncovered is the dire state of education regarding schooling, infrastructure, funding, practice, equity, and opportunity. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a country whose system of public education reflects the democratic values upon which it was founded. Now we can’t even guarantee that all students are reporting for the daily or weekly Zoom call that forms the basis of their learning. And it wasn’t that before we all went online the education system was running smoothly or meeting the needs of all children. It was not. But now we know that we have gaping holes that will need to be fixed.

The crowd that currently holds power in Washington will say that education is the realm of the states, and constitutionally, they are right. Most states were free to create and maintain their school systems. What that’s done, though, is to create 50 separate systems divided into thousands of county and local school systems who are free to set their policies, to determine what they teach and generally how to teach it. Attempts such as the Common Core Curriculum Standards to tie the states together so they are teaching the same skills and holding students accountable to them received push-back from the right because of the loss of state control, and the left because of the focus on testing to determine student and teacher growth. Common Core is doomed to irrelevance.

Add in the problem of funding, and you see why we are where we are. Wealthier states and districts can afford to give every student a computer, and generally, those towns and suburbs are where the vast majority of homes have an internet connection. Those wealthier areas can also afford to pay teachers more and to provide them, and their students, with more resources and programs. Those towns also have a higher percentage of parents whose jobs have not been destroyed because of lockdowns. They also tend to be whiter.

And so, here we are.

What to do? We need a massive, federal investment in the schools. Every child should be given a computer to use and a reliable internet connection that will enable them to explore the world. Every child should have access to resources such as school trips, enrichment activities, speakers, literacy materials, and safe, sustainable buildings. Teachers should be paid a great deal more than they are now so they don’t have to worry about getting two jobs to support themselves.

And everybody–everybody–should have affordable, high-quality health insurance so they don’t have to worry about making a choice between education or food or housing or entertainment and getting medical care.

States cannot do this on their own because they must balance their budgets. Only the federal government can provide the funding and resources to provide what every child, and every family, needs to succeed. This is not going to happen under this administration or, I suspect, under any Republican presidency. We need a change.

Are you registered to vote?



For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Education Featured

The New School Year: History Will Guide the Future

New school years always bring new challenges for children, parents and teachers. This school year, though, promises to be much trickier, because we are now debating United States History.

Remember history? That’s the class that isn’t tested at the end of the year by the great national testing monopoly, Pearson. The PARCC tests focus on non-fiction readings, which allows for more use of historical documents on the test, but there’s no real history or context that a student has to master in order to answer the questions.

For decades we’ve focused on language arts and mathematics as the key components of K-12 education, relentlessly testing students in those subjects. And what has your school district likely spent a good deal of money on over the last few years? STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or STEAM (ibid., but add Arts). Coding classes are now part of the curriculum in many states as required business and personal finance courses. They get lots of press. And, yes, United States History is required in all states, but far too many of them require only one year of it. And with no summary test, save for a final exam at the end of the class, history has lost a good deal of influence in the curriculum.

We are now paying the price.

As this new school year begins, teachers will be asked to address the explosive issues that are daily in the media concerning our history and what it means. How should we treat Confederate statues and monuments? What place do hate groups such as the KKK and the American Nazi Party have in a country with a strong First Amendment? What should we do about immigration and children who were brought here by undocumented parents? And of course, we seem to be debating President Trump’s behavior, tweets and spur-of-the-moment policy declarations on a minute-by-minute basis, not to mention his speculative knowledge of historical events.

This is the environment in which America’s school teachers must operate this academic year. We are the ones who will be the first point of contact for many children who are feeling the anxiety and divisiveness that has taken hold in our society. Remember that as much as any adult is trying to make sense of what’s happening in our society, children experience these events on a magnified scale. They have less of the emotional regulation necessary to confront explosive debates that adults have and they have little context by which to weigh the consequences of what they’re learning. Great teachers recognize these deficits and conduct their classes so as to support students, to teach them civil behavior, to make sure students respect differences, and to calmly appeal to their students’ intelligence, humanity, and sense of justice.

Of course, some would argue that if teachers had done this in the past, then we wouldn’t be at this place in our history where there is so much disagreement and division. This would be a tragic conclusion. Did any of your teachers teach you to hate? To insult your classmates? To steal? To plagiarize? Of course not.

The simple truth is that teachers can only be as effective as the communities in which we teach, and if a community, or the country, is dysfunctional, then that will be reflected in the schools. We see students for only a portion of the day. The media, social and otherwise, takes over from there. Together with parents, teachers can only plant the seeds of knowledge; society and common sense have to do the rest.

That’s why this school year will be more of a challenge than most years, but I have no doubt that America’s school teachers will do their best, keep their emotions in check, teach from the heart and the head, advocate for every one of their students, and proudly represent themselves as doing one of the most important and difficult jobs in this country.

I wish all of my fellow teachers a happy new school year full of joy and wonder. May we learn as much about our students as they learn from us.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Education Featured

America’s Educators Lead the Way

If you care deeply about social and racial justice, value equal opportunity, detest discrimination and believe that this country needs to focus on its core values of tolerance, compromise, equality and democracy, then fear not.

America’s educators have got your back.

I returned from the National Education Association (NEA) convention in Boston last week feeling a great deal better about this country’s direction than I get from watching or reading the news these days. The 7,000 strong NEA Representative Assembly, made up of educators, and the largest deliberative democratic body in the world when it meets, voted decisively in favor of making sure that if nowhere else, this country’s teachers, educational support personnel, children and young adults would be valued, protected, empowered and educated in America’s public schools. We also plan to use the power of solidarity and numbers to move what we consider to be the country’s vital interests forward through the political process, protests and community action.

It was interesting to listen to colleagues who described their states and school districts in glowing terms, but also with a sense that the new administration in Washington is not looking out for our children. Some described ICE raids on their schools and workplaces that create fear and suspicion in their communities. They also described the dire effects that poverty, hunger, disease and psychological issues have on our students. The RA also learned about the deleterious effects of state and national budget cuts on our schools and on our ability to solve the pressing problems that schools and students face today.

By the end of the RA, though, I felt a bit brighter. As a democratic body, we affirmed the NEA’s place in our society as a beacon of justice and a protector for those who desperately need it. We approved policies that will use the voice of millions of educational professionals across the country to pressure states and local governments to address educational equity, reduce the time that children spend on taking standardized tests, to gather and disseminate information on racial, gender, sexual and economic inequality, to publicize educational programs that work in schools and to reaffirm the power of a unified association in a country that seems to have lost its sense that unions are a vital, pulsating, guiding force for now and for our future.

Education must continue to be a bulwark against the high tide of intolerance and ignorance that can negatively affect children. We are here to lead that fight and to defend our country’s values.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Domestic Policies Education

Back To School: A Different Kind of Division

The great divide in American public attitudes is most evident during Presidential election years, and this year is no different. Republicans and Democrats seem to be living in two different countries when it comes to their views on how much the government should be involved in people’s lives, the role of religion, support for social issues such as marriage equality, reproductive rights, voting laws, immigration and, of course, the bathroom.

Now this divide is becoming more evident in education. More specifically, the latest PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools shows that Americans cannot agree on the purpose public schools should serve in our republic. Less than half, 48%, said that the purpose should be to prepare students academically, 25% said schools should prepare students to work, and 26% said that the main purpose should be to promote citizenship. As a teacher, I’m sure that the public schools can do all three, but they really should be doing one thing very well, and my preference is with the plurality of the public that came down on the side of academic skills and knowledge.

This divide, though, says a great deal about our country. We seem to have convinced ourselves that it is necessary to go to college to get a job. Any job. The educational establishment has bought into that attitude and many public schools have eliminated non-academic courses and programs or shifted them to the nearest vocational, technology or career-ready establishment. Are we doing our students a favor by focusing on getting them into colleges? I would say no. Continued academic study is not for everyone, but we seem to be asking every student to follow one path. So while I agree that the main purpose of schools should be academics, we do need to focus on each child’s needs and get them on the road to a career or interest that plays to their strengths. Finances, poverty and whether a child’s family members went to college all have something to do with their success in higher education, but it doesn’t mean that all young adults can succeed in college, and we are wrong to push them there when the evidence is against their interests.

As for citizenship, that is also a key component of our education system, but it shouldn’t be the main focus. We can certainly do better: the arguments I see in the media that revolve around the Constitution or what it means to be an American are sometimes based on a shocking level of ignorance of our basic ideals. I cannot count how many times I have been in discussions with adults and listened as they confused the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution or were ignorant of the Gettysburg Address or how we elect a president or how a bill becomes law. I am not talking about opinions, but rather, about the basic facts. Clearly we need to focus more on the basics of citizenship and what it means to uphold basic American values. Of course, we seem to disagree about what those values are and how to exercise them. See Kaepernick, Colin.

Where do teachers fit in to this? We need to advocate for high-quality curricula and continue to educate the public about the over-reliance on standardized tests. At a time when many states are cutting back on PARCC and other tests, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was handed a victory by the State Board of Education when it resolved to make standardized tests count for 30% of a teacher’s yearly evaluation. This will only make things worse for districts and teachers as they now must spend more time on testing and preparing students for tests in order to keep their jobs. It’s no wonder that we’ve seen stories like this.

We have highly effective teachers in this country who need the public’s support, and have earned it by influencing the lives of generations of children. And we need to attract more qualified people to the profession to ensure that the United States continues to lead the world in innovation, creative thinking and the freedom to think, explore and exercise one’s rights.  The school year has already begun in most parts of the country and Labor Day marks the end of summer for the remainder of public school teachers. I am proud to be an educator and I have been lucky to work with some of the greatest teachers working today from all over the country. We have one of the most important paid jobs in the country and we need to continue to do it with professionalism, passion and persistence.

I wish all teachers a great year for them and their students.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Donald Trump Education News Politics

Chris Christie: Terrible as Governor But Qualified for VP

I sort of forgot that Chris Christie was still the Governor of New Jersey and an active politician until this week, so quiet was he on policy and bombast.

But now he’s back.

His first foray was to emerge with a set of checks made out to suburban school district students for $6,599 each.  This was his way of solving the school funding problem that has vexed governors for the better part of 40 years. Christie’s solution was, in essence, to tell the students who live in New Jersey’s cities to either go to a Charter School, move, get different parents, or suck it up and try to learn in a class with 34 other students because Christie’s plan would mean a bunch of school closures.

To the suburban districts, the message was much less harsh: Your property taxes will go down and you can continue to have fine schools. What I really like is that the amount of aid isn’t a round number. In fact, I think if Christie had consulted Donald Trump, the price would have been $6,599.99. The pennies add so much class.

And speaking of Christie and Trump, the other information that emerged this week is that the Governor is being vetted for the Vice-Presidency. Yes, I’m still scared of ISIS, but this potential pairing comes in a close second (and tied, by the way, with the thought of Newt Gingrich being VP). Christie has evidently been giving Trump political advice ahead of the GOP’s Cleveland Convention, weighing in on the recent firing of Trump’s campaign manager and moderating Trump’s speeches so they include more substance and less invective. OK, that last one isn’t working out too well, but Christie is taking his job as manager of Trump’s transition very seriously.

Which brings us to this weekend’s crisis in New Jersey over the Transportation Trust Fund which, I am told, is out of money because the Legislature hasn’t raised the gas tax to fund it. Of course, it’s really Christie’s problem because instead of agreeing to the gas tax increase in return for an end to the inheritance tax, which Christie has been running on forever, he tried to make a different deal to agree to the gas tax, but lower the sales tax by 1%. That would create a huge hole in the state budget. When the state Senate balked at the deal (both Republicans and Democrats opposed it), Christie threatened to shut down road projects over the weekend. Which would throw a bunch of people out of work. And seriously compromise driver safety. And make him less popular than he already is.

In years past, even though I didn’t agree with much of what the Republican politicians wanted to do, I could at least see their arguments and follow their thinking. Not this year. The party’s done blowed itself up. And Chris Christie has his hand on the dynamite plunger.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Racism Teacher

Teacher Caught on Camera Beating Black Student – Gets Arrested – Video

Cameras are all over the place. These criminals need to keep that when they decide to commit these crimes. To Texas we go!

According to KHOU, Mary Hastings,63, a teacher at Ozen High School near Beaumont was arrested for assault.

In the video — shot by another student, — Hastings can be seen repeatedly hitting the student as he sits at his desk, calling him an “idiot ass,” then mocking him afterwards when he asks, “Why’d you do that?”

According to a statement from Beaumont school district, the video of Hastings was then given to BISD police and school administrators.

The geometry teacher posted a bond of $2,500 in the misdemeanor assault charge at the Jefferson County jail and was released.

The school district stated that she has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.

Video

Categories
Featured Teacher

Georgia Teacher Resigns for Calling Student “the dumbest girl I have ever met” 

A Georgia teacher who called a high school student “the dumbest girl I have ever met” resigned on Monday night, the NY Daily News reports.

Cory Hunter apologized for any “disruption” he caused and announced at a school board meeting in Greesboro that he was stepping down.

“He will not be returning to the classroom,” Greene County School System Superintendent Chris Houstontold the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “In submitting his resignation, he verbally expressed his apologies to his students and fellow staff members for any disruption caused to the school by the controversy over the last several weeks.”

Greene County High School student Shaniaya Hunter, 16 who is not related to the teacher, had been recording the instructor when the harsh comments were made.

“I have been around for 37 years and clearly you are the dumbest girl I have ever met,” the teacher can be heard saying after Shaniaya asked a question.

Cory Hunter also said the student’s purpose in life will be to have sex and have babies.

Video

Categories
Domestic Policies New Jersey News Politics

Public Workers: Working Hard, Paying More, Getting Less, Being Blamed. Solution?

Governor Christie wasn’t back in New Jersey for two days before his administration and its apologists went back on the attack on public worker pensions and health benefits.

The man who promised that he wouldn’t touch pensions in his gubernatorial run in 2009, and who staked his presidential ambitions on a bipartisan pension and benefits bill in 2011 is now touting a plan recommended by his appointed board of campaign contributors and Wall Street executives that would further degrade the benefits that are part and parcel of people’s decision to enter teaching, firefighting, police work and government administration in this state.

The latest plan, which was first unveiled last year and clarified on Thursday, calls for an end to the health plans that most New Jersey state workers get as part of their employment. Christie’s plan would move workers to the equivalent of Affordable Care Act Gold Plans which, despite their lofty name, have higher deductibles and more limited health care options for their subscribers. But the plan gets even better because no longer would health care be paid for by the state and employees; the cost would be shifted to the municipalities and school boards. Then the money that the state saves would be used to replenish (and plenish) the pension system.

Ingenious, right?

We got a further clarification on this proposal by Thomas Byrne, one of the members of Christie’s pension reform panel. And his point, in sum, is that teachers get more benefits than most workers in the private sector. Besides, they say the plan he and the panel recommended is the only way to solve this problem. Talk about reinforcing your own limited thinking.

What Byrne and his apologists don’t say is that there are many private sector workers who get far better benefits. Why can’t he compare public employee health care with those people? Because, simply, the same people calling for benefits reform are the same people who want to privatize public work and to destroy the power of the public worker unions. So comparing us to the average worker who’s been shafted over the past 40 years by Republicans and conservatives makes people angry at what we have, rather than what we have earned through legal collective bargaining. The rich keep what they have and the rest lose out. Haven’t we heard that somewhere before?

I do have to say that I agree with one of Byrne’s points, and this is likely to get me in trouble with my public worker brethren and sisteren. I think that putting a constitutional amendment that forces the state to make a full pension payment every year is a losing issue. Most New Jerseyans support their local teachers and don’t want to penalize them, but the thought of having to pay billions of dollars at the expense of other programs – which is what the opponents of this amendment will argue – will turn most voters against it.

Governor Christie has done a terrific job, and a terrible one at the same time, by turning public workers into the face of the budgetary, taxing and spending problem we have in New Jersey. It’s not right, it’s not fair and it’s a disgraceful turn away from decency and respect, but it’s the truth and Democrats need to understand that. An amendment will fail. Nix it.

Likewise, a millionaire’s tax would help, but will not raise enough money to pay for the shortfall. Reducing pension investment fees is also a necessary step, but a small one. So what to do?

A 1% tax on corporate profits. After all, it’s the business interests that have been driving educational reform since 1983, including the calls for more cooperative learning, back-to-basics content retention, tenure reform and the Common Core Curriculum Standards. Business is interested in education because schools supply their future workers, and they also have an interest in well-run towns, police forces and firefighters. So why not have them pay a greater share of the expenses? That way, all public workers could share in the proceeds and homeowners wouldn’t have to bear the burden of ever-rising property taxes. One percent is not too much to ask and any company that decides that it’s too much and leaves New Jersey would be sacrificing its highly educated labor force and would risk ridicule for running away.

Obviously I don’t have complete details and I’m sure the accountants would discover all manner of roadblocks. Plus, having corporate interests pay for things usually means they’ll want their names and logos on it. But I think this is better than having taxpayers voting on a multi-billion dollar plan that will hike their taxes. And it just might solve the problem of our underfunded school systems.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Domestic Policies Education News Politics

The Swift Fall of Testing – What Comes Next?

I’ve been in the education business for 31 years and I’ve seen many a fad come and go, from Teacher-proof curricula to shared decision-making to Differentiation to Cooperative Learning, Curriculum Mapping, Goals 2000 and various reading programs that focus on inventive spelling, phonics, whole language and learning vocabulary in context. Many of my colleagues didn’t believe me when I said that our present testing fetish would also shuffle off the educational stage at some point. What caught me by surprise was just how quickly that would happen.

The focus on testing and corporate-style accountability began with the publication in 1983 of A Nation at Risk, a report that essentially regarded the American education system as having failed our students, our economy, and our values. It repudiated many of the reforms that liberals had foisted on the system in the 1960s and 70s and said that if we didn’t correct those flaws we would fall behind other countries whose schools were beginning to produce students who knew more math, science and analytical skills. Conservatives adopted the report as the clarion call for privatization, a back-to-basics curriculum that stressed factual recall, and of course, tests to measure not just students, but teachers, with the secondary goals of loosening the grip that the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers had on school policy and defeating Democrats who relied on union support.

And they almost succeeded. The testing movement – which reached its pinnacle last year and is now under more assault than what we are using to fight ISIS – is in rapid decline. Last year, 44 states gave the PARCC tests which measure how thoroughly students have learned the Common Core Curriculum Standards. This school year 7 states, including New Jersey, will be giving those tests. The rest will be giving a test adopted by their own Education Departments. Further, some states, most notably New York, won’t be using the tests to evaluate teachers. The retreat is notable.

Is the assault over? Not by a long shot, but it is weakening. Conservative groups are still trying to get states to funnel money to Charter Schools, which, on average, do no better than public schools. Many charters do better within certain geographic areas, but much of that has to do with state governments that are abandoning public schools that are in poor urban centers. The fight to limit collective bargaining for teachers and other public workers reached its height in 2013 and has since paused, although the damage done to teachers’ pay and benefits has been significant. And although New York is backing away from using tests to evaluate teachers, more states need to follow them for the good of education everywhere.

The bottom line is that teachers are doing a magnificent job with the dwindling resources and increased scrutiny that came with the rise of the know-nothing conservatives. Aligning teacher evaluation with student test scores only illustrated that the overwhelming majority of teachers were effective. Clearly, the know-nothing’s intent was to use the test scores to fire teachers they thought were failing our students. That hasn’t happened because their assumption was incorrect. They won’t admit it, but it’s true.

The next fight will now be on the state level as we return to local standards and local tests. In the past, most states created tests where 90% of the students scored in the proficient range. That’s just not statistically feasible. We do need national standards and we do need to measure how students are learning. The reaction to the Common Core and PARCC will not make this possible, and that’s to the country’s detriment.

Have no fear, though: If history is any guide, this reaction will only last a few years and something else will come along and replace it. Will it be better or will it be worse?

My answer? Yes.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
BLM Domestic Policies Education News Politics teachers

Education’s Dirty Little Secret

The week began with the president saying that there was too much emphasis on testing in schools. 
In the middle of the week, the New York Times published a story about Success Academy Charter Schools that, among other things, noted the following:

The network serves mostly black and Hispanic students and is known for exacting behavior rules. Even the youngest pupils are expected to sit with their backs straight, their hands clasped and their eyes on the teacher, a posture that the network believes helps children pay attention. Ms. Moskowitz has said she believes children learn better with structure and consistency in the classroom. Good behavior and effort are rewarded with candy and prizes, while infractions and shoddy work are penalized with reprimands, loss of recess time, extra assignments and, in some cases, suspensions as early as kindergarten.

Backs straight? Hands clasped? Candy as a reward for good behavior? More homework as a punishment for bad behavior? Any public school teacher who attempted any of these would be severely reprimanded. In addition, this is not the way we’re supposed to be teaching in the 21st century. What happened to cooperative activities? Differentiation? Healthy snacks? Imagination?

By the time the week was over, the entire know-nothing education reform movement was in question.  Not that teachers and others who actually work in education didn’t already know this. Because they lived with the terrible reforms every day and had little influence on whether those reforms should have been imposed in the first place. After all, the political process is slow and those right-wing money machines that were attempting not just to change the schools but also to destroy the teacher’s unions had a vested interest in drawing out the process so that the public could catch a ride on the train as it crashed in Conjunction Junction.

Not so bad, right? At least we only messed up one generation of children.

Yes, friends, education came roaring back as a national priority with the release of both the PARCC and the NAEP exams this week. In a nutshell, students did not perform very well on the tests. The reasons? Well, there’s the rub. According to those who comment on such things, they range from the fact that more students are living in poverty to the truth that the Common Core Standards, which are the basis for the PARCC exams, have not been around long enough for students to have internalized them. As for the NAEP, the answer is even muddier, but the consensus seems to be that last year’s exam asked questions about curriculum that students have not been taught.

Really? If I gave tests on information I hadn’t taught my students, I could be fired. That hasn’t stopped the know-nothings from using tests to evaluate teacher performance and use the information to retain or let teachers go. This year we’re using flawed tests created by people who are not in classrooms based on standards that have not been sufficiently implemented.

But there’s a bigger problem. The NAEP has generally shown that students do not perform well in math and reading. If you want evidence, take a look at this report by the NAEP on the 2009 test administration. Scroll down to page 9, then look at pages 10 through 14. I’ll wait.

Interesting, yes? It shows that students in almost every state, save Massachusetts, do not perform proficiently on the test. Remember; the NAEP is called “The Nation’s Report Card” because it is given in every state, so it gives us an unsparing look at the differences in each state’s curriculum strength and delivery.

Want more stark proof? I knew that you did. Take a look at the 2013 NAEP Report that graphically shows the remarkable differences between student performance on the NAEP with their performance on their state’s end-of-year evaluation. Scroll yourself down to pages 3 and 4. Those graphs tell you the difference between NAEP scores and state tests scores. In every state but two–NY and MA–there was a gap between how students performed on state tests versus the NAEP.  Isn’t it scary enough to be posted on Halloween? Many states were clearly giving easy tests and skewing the results.

And, no, these numbers are not confined to 2009 and 2013. They are similar in every year the NAEP has been given.You could look it up. And you should, because this has been education’s dirty little secret for too long.

The lesson here? There are many. One is that both the NAEP and the PARCC are difficult tests that hold students accountable to standards that require much more reinforcement over time. The PARCC has not been in existence long enough for us to adequately measure its accuracy. The NAEP has been showing us for years that students across the country are not getting a rigorous enough training in content and skills that a truly educated person should have.

More important is that for years, at least since the No Child Left Behind Act began mandating tests in the early 2000s, most states have been giving easy tests based on easy curricula and calling themselves satisfied with their education systems. This is the main reason why we need the Common Core Standards. They will ensure that students throughout the country be held to the same standards no matter where they live. The political opposition to the Core Curriculum has been centered on federal government involvement in what should be a state concern. The state test scores invalidate that argument. Many of the states have been committing educational fraud. National standards will go a long way towards fixing that.

The president was correct in saying that we are focusing too much on testing, but testing is not going away and it shouldn’t. What we need are tests that measure what students know based on verifiable standards and that ask students to perform evaluative tasks that stretch their brains and their imaginations. We haven’t achieved either of those yet. That will require that classroom educators be intimately involved in the evaluative process. It will happen, but we need the know-nothings to step aside and let the teachers take over this process.

Let’s not waste another generation.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Domestic Policies Education News Politics Wisconsin Union Bashing

Great Teachers Make Great Schools

happy teacher and students standing in classroom holding books

Another school year. It’s my 32nd as a teacher and I can still say that I love what I’m doing and believe that I am contributing to the betterment of society. I just wish that at some point before I go to the Great Faculty Room in the Sky, you know, the one where the microwave works, the carpet doesn’t smell and the walls aren’t made of cinder block, I could feel that society’s attitudes about my work would improve and that the United States would value education as much as it does entertainment, sports and the stock market.

The public’s attitudes on education are on display in this year’s new PDK/Gallup Poll on the Public’s Attitude Toward the Public Schools, and the results are encouraging. Most Americans do not think that standardized tests should be used to evaluate teachers and indeed say that there are too many of these high-stakes tests being administered to children. Most people surveyed also don’t like the Common Core Education Standards, both because they are tied to the tests and because most people don’t think that comparing American students’ scores with other countries is a worthy endeavor.  But more important is the finding that most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say that it’s important that the public schools are adequately funded. 

Which brings us to how important teachers are to the success of the system. You would think that this would be a given and, for the most part, parents in local communities support efforts to bring in excellent teachers and to keep them in their schools. When schools are not fully funded, though, the system begins to break down. In most parts of the American economy, consumers understand that you get what you pay for and that sometimes you need to economize and think short term because of family limitations, emergencies, or good old American low wages.

In education, though, the argument get mangled a bit. Much of the (incorrect) literature suggests that more money doesn’t necessarily translate into better schools. Politicians and a segment of the public like to lean on the idea that teachers don’t go into teaching for the money, using that argument for keeping pay low relative to teachers’ experience and education. They also say that they want the best and brightest to go into teaching,

The insulting thing about this argument is the assumption that the best and brightest are not in teaching to begin with and that we need to attract them to the field. That’s wrong. Most of America’s teachers are smart, engaging, sharp, inquisitive, analytical and effective at what they do. Teaching is an incredibly difficult job to do well and the expectation is that you will do well with each and every one of that year’s students. You want the best and brightest? You’re getting them. It’s now time to make sure that they get the resources and financial recognition they’ve earned. Other countries do it; it’s time we did it too.

What would help is untying education money from property taxes and finding a more secure, and less intrusive, funding source. My idea is for the Congress to impose a 1% tax on all corporate earnings and a 1% income tax increase on the top earners and earmark it specifically for education. After all, who benefits the most economically from America’s great schools? American businesses, that’s who, so it makes sense for the corporate sector to pay more for their lifeblood. This would take the pressure off of middle and working class Americans who struggle with high property taxes and a system of funding that tilts towards the wealthy communities that can support higher valuations.

As we know, poverty is the main cause of educational inequality in this country. If we don’t address it, then we will never solve the problems associated with fewer educational opportunities, fewer students going on to higher education and the wage gap that accompanies it.

What we also really need is for the best and brightest to go into politics and to be part of the solution, not the problem. Most of the Republican candidates favor vouchers, which the Gallup poll shows is not enthusiastically shared by the general public. Governors Christie and Walker are proudly running on their efforts to minimize teacher input regarding educational reforms and are blaming teachers for the economic problems in their states. Neither of them have said anything remotely positive about teaching and, at least in New Jersey, morale among the teachers is abysmally low.

Not that the Obama administration is shying away from standardized tests and No Child Left Behind. Although a major Democratic constituency favors lessening the impact of tests, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with the president’s support, is still doggedly applying the law to the public schools. And supporting Charter Schools.

So what to do? Involve the teachers. Use their expertise. Include them in decision making at the local, state and national levels. Leverage their knowledge. It seems so simple, but for the better part of 20 years, teachers have been methodically excluded from the major educational decisions of the day. This simply doesn’t happen in other industries. Exclude doctors from health care decisions? Attorneys from legal reviews? Never. But somehow the not best and less bright politicians have decided that they know best when it comes to the schools and that teachers are shills for the National Education Association and are not to be trusted. It’s a terrible situation and is threatening to get worse.

Meanwhile, the nation’s teachers will continue to do their level best to educate all children across the country.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Exit mobile version