More on the VAM scam from Diane Ravitch's blog.

KrazyTA Deconstructs VAM and ASA

By dianeravitch

July 26, 2014 //

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Our friend and frequent commenter KrazyTA has analyzed the response of the VAM Gang (Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff) to the American Statistical Association’s pithy demolition of their famous and much praised justification for VAM.
Here is his analysis:
I urge viewers of this blog to read the recent response by Raj Chetty (Harvard University), John Friedman (Harvard University) and Jonah Rockoff (Columbia University) to a statement by the American Statistical Association (ASA) [2014] on VAM.
A pdf file of same (less than five pages hard copy) can be accessed at—
Link: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/ASA_discussion.pdf
The last paragraph of their response to ASA’s point #7 (p. 4):
“The ASA appropriately warns that “ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.” In particular, it is possible that teachers may feel pressured to teach to the test or even cheat if they are evaluated based on VAMs. The empirical magnitude of this problem—and potential solutions if it turns out to be a serious concern—can only be assessed by studying the behavior of teachers in districts that have started to use VAMs.”
Immediately followed by the last paragraph of their response, in full (p. 4):
“In summary, our view is that many of the important concerns about VAM raised by the ASA have been addressed in recent experimental and quasi-experimental studies. Nevertheless, we caution that there are still at least two important concerns that remain in using VAM for the purposes of teacher evaluation. First, using VAM for high-stakes evaluation could lead to unproductive responses such as teaching to the test or cheating; to date, there is insufficient evidence to assess the importance of this concern. Second, other measures of teacher performance, such as principal evaluations, student ratings, or classroom observations, may ultimately prove to be better predictors of teachers’ long-term impacts on students than VAMs. While we have learned much about VAM through statistical research, further work is needed to understand how VAM estimates should (or should not) be combined with other metrics to identify and retain effective teachers.”
My initial reaction.
While they don’t use the term “Campbell’s Law” — IMHO, they are deliberately avoiding it — notice how they take the import and sweep of Campbell’s astute observation and reduce it to “responses such as teaching to the test or cheating” with the added proviso that “there is insufficient evidence to assess the importance of this concern.” *Note that in his testimony during the Vergara trial, Dr. Chetty on p. 547 casually dismissed this challenge to his VAM-based beliefs as “Campbell’s Conjecture.”*
Link: http://www.vergaratrial.com/storage/documents/2014.01.30_Rough_am_session.txt
This is critical. First, they reduce Campbell’s Law to a statement about individual morality and ethics—of the employees no less!—rather than something that involves whole institutions [e.g., the recent VA scandal or the Potemkin Villages of the now-vanished Soviet Union] and is created/mandated/enforced from the top down. Second, by doing so they avoid having to address the destructive effects of Management by the Numbers/Management by Objective/Management by Results, i.e., the very management philosophy of those funding their “research” and leading the charterite/privatization charge. Third, they literally discard the already large amount of evidence proving the accuracy and trustworthiness of Campbell’s Law re VAM [and its fuel/food, standardized test scores] by referring to it as “insufficient” — while their pronouncements, of course, even though they need “further work,” is the current Gold Standard.
So it is hardly surprising that they are hot and heavy for heading off potential problems in data corruption by “studying the behavior of teachers in districts that have started to use VAMs” when what is needed is to independently study, monitor and regulate the behavior of folks like administrators, school boards, heads of CMOs and charter owners/operators, the DOE, and those who employ people like Chetty, Freidman and Rockoff—they’re the ones that set the numerical goals/straightjackets that drive data corruption!
*While W. Edward Deming would come in handy here, someone else thought along the same lines: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” [Charles Goodheart]*
The next is a bit perplexing. Apparently they don’t know how to use google and Amazon to find (among many such works) Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner, COLLATERAL DAMAGE: HOW HIGH-STAKES TESTING CORRUPTS AMERICA’S SCHOOLS (2010, third printing) or Phillip Harris, Bruce M. Smith and Joan Harris, THE MYTHS OF STANDARDIZED TESTING: WHY THEY DON’T TELL YOU WHAT YOU THINK THEY DO (2011). Perhaps they permit themselves no newspapers, internet, or television either, hence testing scandals such as those in Washington, DC and Houston, TX and Atlanta, GA (just to name a few) escaped their notice completely. Also, the above authors and many others, like Audrey Amrein-Beardsley (see her recent RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TESTS AND ASSESSMENT-BASED ACOUNTABILITY, 2014) can be contacted by email. Is it too much to ask of those claiming to be researchers that they take the time and make the effort to, er, get the contact information they need to make sure their research is done properly?
In their response to ASA point #7 they quote the ASA to the effect that “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality” (p. 3). The trio start off as best they can by stating that “The ASA is correct in noting that the majority of variation in student test scores is ‘attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control,’ and that this ‘is not saying that teachers have little effect on students.’” Wait! You can read the rest for yourselves but a fly in the ointment—or the elephant in the room—when you’re in a debate is that when you concede the most critical point you lose the argument.
Since Chetty/Friedman/Rockoff didn’t dispute the 1% to 14% assertion then I would like to point out that I would be awfully interested in knowing why they’re ignoring the other 99% to 86%. Could it be that it’s poses intractable difficulties to their VAManiacal beliefs?
My very last point. Chetty/Friedman/Rockoff don’t understand that even under the most favorable circumstances, high-stakes standardized testing measures very little, is inherently imprecise, and is used for purposes so inappropriate to its few strengths that it needs to be junked. Take out of the Chetty/Friedman/Rockoff response those terms referring to “test scores” and the like and, well, the whole thing falls apart. Those “vain and illusory” [thank you, Duane Swacker!] numbers/stats are the glue that holds VAM together, the fuel that keeps VAM moving ahead, the food that sustains its very existence.
The Golem of VAM reverts to its inert form when you remove the magic of Testolatry.
Perhaps they should have taken that class in ancient Greece rather than Bean Counting For $tudent $ucce$$—
“I have often repented of speaking, but never of holding my tongue.” [Xenocrates]
Or if you prefer another very old, very dead and very Greek guy:
“Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.” [Homer]
Take your pick. Odds are you won’t go wrong. [a numbers/stats joke…]
😎
P.S. I leave it to readers of this blog to read the triad’s response and make their own judgments and comments.

Read it and weep...then get angry and do something.

Reclaim Reform

by Ken Previti

 

David Sirota, you and me…

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Ken Previti

David Sirota exposes yet another major rip-off of teachers – active and retired. The political leadership of both major political parties, the elected officials, and the corporate thieves who control major media outlets lie and propagandize about these rip-offs.
“As states and cities grapple with budget shortfalls, many are betting big on an unproven formula: Slash public employee pension benefits and public services while diverting the savings into lucrative subsidies for professional sports teams.”
So begins Sirota’s latest investigative article.
Illinois, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey, Arizona, and Maryland are all used as examples in Sirota’s article, yet many other state legislatures are following this same pattern of theft.
Active teachers pay a percentage of their salaries into pensions systems that are predicted to fail – predicted by the same legislators who both mandate teacher pension payments by teachers and their local school districts in addition to 401k “savings” and redistribute these mandated savings into the pockets of corporate thieves who contribute to the re-election of the legislators. Before the same legislators legalized this process with the help of the courts, it was called corruption. Now it is merely a “public-private partnership” that sells America one student, one teacher, one pension, one contract, one school, one special sales tax dollar, one high stakes test, and one soul at a time.

The misused and diverted earned income of active teachers is wage theft. Retired teachers watch as their earned income, pensions, is erroneously blamed for the crippling of America’s economy. So, as Sirota publishes his findings, the corporate media publishes greedy-teacher pension scapegoating propaganda as truth.
“The state has a total of $175.7 billion in unpaid pension and state debts it cannot pay. If that had to be paid today, every Illinois taxpayer would have to fork over $43,000.”
- The Chicago Sun Times paraphrases a self proclaimed non-partisan think tank.
Let’s read that again with my emphasis that emphasizes the method of propaganda.
“The state has a total of $175.7 billion in unpaid pension and state debts it cannot pay. If that had to be paid today, every Illinois taxpayer would have to fork over $43,000.”
What other state debts? If what had to be paid in one day? Why would a state pay all its forecast payments immediately as one big, lump sum? Propaganda as fair and balanced news? Nonsense. Repeated nonsense by major media outlets becomes believed propaganda.
The stock market is at an all time high. In many states, over 70% of corporations pay no taxes. American CEO income is also at an all time high. American companies who relocate overseas are paid subsidies from America’s tax base to leave the country.
The wealthiest country in the world is selling itself away because of unnecessary austerity measures that are not called austerity. Taxes are supposed to be used for the public good – not as unearned payoffs to the immensely wealthy.
Let’s call it non-partisan corruption and redistribution of earned income to insanely wealthy corporate thieves who have no moral compass.
This is yet another way to wage war against public education. What capable young adult would choose to make teaching a lifelong career, a career that assures teachers will be victims of wage theft and guarantees a retirement into poverty?
This war must be won by teachers, or the quality of education will be lost.
-
—–

Thar's gold in them thar classrooms!

An in-depth look at how the money in public education is irresistible to those for whom money is everything........ from Capitalandmain.com

Bonanza! Silicon Valley Sees Gold in Corporate-Driven School Reforms

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By Bill Raden and Gary Cohn

July 17, 2014 in California Expose

When Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu struck down the tenure rights of the state’s public school teachers last month in Vergara v. California, his decision was hailed by Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., lead attorney for the plaintiffs, as “a terrific, wonderful day for California students and for the California education system.”
The lawsuit, which had been brought on behalf of nine California schoolchildren, argued that the retention of “grossly ineffective” teachers through five due-process statutes violated the students’ civil rights.

Vergara lawsuit backer David Welch

The suit and its accompanying public relations blitz had been bought and paid for by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch under the umbrella of Students Matter, Welch’s personal Menlo Park education reform nonprofit. Welch made his fortune designing large-capacity fiber optic transmission systems for the global service-provider market.
“I have not devoted my career to education policy,” Welch admitted when launching the  Vergara campaign last summer, “but I do believe I’m an expert on what you need in an environment to get the most out of people.”
Welch’s obsession with restructuring public education hardly marks him as an outlier among Silicon Valley tycoons. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, sits on the boards of Microsoft, KIPP and CalCharters (the California Charter School Association), and is a founding funder of Green Dot and a co-founder of NewSchools.org, Aspire Public Schools and EdVoice.net. Hastings summed up his vision for transforming education last March, when the newly minted billionaire called for the end of locally elected school boards and announced a goal of moving 90 percent of America’s public school kids into charter schools over the next 30 years. That’s a tall order, especially in light of a 2009 Stanford University study showing that when averaged across all schools, the impact of attending a charter has a slight — but statistically significant — negative impact on both math and reading gains.

Netflix’s Reed Hastings

Judge Treu’s decision not only marked a significant legal victory against teachers and their unions. It was also an important public affirmation for Welch, Hastings and other well-heeled Silicon Valleyites and their revisionist narrative of progressive public education. By placing the blame on teachers for poor student outcomes, the Vergara ruling ignored decades of research establishing families’ socioeconomic background as the predominant factor affecting how children perform in school — research that also singles out small class size and experienced teachers as being directly beneficial to learning.
The reasons why tech titans like Welch and Hastings have decided that they know how public education can best be “fixed,” and why they are backing those hunches with big money, have been a matter of some speculation. In celebrating Vergara’s nullification of public school teacher job protections, however, Los Angeles schools superintendent John Deasy may have inadvertently dropped a clue when he declared, “Every day that these laws remain in effect represent an opportunity denied.”
The precise nature of that opportunity was immediately grasped by those who stand to gain the most from Vergara. In an ecstatic, post-verdict op-ed piece published on TechCrunch, the online news site that serves Silicon Valley’s tech-startup community, writer Danny Crichton gloated over what he described as “a key opening for startups to begin thinking about grade school in a post-tenure world” now that teachers were out of the way.
When they speak to the general media, Silicon Valley ed reformers sound much like Welch, talking altruistically about the underserved and the right of the state’s children to a quality education. But when they speak to each other they are more apt to talk in the language of money – that is, about the potential gold rush represented by the $638 billion spent on K-12 education between 2009 and 2010 by American taxpayers.
The stakes are high. For Silicon Valley venture capitalists and “ed tech” prospectors, mining the high-grade ore of the U.S. public education market is only the beginning, a test bed to develop a tech-based education model capable of tapping the real mother lode  — the emerging middle classes of China, India and Africa. That’s a global ed tech market, estimates venture capitalist Jon Sakoda of New Enterprise Associates, currently worth $4-6 trillion.
Ground zero for this ed tech bonanza may well be Oakland’s NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit venture capital fund known for its financing of both ed tech startups and charter school management organizations (CMOs), including Aspire Public Schools, KIPP and Redwood City-based Rocketship Education. The fund has drawn money from high-profile foundations created by Eli Broad, Bill Gates and the Walton family, as well as from Welch’s own David & Heidi Welch Foundation and Reed Hastings’ Hastings/Quillin Fund.

Rocketship co-founder John Danner

In its 2012 annual report, NewSchools speaks of its mission as investing “in education entrepreneurs who can transform public education in America.” What that murky intersection of entrepreneurship and altruism looks like in action might best be exemplified by Rocketship Education. The smart money began pouring into “blended learning” charters — whose classroom time is split between traditional teachers and online learning — earlier this century. By the late aughts, blended learning’s rising star was the K-5 Rocketship Education.
Co-founded in 2006 by online ad-surfing mogul John Danner, Rocketship quickly rose to national prominence by claiming stellar test scores from poor and immigrant students in San Jose through its near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and a model that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day. Danner also announced aggressive plans to expand Rocketship into a national online school district with an ambitious goal of enrolling one million students in 50 cities — rivaling New York City’s public school system, the nation’s largest. (Rocketship did not respond to requests for comments for this article.)
Reed Hastings was impressed enough with Rocketship to put his money down on both the nonprofit and on the for-profit ed tech company, DreamBox Learning, which supplies Rocketship’s computer labs with their “adaptive learning” math games.
Brett Bymaster is a Silicon Valley electrical engineer who, through his website Stop Rocketship Education Now!, has been fighting Rocketship’s planned 30-school expansion into San Jose’s low-income neighborhoods.
“One of the things that’s going on behind the scenes,” Bymaster explains, “is that it’s getting harder and harder to get [new] big-growth businesses in Silicon Valley. It’s getting harder and harder to get the big wins that [investors] need. And [these] people are starting to look towards [public] education, because there’s a tremendous amount of money to made in education, but it’s all locked up in teachers. The districts are spending 85 percent of their budget on teachers.”
According to Bymaster, the big secret to making charters profitable is reducing teacher costs. “If you’re going to break that market open,” he says, “you have to run a high student-teacher ratio. And so if you look at the Rocketship model, it’s completely built around this 40-to-one student-teacher ratio. And they want to increase it. They wanted to take it to 50-to-one. The ugly side of that is that it’s really clear that these high student-teacher ratio models are not good for kids.”

Rocketship CEO Preston Smith

Alicia Serrano was a San Jose Unified School District veteran when Rocketship co-founder (and now CEO) Preston Smith recruited her as a first grade math teacher for Rocketship #1 for the 2007-08 school year.
“This was something that was full of innovation,” Serrano recalls. “It was different. It was thinking outside of the box and it was exciting to be a part of that.”
Her excitement was short-lived. By the following year, as Danner put his expansion plans into overdrive, what began as a modest laboratory for innovation had changed.
“It started becoming a monster that I could not connect with on a personal or professional level,” says Serrano. “And I started to see things that just did not square with who I am as a person and what is right for children.”
What Serrano found was that Rocketship’s rigidly test-focused culture had eliminated the “human part” of education.
“Preston or the principals,” says Serrano, “would stop kids randomly [and ask] ‘What’s your test score? What did you get on test? What did you get on your benchmark test?’ Instead of connecting with the child in terms of, ‘What did you do yesterday when you got home from school?” or ‘What sports do you like to play?’ or ‘What do you do with your family on Sunday afternoon?’ or any other question to get to know kids. It was all about the number. It was all about the test score.”
The pressure to produce scores was felt by both students and teachers, whose salaries are directly tied to test scores. “I would see so many young teachers,” Serrano remembers, “even some that were TFA [Teach for America] teachers — and this was their second year — that were just crying in their classrooms. It wasn’t a happy place.”
Those indications that the Rocketship edifice might be unsound were confirmed last month when Smith announced that due to plummeting test scores, Rocketship would be scaling back its expansion. “We didn’t deliver,” the CEO admitted.
John Danner had already jumped Rocketship last year to devote himself full-time to his latest venture, which this time sidesteps teachers entirely — a smartphone ed-app startup based in Palo Alto called Zeal, which Danner’s Twitter site describes as “putting school on a phone.”
But if blended learning suffered a black eye, Bymaster cautions that the model of pairing large-scale CMO nonprofits with the for-profit companies that supply them with their education software and lease them their classrooms is not about to go away.
“People need to understand,” he says, “that there’s tons of money in nonprofits, first of all. Second, nonprofits can kind of become containers for for-profit organizations . . . and a lot of that is tax money going into rich people’s pockets.”

California Public Education David Welch Rocketship Education Students Matter Vergara v. California 2014-07-17

Bill Raden and Gary Cohn

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Tags: California Public Education David Welch Rocketship Education Students Matter Vergara v. California

(Bill Raden is a freelance Los Angeles writer. Gary Cohn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has worked for the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Read more articles by Bill Raden and Gary Cohn

         

Why you should be against the Common Core...............

IN this article from Psychology Today, one of the developers of the Common Core standards articulates what teachers have been saying all along... except for a very few extremely gifted students, the Common Core standards are totally inappropriate.

Child Development Central

Practical, evidence-based information for parents and professionals.

by Mark Bertin, MD

When Will We Ever Learn

Dissecting The Common Core State Standards with Dr. Louisa Moats

Published on January 21, 2014 by Mark Bertin, M.D. in Child Development Central

Dr. Louisa Moats, the nationally-renowned teacher, psychologist, researcher and author, was one of the contributing writers of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The CCSS initiative is an attempt to deal with inconsistent academic expectations from state-to-state and an increasing number of inadequately prepared high school graduates by setting high, consistent standards for grades K-12 in English language arts and math. To date, forty-five states have adopted the standards. I recently had the opportunity to discuss the implementation of the CCSS with Dr. Moats.
Dr. Bertin:   What was your involvement in the development of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)?
Dr. Moats:   Marilyn Adams and I were the team of writers, recruited in 2009 by David Coleman and Sue Pimentel, who drafted the Foundational Reading Skills section of the CCSS and closely reviewed the whole ELA (English Language Arts) section for K-5. We drafted sections on Language and Writing Foundations that were not incorporated into the document as originally drafted. I am the author of the Reading Foundational Skills section of Appendix A.

       

Dr. Bertin:   What did you see as potential benefits of establishing the CCSS when you first became involved?
Dr. Moats:  I saw the confusing inconsistencies among states’ standards, the lowering of standards overall, and the poor results for our high school kids in international comparisons. I also believed that the solid consensus in reading intervention research could be reflected in standards and that we could use the CCSS to promote better instruction for kids at risk.
Dr. Bertin:  What has actually happened in its implementation?
Dr. Moats:  I never imagined when we were drafting standards in 2010 that major financial support would be funneled immediately into the development of standards-related tests. How naïve I was. The CCSS represent lofty aspirational goals for students aiming for four year, highly selective colleges. Realistically, at least half, if not the majority, of students are not going to meet those standards as written, although the students deserve to be well prepared for career and work through meaningful and rigorous education.
Our lofty standards are appropriate for the most academically able, but what are we going to do for the huge numbers of kids that are going to “fail” the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test?  We need to create a wide range of educational choices and pathways to high school graduation, employment, and citizenship. The Europeans got this right a long time ago.
If I could take all the money going to the testing companies and reinvest it, I’d focus on the teaching profession – recruitment, pay, work conditions, rigorous and on-going training. Many of our teachers are not qualified or prepared to teach the standards we have written. It doesn’t make sense to ask kids to achieve standards that their teachers have not achieved!
Dr. Bertin:   What differences might there be for younger students versus older students encountering it for the first time?
Dr. Moats:   What is good for older students (e.g., the emphasis on text complexity, comprehension of difficult text, written composition, use of internet resources) is not necessarily good for younger students who need to acquire the basic skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Novice readers (typically through grade 3) need a stronger emphasis on the foundational skills of reading, language, and writing than on the “higher level” academic activities that depend on those foundations, until they are fluent readers.
Our CCSS guidelines, conferences, publishers’ materials, and books have turned away from critical, research-based methodologies on how to develop the basic underlying skills of literacy. Systematic, cumulative skill development and code-emphasis instruction is getting short shrift all around, even though we have consensus reports from the 1920’s onward that show it is more effective than comprehension-focused instruction.
I’m listening, but I don’t hear the words “research based” as often as I did a decade ago – and when CCSS proponents use the words, they’re usually referring to the research showing that high school kids who can’t read complex text don’t do as well in college. Basic findings of reading and literacy research, information about individual differences in reading and language ability, and explicit teaching procedures are really being lost in this shuffle.
Dr. Bertin:  What benefits have you seen or heard about so far as the CCSS has been put in place, and what difficulties?
Dr. Moats:   The standards may drive the adoption or use of more challenging and complex texts for kids to read and a wider sampling of genres. If handled right, there could be a resurgence of meaty curriculum of the “core knowledge” variety. There may be more emphasis on purposeful, teacher-directed writing. But we were making great inroads into beginning reading assessment and instruction practices between 2000-2008 that now are being cast aside in favor of “reading aloud from complex text” – which is not the same as teaching kids how to read on their own, accurately and fluently.
Dr.  Bertin:  What has the impact been on classroom teachers?
Dr. Moats:  Classroom teachers are confused, lacking in training and skills to implement the standards, overstressed, and the victims of misinformed directives from administrators who are not well grounded in reading research.  I’m beginning to get messages from very frustrated educators who threw out what was working in favor of a new “CCSS aligned” program, and now find that they don’t have the tools to teach kids how to read and write. Teachers are told to use “grade level” texts, for example; if half the kids are below grade level by definition, what does the teacher do? She has to decide whether to teach “the standard” or teach the kids.
Dr. Bertin:  You’ve raised concerns elsewhere that CCSS represents a compromise that does not emphasize educational research.  How do the CCSS reflect, or fail to reflect, research in reading instruction?
Dr.  Moats:   The standards obscure the critical causal relationships among components, chiefly the foundational skills and the higher level skills of comprehension that depend on fluent, accurate reading.  Foundations should be first!  The categories of the standards obscure the interdependence of decoding, spelling, and knowledge of language. The standards contain no explicit information about foundational writing skills, which are hidden in sections other than “writing”, but which are critical for competence in composition.
The standards treat the foundational language, reading, and writing skills as if they should take minimal time to teach and as if they are relatively easy to teach and to learn. They are not. The standards call for raising the difficulty of text, but many students cannot read at or above grade level, and therefore may not receive enough practice at levels that will build their fluency gradually over time.
Dr. Bertin:  How about recommendations for writing?
Dr. Moats:   We need a foundational writing skills section in the CCSS, with a much more detailed progression. We should not be requiring 3^rd graders to compose on the computer. Writing in response to reading is a valuable activity, but teachers need a lot of assistance knowing what to assign, how to support writing, and how to give corrective feedback that is constructive.  Very few know how to teach kids to write a sentence, for example.
Dr. Bertin:   In an article for the International Dyslexia Association, you wrote “raising standards and expectations, without sufficient attention to known cause and remedies for reading and academic failure, and without a substantial influx of new resources to educate and support teachers, is not likely to benefit students with mild, moderate, or severe learning difficulties.”   You also mention that 34% of the population as a whole is behind academically in fourth grade, and in high poverty areas 70-80% of students are at risk for reading failure.
How does the CCSS impact children who turn out to need additional academic supports for learning disabilities, ADHD or other educational concerns?
Dr. Moats:   I have not yet seen a well-informed policy directive that addresses the needs of these populations. There are absurd directives about “universal design for learning” and endless accommodations, like reading a test aloud, to kids with learning disabilities. Why would we want to do that? The test itself is inappropriate for many kids.
Dr. Bertin:   How does it relate to concerns you have about teacher training in general?
Dr. Moats:   What little time there is for professional development is being taken up by poorly designed workshops on teaching comprehension of difficult text or getting kids to compose arguments and essays. This will not be good for the kids who need a systematic, explicit form of instruction to reach basic levels of academic competence.
I’ve been around a long time, and this feels like 1987 all over again, with different words attached to the same problems. When will we ever learn?
*             *             *
In addition to the LETRS professional development series, Dr. Moats’ books include Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers (Brookes Publishing); Spelling: Development, Disability, and Instruction (Pro-Ed); Straight Talk About Reading (with Susan Hall, Contemporary Books), and Basic Facts about Dyslexia.  Dr. Moats’ awards include the prestigious Samuel T. and June L. Orton award, in 2013, from the International Dyslexia Association, for outstanding contributions to the field.

An NEA Identity Crisis, thank you very much.

The NEA has been conspicuously absent from most of the news that I follow, and OEA seems more interested in providing discount tickets to sporting events than addressing real issues. What can I say? Curmudgucation: read it.

CURMUDGUCATION

A grumpy old teacher trying to keep up the good classroom fight in the new age of reformy stuff.

 

 

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Van Roekel Gets Feisty-ish

It has been a noisy week for NEA president Dennis van Roekel. In the face of a great deal of anti-teacher rhetoric (some if it coming from a sitting judge in a major court case), DVR has decided that it's time to finally speak up on behalf of teachers.

First, he opened up in HuffPo, declaring that our accountability system is flunking. He wrote, in part:

The idea that everything will be better if we test students and just "hold teachers accountable" for results is unfair to our students and insulting to those of us who devote our lives to educating kids.

This is right on point, and even though he's at least a year late, at least he finally said it. But like Randi Weingarten and Linda Darling-Hammond, whose lead he appears to be following here, he writes about the high stakes testing as if it is occurring in some sort of vacuum and not as a linked and logically predictable outcome of the Common Core Gates Standards.

He compares the current system to applying for a bank loan and--wait! what? Literally thousands of metaphors have been put out there for this process, but DVR has chosen a terrible one. Our evaluations are like loans given to us by banks? Teaching is like asking someone to give you money that isn't really yours and that you have to prove you deserve?Which you have to pay back with interest?

And he calls for full-system accountability, accountability for politicians and bureaucrats. Accountability that "emphasizes improving professional practice and advancing student learning." Put that together with an earlier quote from the piece: "There are ways that do improve student success, and they involve better preparation for teachers, better support in the classroom, and ensuring that all students have access to qualified teachers and great schools." Oh, look! DVR is testifying for the Vergara plaintiffs!

I get that it's a clever technique to appropriate the language of your opponents. Hell, the reformsters have been kicking our collective ass using that technique. But you have to make clear, at least to your own people, how it means something different when you say it. When DVR says he favors measures of "advancing student learning," I don't know if he means "we need meaningful measures of student growth" or "let's have more VAM!" Ultimately, he doesn't say anything, call for anything specific (like, say, actual teacher involvement) that would cause Arne Duncan or That Woman the slightest disagreement.

Then later in the week, DVR stepped up and actually addressed his members. Specifically, he was addressing the full page USA Today attack ad (everything you need to know about the ad is covered here by Mercedes Schneider, other than saying that this is the sort of thing that leads teachers to conclude that a "mutual cease-fire" is a silly thing to discuss).

DVR opens with a compelling juxtaposition-- an ad comparing students and teachers to garbage coming to his attention while he was dedicating a memorial to teachers who died trying to protect their students. He tells us he's angry-- angry about a system that is misfocused and dominated by corporate interests. And then he addresses the reformsters directly. And this part is good. Really good:

I have a message for those people who would seek to reduce children to a test score and teaching to a technological transaction. 
You are mistaken if you think we will see your attacks and get discouraged, that we will read the headlines and give up.
You may put students in the name of your campaigns but that doesn’t mean you really care about the millions of children in our public schools.
If you did truly care, you would look at the more than half of public-school children who live in poverty and wage your crusades against the inequity in our economy.
If you truly cared, you would look at the deteriorating conditions in schools across this country and aim your fire at politicians who have starved our schools of the resources to succeed and then punished them for their failures.

Sadly, DVR does not stick the landing for the whole speech:


I will continue to fight for them, and for the educators across this country who dedicate themselves to fulfilling the promise of another generation of students.

This would be more compelling if-- well, you cannot "continue" doing something that you have not to date actually done. And while I'm being critical, I recommend you read the text and not watch the video. DVR's "I'm very angry" looks a lot like "I should have not eaten the rest of that garlic hummus."

Look, I'm still pissed at him. I'll admit it. I have not forgiven him for last summer's "Well, if you don't like CCSS, then what do you want to do instead." It was a horrible thing for the head of the NEA to say, embracing the assumption that America's teachers suck and need to be guided out of the vast swamp of suck in which they've gotten lost. Or his prolonged silence-- remember when he criticized the rollout of CCSS, then took it back immediately, then shut up about it entirely until now? So while I appreciate his defense of us now, I'm having a hard time getting past "Where the hell have you been, Dennis?"

But beyond that, DVR still doesn't grasp how complicit in the reformster mess he is, how his support of the Core has fueled much of what he now rails against. When they say we stink, they are saying the proof is that our students do poorly on the high stakes tests that are set up to prove we're teaching the Core. It is hard for DVR to convincingly protest the measuring when he's one of the people who promoted the ruler in the first place.

So I appreciate his jumping in now that we've had a week of severe clobbering. But I'm not going to get excited about it until A) he recognizes and apologizes for his role in creating this atmosphere in the first place and B) he repudiates the whole mess, Core and all. What a great gesture if the NEA gave back the $3.00 it collected from all of us to help promote CCSS (like buying bullets for our own executioners).  I will settle for somebody getting a clue to his most-likely already-selected successor.

What you need to know about that nasty ad in USA Today.

That Full-page Union-bashing Ad in USA Today

June 12, 2014

Remember that five-story billboard in Times Square in December 2013 and the accompanying full-page ad in the New York Times blaming American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten for 2012 US PISA scores?
Both were the work of a union-busting “nonprofit,” the deceptively-named Center for Union Facts.
Well, on June 12, 2014, the same union-busting group posted this full-page ad celebrating the teacher tenure mis-ruling in California’s Vergara trial:



The Vergara trial amounts to nothing more than well-funded privatizers attempting to strip teachers of due porcess rights. Here is a summation of the case as posted by education historian Diane Ravitch:
The plaintiffs argued that poor and minority children suffered because they had ineffective teachers who could not be fired. Lawyers for the teachers unions maintained that the causes of low performance were poverty and inadequate school funding. The plaintiffs prevailed and promised to take their cause to other states with strong teacher job protections, like New Jersey and New York.
There will be appeals, and the battle will spread to other states. As due process is removed, it seems to be replaced by evaluations of “effectiveness” based on test scores.
The long-range question is whether the “reformers’” efforts to remove all job protections from teachers will affect the number of people who choose teaching as a career and how they will affect the nature of the profession over time.
For an excellent detailing of the Vergara trial, the decision, and varied responses, follow this link to Ravitch’s blog.

Teacher tenure” is due process, not a lifetime job guarantee.
This brings us back to that full-page USA Today ad bashing unions and encouraging the public to sue “to protect kids.”
Ironically, not only were none of the plaintiffs’ teachers documented as “ineffective”; some of these plaintiffs did not even attend schools where teachers had due process at all. As Ravitch notes:
I was curious to learn whether the plaintiffs in the Vergara trial actually had “grossly ineffective teachers.” The answer is “no, they did not.”
Not only did none of them have a “grossly ineffective” teacher, but some of the plaintiffs attended schools where there are no tenured teachers. Two of the plaintiffs attend charter schools, where there is no tenure or seniority, and as you will read below, “Beatriz and Elizabeth Vergara both attend a “Pilot School” in LAUSD that is free to let teachers go at the end of the school year for any reason, including ineffectiveness.
It turns out that the lawyers for the defense checked the records of the plaintiffs’ teachers, and this is what they found (filed as a post-trial brief in the case): (See pp. 5-6).
“Plaintiffs have not established that the statutes have ever caused them any harm or are likely to do so in the future. None of the nine named Plaintiffs established that he or she was assigned to an allegedly grossly ineffective teacher, or that he or she faces any immediate risk of future harm, as a result of the challenged statutes. The record contains no evidence that Plaintiffs Elliott, Liss, Campbell or Martinez were ever assigned a grossly ineffective teacher at all. Of the remaining five Plaintiffs, most of the teachers whom they identified as “bad” or “grossly ineffective” were excellent teachers. [Emphasis added.]
Wow.
Of course, union-bashing Center for Union Facts had to kick the teaching profession when it was down by encouraging the spread of this utter absence of justice to other states.
But who is behind the so-called Center for Union Facts?
Rick Berman, and does he have a self-serving story. Here is a detailed excerpt I wrote as part of this December 2013 post:

CUF is a front for union bashing. This is what CUF does. CUF is not concerned “with” education; CUF is concerned “against” teachers unions. So, the issues it pretends to raise in its ads (not only in newspapers, but also on radio) are done in order to undermine collective bargaining.
Unions are certainly not the sole Berman target. Berman uses his front groups to attack anyone who stands in the way of his mystery funders’ profits.
Berman serves corporate America in shady fashion. Allow me to offer some Sourcewatch highlights:
Although Berman used to fly under the media radar, by now he is well-known and widely regarded as an industry shill, having been the subject of a 60 Minutespiece in 2007that dubbed him “Dr. Evil,” a public takedown on the Rachel Maddow Show, and years of research documenting his close ties to industries looking for a well paid hired gun to defend the indefensible. He has attacked respected scientists and scholars, food safety experts, and even Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).
Despite this documented lack of credibility, Berman continues to work through a variety of research-for-hire front groups to remain relevant by creating a façade of academic respectability for extreme policies that many mainstream companies, scientists, and voters have rejected.
Berman has raised millions of dollars from companies, trade associations and individuals, but refuses to name them. According to the National Journal, the Employment Policies Institute was started “by a group of restaurant companies” that at the time (1995) got “95% of its budget from corporate sources—primarily restaurateurs and retailers.” Several years ago an unnamed former Berman employee revealed a list of Berman’s 2001-2002 corporate funders, including Coca-Cola, Cargill, Monsanto, Tyson Foods, Wendy’s, Outback Steakhouse and Applebee’s.
“We always have a knife in our teeth,” Berman has said, and his approach is “to shoot the messenger.” Restaurant industry spokespeople have praised his “outstanding work as an industry Doberman.” 60 Minutes called him “the booze and food industries’ weapon of mass destruction.”  …
Rick Berman conceived the idea of theGuest Choice Network, a front group to help advance the goals of Philip Morris‘ Accommodation Program while appearing to be more of a grass-roots-led effort. …
Berman is also counsel for the American Beverage Institute, which also fronts for the tobacco industry. …
Berman formed a group called Beverage Retailers Against Drunk Driving” (BRADD), a pro-social drinking group, in response to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). …
For several years, Berman has been fighting efforts by the voter registration/community organizing group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal levels. To assist with his efforts, Berman created a Web site,http://www.rottenacorn.com, slamming the group. Contact information on RottenACORN.com directs readers to theEmployment Policies Institute,^[23]a Bermanfront groupwhich shares the same address as Berman’s lobbying business, Berman & Company. ^…
As head of theCenter for Consumer Freedom(CCF), afront groupfor the restaurant, tobacco, and alcohol industries, Berman has specialized in the no-holds-barred intimidation tactics pioneered by Big Tobacco. …
In an October 9, 1989 commentary for Nation’s Restaurant News, Berman opposed the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act(“ADA”). He wrote, “The ADA in its present form will cost our industry untold millions in added construction and labor costs.”  [Emphasis added.]
So, this is the kind of ‘work” for which Berman is known.
The real story is on Berman’s nonprofit tax returns.

Berman Nonprofits Paying Berman

 In the last several months, I have read at least 100 nonprofit tax returns. Nothing I have seen equals what I am about to write for its obviousness in corporate profits being funneled through nonprofits.
This is the 2011 990 for Berman’s CUF. Berman is listed as CUF’s president and executive director.
In 2011, CUF’s total revenue was $3.24 million.
In 2011, CUF’s highest paid “independent contractor” was Richard Berman and Company, Inc., to the tune of $870,182.
This is the 2011 990 for Berman’s American Beverage Institute (ABI). Berman is listed as president and general counsel-director.
In 2011, ABI’s total revenue was $1.76 million.
In 2011, ABI’s only “independent contractor” was Richard Berman and Company, Inc., to the tune of $1.35 million.
This is the 2011 990 for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). Berman is listed as president and executive director.
In 2011, CCF’s total revenue was $1.4 million.
In 2011, CCF’s highest paid “independent contractor” was Richard Berman and Company, Inc., to the tune of $1.3 million.
This is the 2011 990 for Berman’s Employment Policies Institute Foundation (EPIF). Berman is listed as president and executive director.
In 2011, EPIF’s total revenue was $1.6 million.
In 2011, EPIF’s highest paid “independent contractor” was Richard Berman and Company, Inc., to the tune of $1.1 million.
There is a fifth nonprofit that Berman runs, the Enterprise Freedom Action Committee (aka the Employment Freedom Action Committee) (EFAC). It is listed as the co-sponsor with CUF of the Labor Pains blog used to blast both Weingarten and now Ravitch (in defense of Weingarten).
EFAC’s 990 notes that EFAC “advocate[s] on behalf of employee choice in the workplace, in particular related to issues of union organizing, job growth and health care options.”
EFAC was quiet in 2011. According to its 2011 990, it produced only $322 in revenue. However, EFAC’s total revenue for 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined was $20.3 million, with most of it ($16 million) paid to Orion Precision Marketing Research (CT) for “media brokerage.”
Despite its virtually nonexistent revenue in 2011, Berman still managed to use EFAC to transfer nonprofit funds into his for-profit.
As the Charity Navigator notes,
During our analysis of this charity’s FYE 2011 Form 990, the document revealed that more than half of Enterprise Freedom Action Committee’s functional expenses were paid to its CEO Richard Berman’s for-profit management company, Berman and Company.  The document revealed that, out of total expenses of $136,000, $82,000 were paid to Berman and Company. See relevant pages from the organization’s 2011 Form 990 filing via PDF files “EFACpage10” and “EFACscheduleLpage2” for  more information. 
We find the practice of a charity contracting for management services with a business owned by that charity’s CEO atypical as compared to how other charities operate and have therefore issued this Donor Advisory.
Affiliated nonprofits also have Donor Advisories including: Center for Consumer Freedom, American Beverage Institute, Employment Policies Institute Foundation and the Center for Union Facts.  [Emphasis added.]
If Berman (aka CUF, ABI, CCF, EPIF and EFAC) thinks that his accusing Weingarten and, in turn, Ravitch absolves him of his own “elephant,” he either has had a partial lobotamy or believes that the American public has had one.
Berman is hooking for corporate. Evidently it pays quite well.

Berman does not care for children. He serves himself by way of the corporate interests who pay him.
For Berman and the misnamed Center for Union Facts, the Vergara verdict is a convenience to be used. And buying full-page ads is nothing new for him.
_______________________________________________________________

Like my writing? Read my newly-released ed “reform” whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education

NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE.

Governor Kasich is really beginning to piss me off! Actually, it's been that way for quite a long time, but it's becoming really egregious lately, and here's the latest piece of excrement...... as reported by Plunderbund.

New Kasich School Board Appointee Thinks Kids Should Be Taught Creationism

By Joseph On June 13, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Governor John Kasich appointed Republican Cathye Smith Flory from Hocking County to the State School Board yesterday, filling the seat left open when Darryl Mehaffie resigned last week.
Flory previously served 12 years  on the Logan-Hocking Board of Education.
In a 2005 Meet the Candidates Night, Flory was one of two Logan-Hocking school board candidates who wanted Creationism should be taught alongside actual science in public schools.
According to an article on LoganDaily.com, Flory and another candidate agreed that “children should be taught the various theories and decide for themselves what is right for them.”   
Today, class, we will be watching another episode of Cosmos and discussing the Earth’s place in the Universe.  Tomorrow we will discuss the possibility that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.   And remember, Friday is the last day to bring in your dioramas of humans riding on dinosaurs.