Priorities

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Won't Back Down - Infomercial

Yesterday, in 2012 Medley #18, I had a section about Won't Back Down, the movie which claims to be "based on something true." Of course, we know that it's actually based on nothing but the dreams of the corporate charter industry.

There hasn't been a parent trigger-based transfer of a school from public control to corporate charter control. There shouldn't be either, because, as much as "reformers" may want you to believe it, parents don't own public schools. The public owns public schools and a group of citizens, no matter how involved they are in a public institution, shouldn't have the right to sell that institution to a private enterprise. A little league group, for example, can't sell the public park in which they play simply because they use the park. I believe parents should be closely involved in their children's education, but that's not what the parent trigger laws provide for.

In yesterday's blog post I referenced a few locations which dealt with the new movie, Won't Back Down.

• Why do Teachers Unions Hate America? (hint: they don't!)
• "Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal
• Educate Maggie from the New Yorkers for Great Public Schools and their Youtube video, "EDUCATING MAGGIE" | The Real Parents #WontBackDown Against #ALEC | ***UPDATE***

There's more, though. As the movie begins to settle in as this week's main topic on the edublogosphere, more and more information and commentary is being produced.

REACTION

This morning, for example, Anthony Cody posted Reaction to "Won't Back Down" Shows Critics Have Learned Something which compares the reaction to Won't Back Down to the reaction to Waiting for Superman.

Reviewers were mostly favorable towards "Waiting For Superman." The web site Rotten Tomatoes aggregates reviews, and also collects feedback from ordinary folks who have seen the movies. "Waiting For Superman" got an overall rating of 89%, with an audience score that was 84% positive.

Flash forward two years, and witness the release this month of "Won't Back Down," another movie heavily financed and promoted by education "reformers," with a similar message that teacher unions are obstacles to school improvement. This time the reaction has been decidedly different. The Rotten Tomatoes site indicates a reviewer score of only 35% so far, in spite of efforts by staffers at Students First to boost the score.

Both movies are "reformer" propaganda focusing on the evils of teachers unions, the failure of public education and the need to fire "bad teachers." Waiting for Superman was a documentary which failed in this task, so the moneybags funding "education reform" decided a heart-pumping, good vs. evil, moms-beat-the-system, fictional movie might work better.

Many reviewers are taking issue with the use of an emotionally loaded story to push a particular political agenda, one which demonizes teacher unions and promotes charter* schools. But the movie is provoking some deeper discussions as well. Many reviewers are pointing out the source of funding for the film, and the strong political agenda that comes with it.

The Chamber of Commerce is seeking to gain access to the $500 billion spent on education each year for profit-making corporations. They characterize our system of democratically controlled, community-based public education as some sort of "government monopoly," in order to undermine support for public schools and build support for free-market alternatives.

Cody is not 100% correct when he defines public education as being a "democratically controlled, community-based" system. That's partly true, of course, but in some places, New York City and Chicago, for example, public education is controlled by the mayor who appoints the school board. I suppose that mayors, being elected (at least for the time being) officials, could be described as "democratically controlled," but school boards in such places are controlled by cronyism and political contributions. His point however, is well taken. Public education is not a government monopoly any more than public libraries are...or police departments...or fire departments. Such public institutions are services provided by the government under public control. There might be some extreme anti-government-types who would like to see all public services moved to private, corporate hands, but for most people, the thought of "charter" police and fire departments is out of the question.

INFOMERCIALS

In School reform’s propaganda flick, on Salon.com, Alexander Zaitchik writes,

[The film's production company], Walden Media, is linked at the highest levels to the real-world adult alliance of corporate and far-right ideological interest groups that constitutes the so-called education reform movement, more accurately described as the education privatization movement.

It is also

an educational content company with a commercial interest in expanding private-sector access to American K-12 education, or what Rupert Murdoch, Walden’s distribution partner on “Won’t Back Down,” lip-lickingly calls “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”

In other words, Won't Back Down is a feature film length advertisement for the corporate takeover of public education. It's an infomercial, if you will, using highly paid actors and featuring "facts" adjusted by the corporate interests for public consumption. There's nothing wrong with infomercials, of course, but TV networks generally require a disclaimer, such as, "the following program is a paid advertisement." It would have been nice if Walden Media provided the same for its "infomercials" Waiting for Superman and Won't Back Down.

Zaitchik is correct that Walden Media is run by "far-right ideological interest groups" but it's important to take note of the beginning of his sentence..."the real-world adult alliance of corporate and..." That alliance includes both of America's major political parties and most of it's major media outlets.

LINKS

Finally,

• The United Church of Christ's web site has an article entitled, Films that Attack Public Education. The site discusses the films, has links to supporters, financial sources, ALEC involvement, commentary and reviews. It's worth a look.
• Check out Bill Moyers Exposes the Stranglehold the Corporate & Right-Wing Alliance Has on Our Democracy. Moyers exposes ALEC.
• NPR, formerly a relatively unbiased news source, has fallen, too. The influx of money from the Walton and Gates foundations has led to things like Scott Simon's interview of Arne Duncan about the Chicago Teachers strike. Well informed readers know that money was among the least important items under contention and in fact, the strike started even after the money issues had been agreed upon. Simon, however, focused only on teachers pay. Nothing about lack of art or music education. Nothing about lack of libraries and world language teachers. Nothing about schools as sweatshops with leaky roofs. The truth gets lost during political campaigns.
• The nation's teachers unions are falling into line as well -- notice Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA, following Arne Duncan around on a bus tour touting President Obama's education platform, seemingly without regard to the damage that Race to the Top has done to America's public schools.

*References to charters generally imply corporate, for-profit charter schools. Quotes from other writers reflect their opinions only. See It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

2012 Medley #18

Accountability, Teaching as a Career,
Won't Back Down, Education Politics in Indiana.

[UPDATE:] ACCOUNTABILITY

Contextual Accountability

John Kuhn, Superintendent of Perrin-Whitt CISD in Perrin Texas, has written a great article defining where we are in public education in the US. Quietly, while running a small school system in Texas, this man has become a leader in the quest for fair, community-based, adequately supported public schools.

I don’t write to argue that improvement in the education of American minority students isn’t necessary. The reformers are right at the beginning of the conversation—there’s an emergency in our urban schools. But they are consistently wrong about their monolithic, ideology-driven cause, and about how to fix it. They are also wrong to pretend that there isn’t a whole family of non-school emergencies in our urban areas, and to play-act that schools should somehow be immune from the general devastation around them. If an earthquake hits, should the school building’s pictures not move? If a wave of poverty, drugs, and obliterated families inundates a neighborhood, should the school float above the fray?

TEACHING AS A CAREER

Does It Pay to Become a Teacher?

When I started teaching in 1976, educators had high job satisfaction. The act of teaching...of working with children, learning with them, and guiding them...was a fulfilling career that overshadowed the low pay (when I started teaching my own children qualified for the federal lunch program because of my low income) and difficult working conditions. Now, however, with the bipartisan war against public schools and the push for privatization led by presidents of both parties, teacher morale is the lowest it's been since A Nation at Risk.

What's going to happen to public education when the teaching profession is completely demoralized? What's going to happen to our neediest students when the supply of teachers is cut off because the profession has been degraded and debased to the point where no one in their right mind would choose it as a life's calling? What's going to happen when only the moneyed classes can afford to educate their children?

Our nation's future depends on an educated population. Where will the next generation of teachers come from if the work is unfulfilling, low paying, and micro-managed even more than it currently is?

The average primary-school teacher in the United States earns about 67 percent of the salary of a average college-educated worker in the United States. The comparable figure is 82 percent across the overall O.E.C.D. For teachers in lower secondary school (roughly the years Americans would call middle school), the ratio in the United States is 69 percent, compared to 85 percent across the O.E.C.D. The average upper secondary teacher earns 72 percent of the salary for the average college-educated worker in the United States, compared to 90 percent for the overall O.E.C.D.

American teachers, by the way, spend a lot more time teaching than do their counterparts in most other developed countries

...Given the opportunity costs of becoming a teacher instead of using your college degree to enter another, more remunerative field, are the psychic rewards of teaching great enough to convince America’s best and brightest to become educators?

WON'T BACK DOWN

“Won’t Back Down”: Why do teachers’ unions hate America?

Here's a review of Won't Back Down which says that, aside from being an obvious propaganda film for the school privatizers and union busters, it's not a very good movie either. 

...the movie is unbelievable crap and the whole project was financed by conservative Christian billionaire Phil Anschutz, also the moneybags behind the documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” which handled a similar agenda in subtler fashion.

...Most people still understand, I believe, that teachers work extremely hard for little pay and low social status in a thankless, no-win situation. But this is one of those areas where conservatives have been extremely successful in dividing the working class, which is precisely the agenda in “Won’t Back Down.”

"Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal

Who made Won't Back Down?

Well-funded advocates of privatizing the nation's education system are employing a new strategy this fall to enlist support for the cause. The emotionally engaging Hollywood film "Won't Back Down" -- set for release September 28 -- portrays so-called "Parent Trigger" laws as an effective mechanism for transforming underperforming public schools. But the film's distortion of the facts prompts a closer examination of its funders and backers and a closer look at those promoting Parent Trigger as a cure for what ails the American education system.

"EDUCATING MAGGIE" | The Real Parents #WontBackDown Against #ALEC |
A group called, New Yorkers for Great Public Schools has started a movement to educate the actors in Won't Back Down.




EDUCATION POLITICS IN INDIANA

Indiana education: Tony Bennett wants to see accountability measures extended to Indiana school districts

Republican Tony Bennett, Indiana's Superintendent of Public Destruction Instruction claims that local control is not as good as state takeover of public schools.

Accountability measures for schools — including state takeover for those that consistently fail — have worked so well that lawmakers should consider extending them to school districts, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said Tuesday.

Democratic candidate Glenda Ritz responds to Bennett's State of Education

Glenda Ritz is running against Tony Bennett and his school-privatization backers (aka, the Walton Family, Michael Bloomberg, etc) for Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana. This is a nice little piece in which Ritz outlines her plans should she (by some miracle) defeat the moneybags bankrolling Bennett. However, I would have liked to hear her argue against specifics...like, are the schools which the state took over really doing better than they did before? Are they working with the same students or did the low performing students get "relocated" in a trail of tears so common when corporate charters take over so-called failing public schools?

The state of education in Indiana is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to assuring that quality teachers are in every classroom. Dr. Bennett is asking the State Board of Education to lower standards for teachers. Under his new proposal, teachers will no longer be required to have a degree in education to teach, but instead would be given licenses if they can simply pass a test by the Pearson Company. The profession of teaching is continually refining and expanding the ways in which teachers can better reach students with rigorous content. This is not the time to take a step back. This is the time to make sure teachers have the proper educational background, internships, and student teaching experiences that will make them highly qualified in the classroom.

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Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Choosing an Education President

Politicians running for president nearly always claim that their education platform is based on concern and care for the children of America. They claim, using the language of their choice, that they want to be the "Education President" (See George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush) and speak about "education for a global economy."

President Obama and Governor Romney are no exception. What are their platforms for education and what can we expect to see in a second Obama administration or a Romney administration?

Obama's (Democratic) platform promises more of the same as the last 4 years.

The Democratic Party understands the importance of turning around struggling public schools. We will continue to strengthen all our schools and work to expand public school options for low-income youth, including magnet schools, charter schools, teacher-led schools, and career academies.

...includes raising standards for the programs that prepare our teachers, recognizing and rewarding good teaching...We also believe in carefully crafted evaluation systems that give struggling teachers a chance to succeed

During the Obama administration "turning around struggling public schools" has meant firing staffs, and/or selling off public educational institutions to private companies and expanding charter schools. "Carefully crafted evaluation systems" means evaluating teachers based on test scores. Neither of those "reforms" has a research base indicating success. Charters perform no better, on average, than public schools and VAM evaluation processes have been found to be invalid.

The Republican platform upon which Romney is running promises,

School choice – whether through charter schools, open enrollment requests, college lab schools, virtual schools, career and technical education programs, vouchers, or tax credits – is important for all children...

...We support legislation that will correct the current law provision which defines a “Highly Qualified Teacher” merely by his or her credentials, not results in the classroom. We urge school districts to make use of teaching talent in business, STEM fields, and in the military, especially among our returning veterans. Rigid tenure systems based on the “last in, first out” policy should be replaced with a merit-based approach...

Again, like the Democrats, we see turn-arounds leading to charters, and student test scores being used to evaluate teachers (merit pay). The Republicans add vouchers, and specifically denounce teachers unions.

Neither party has an interest in saving public education...both are intent on selling public education to the highest bidder through corporate charters and/or vouchers. Chris Hedges believes that it's system-wide, not just education.

We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will be administered. Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth’s ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to stop it.

NEA President, Dennis Van Roekel is currently traveling the campaign trail with Arne Duncan, the Obama's "reformer" Secretary of Education. Duncan's Race to the Top is nothing more than a plan to charterize public schools and de-professionalize public school teachers.

The Democrats will continue to throw money into the Race to the Top, while the Republicans will let public education starve. In either case, the privatization will continue. Van Roekel, the president of America's largest teachers union, is following one of the prime destroyers of public education in order to get more money for corporate charters and privatization.

You might choose another reason to vote for Obama or Romney, but either way the privatization of public education (and the rest of the country's public institutions as well) will likely continue. The country will be led by the same people who gave us the second highest level of child poverty in the advanced world (nearly 25% of our children), the housing crash and the ever-increasing income gap between rich and poor.

Who owns public institutions such as public schools? In the past public education belonged to its communities, municipalities and states. Now it's the Koch brothers, the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and an ever increasing number of "edupreneurs" like K-12 Online Learning and Pearson.

We're letting it get away...and it will, if we don't stop it. Tell the next president that the attack on public education must stop. Tell him that we need to fix our public schools, not sell them. We can

allocate more resources for public schools — to improve technology, to expand professional-development opportunities for teachers, to buy classroom supplies, up-to-date textbooks and all the other materials that come with a good education. Perhaps one of the best ways to improve public education would be to loosen the strictures that tie student and school evaluations to test preparation and instead to allow teachers to instruct students in the sort of project-based units supported by educational research and the sort of critical-thinking skills that cannot be measured by filling in bubbles — the sort of academic freedom that is praised in charter schools but restricted in traditional public schools.

We can give our children the kind of schools they deserve.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Truth Doesn't Need Your Approval

John Calvin denounced Nicolaus Copernicus for saying that the Earth moved around the Sun. Calvin claimed that it was the Sun which moved.

We know now that the Earth, along with the other planets, asteroids, comets and other rocks and ice balls of various and sundry sizes (including the dwarf planet Pluto) do, indeed, orbit the Sun. The fact that early church leaders didn't believe it, didn't make it untrue. The Earth was steadily and quietly orbiting around the Sun all during the arguments in the 16th century (and earlier).

Anti-science/anti-intellectual arguments are still with us today...more than a third of all American don't "believe in" evolution (some recent surveys have claimed that the number of those not believing in evolution is higher...approaching half of all Americans, but those numbers may be skewed). Almost a fifth of all Americans deny that the world's climate is changing.

There is a large anti-science feeling in the US...a feeling that science is not reliable - probably due to the fact that as the findings change, so does science. The average person might see that as meaning that science is unreliable...as opposed to self-correcting.

This isn't new to the United States. Anti-intellectualism has been here for a long time. Isaac Asimov wrote

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

Asimov's position on this was obvious. Just because a free society allows people to have false ideas doesn't mean that we should, as a society, accept those false ideas as valid.

Sometimes the anti-science attitude comes from the government and the business community. Take one of the main conflict areas in the recent Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike -- Value Added Measures (VAM) as part of a teachers evaluation process.

Illinois state law requires that at least 30% of a teacher's evaluation must be determined by student progress -- clearly referring to standardized tests. Illinois is not the only state with that requirement, though. Dozens of states (including my home, Indiana) have jumped on the "use standardized tests to evaluate teachers" bandwagon. To be fair...many only did so in order to qualify for federal money from the Administration's Race to the Top program.

The CTU claimed, however, that those sorts of evaluations weren't valid.

Valerie Strauss agreed.

The [New York] Times can say that using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers is a sensible policy and Obama can say it and Education Secretary Arne Duncan can say it and Emanuel can say it and so can Bill Gates (who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop it) and governors and mayor[s] from both parties, and heck, anybody can go ahead and shout it out as loud as they can.

It doesn’t make it true.

No amount of support for VAM based teacher evaluations changes the fact that researchers have found the method to be unreliable.

A group of Chicago area researchers objected when Mayor Emanuel came out with his plan to evaluate teachers using the method, and they urged restraint and caution. In Misconceptions and Realities about Teacher and Principal Evaluation the Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE) wrote

Assessments designed to evaluate student learning are not necessarily valid for measuring teacher effectiveness or student learning growth. Using them to measure the latter is akin to using a meter stick to weigh a person: you might be able to develop a formula that links height and weight, but there will be plenty of error in your calculations.

A similar objection was written by researchers in Georgia. The Georgia Researchers, Educators and Advocates for Teacher Evaluation Reform said

No evidence exists that evaluation systems that incorporate student test scores produce gains in student achievement...Testing companies themselves advise against the use of their instruments to evaluate educators...Assessments designed to evaluate student learning are not necessarily valid for measuring teacher effectiveness or student learning growth...

These researchers are joined by the National Research Council. Strauss notes in her article,

The National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academies, which include the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, issued a major report last year on this issue that said:

The standardized test scores that have been trumpeted to show improvement in the schools provide limited information about the causes of improvements or variability in student performance.This would be true, presumably, for any school system that use standardized tests as a measure of achievement.

In other words, using students' standardized test scores to evaluate a teachers effectiveness in the classroom is bad science. The real research shows that those methods are incorrect usages of standardized tests and they are unfair to students and teachers, and anyone else involved, including parents, communities and local governments. Just because you want something to work a certain way doesn't mean it does. Good science suggests that we not use these methods for teacher evaluation until they have been shown to be reliable and valid.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson said "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

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~~~

Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 7

The strike is suspended. A couple of comments...

Day 7 Strike suspended. Big victory for teachers

CTU's House of Delegates voted to "suspend" the strike and ask teachers to return to class tomorrow.

“Everybody is going back to school,” said Jay Rehak, a delegate from Whitney Young High School. Delegate Mike Bochner said “an overwhelming majority” of delegates voted to suspend the strike. “I’m really excited, I’m really relieved,” said Bochner, a teacher at Cesar Chavez elementary.

Thank You Chicago Teachers

A huge THANK YOU is due to the teachers of Chicago, who are going back to work tomorrow, after making the most important statement in defense of public education in this country in the last ten years...a cross section of progressives are willing to admit that Democratic Party education policies, as well as Republican ones, are disastrous, and that you cannot improve schools unless teachers are treated with respect and brought into the center of every discussion which shapes education policy.

(btw, the youtube link at the end of this article doesn't work)

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 6

Chicago Teachers Strike Continues Into New Week As Union, City Fail To Strike Deal

The Chicago Teachers Union delegates decided Sunday night not to accept a deal for a new contract from Chicago Public Schools and made plans to resume negotiations Tuesday, effectively prolonging the weeklong teachers strike and ensuring that school would not be in session for the city's public school students for the next two days.

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Chicago teachers extend strike, mayor seeks court order

The confrontation between Chicago teachers and Mayor Rahm Emanuel escalated on Sunday when their union extended a strike and the mayor said he would go to court to block the walkout, risking more friction within President Barack Obama's political coalition as the November 6 election nears.

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Letter to the Editor from CTU President Karen Lewis

Mayor Emanuel says we will have to close and consolidate public schools to save money to pay for the new union contract. Does anyone in the public have any idea how much money it costs to open a brand new charter school* and pay for the first few years while the school gets up and running? Hundreds of millions of dollars! CPS has an entire department dedicated to soliciting charter proposals, reviewing them, and then supporting the charter during its “incubation period.” Also during this incubation period, the school is not held accountable for its test scores because CPS understands that of course the school will not do well initially.

This is what we want for our children? Parents don’t want their kindergartner, 5th grader or 9th grader acting as guinea pigs for a charter school that might eventually become a good school. There is not a single charter management network that can say that all of its campuses are doing well.

Mayor Emanuel and his charter school friends are complaining that the Chicago Teachers Union strike has kept students out of school for a few days. What about the years that students suffer in low-performing charter schools that are still trying to figure out how to manage themselves as an academic institution? Even the hedge fund billionaires that are behind this push admit that every charter school is not going to succeed–so why are we doing this? Why aren’t we simply looking at what already works, at the 30 percent of CPS’ neighborhood elementary schools that are scoring 85 percent and above–some at 100 percent– on state tests. Why aren’t we replicating that?

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Responding to NPR's What's At Stake for US Teachers

Not only is this going to be very costly, but there is evidence that it won’t increase school achievement. It will rob money from where we need it, money that could protect children from the effects of poverty by improving nutrition, health care, and access to books.

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Chicago Teachers and Support Staff: Lots of Thank Yous and a Couple of Warnings

• Thank you for the exercising the courage, care, and conviction that has been banished by the national union leadership of the NEA and AFT.
• Thank you for reminding us what leadership looks like.
• Thank you for re-focusing the teacher union movement on the social justice mission for children, which is our calling, our mission, and the fire we carry.
• Thank you for demanding respect, rather than cowering and cutting deals to assuage corporate hacks stuck in a Reagan time warp.
• Thank you for your energy, your pluck, your pride, your determination that makes us all proud again to claim the title of teacher.
• Thank you for explaining the effects on children of teacher evaluation based on test scores, class size extremes, environmental needs of children, resource shortages, personnel cuts, school closures, corporate charter schools.
• Thank you for doing what so many have feared to do and must be done.
• Thank you for your model of impassioned professionalism.
• Thank you for making us look up again, rather than down.

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UP With Chris Hayes

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Who Is Victimizing Chicago’s Kids?

The city’s current reform wave began in 2004 with Mayor Richard Daley’s Renaissance 2010—a massive program, funded in part by $90 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to transform the city’s schools by 2010. The strategy included firing and replacing entire staffs in low-income neighborhood schools, shutting down dozens of schools, and setting up charter schools. When reckoning day came, here is what the Chicago Tribune reported:

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data. …The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010—that displaced students ended up mostly in other low performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn’t lived up to its promise by this, its target year.

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Karen Lewis Speak to Rally at Union Park (Saturday)

I am tired of billionaires telling us what we need to do for our children as if they love our children more than we do.

I want them to turn off the air conditioning in 125 South Clark and work like we work. I want them to turn off the air conditioning on the fifth floor of city hall and let them work like we work. I want them to turn off the air conditioning at the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation and the Walton Foundation so they can see what our children have to suffer under.

I want them to come sit in a classroom with peeling plaster and no books and I want them to be evaluated. I want to be evaluated. I want somebody to tell me how I can get better as a teacher. I want them to come in to my classroom and see what it is I do. But while these people have their air conditioners turned off I want these people not to be able to go to the dentist when they have a toothache. I want them to not be able to go to a physician when they are feeling ill. I want them to understand what it means to be hungry...what it means to be homeless...and what it means to be uncomfortable while you give me a test.

I want them to show us where are the billionaires marching? Why do they have so much influence because they can write a check. They only have one vote.

I want to know why, when we ask for textbooks and materials on the first day...on the first day when children walk into a building...that somehow we're being unreasonable. I want somebody to tell me why that is. I want somebody to tell me why asking for more than 325 social workers for a system of 400,000 children is unreasonable. I want you to tell me why you have to test my kindergartners 5 and 6 times a year when they haven't even learned how to play.

*References to charters generally imply corporate, for-profit charter schools. Quotes from other writers reflect their opinions only. See It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Now I'm 64!

A One-Man Band



The String Quartet



Bodhi playing 'When I'm 64' on trumpet for his Grandad.
(No, I have no idea who this kid is. I just thought it was cute!)



Awesome Guitar Solo!



Kirk and Spock



The Originals.

The Truth in Black and White

Please send the video link or embed it and post everywhere you can, in every county, state, and country.

I wanted to stand up and cheer for this video. I went to one of the schools represented in this video (Grades K-8)...and we had a full time art teacher...a full time music teacher (and a band program)...and a full time PE teacher.  Aren't we capable of giving our children what they need? Where are our priorities?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prM0HWKrWVI&feature=player_embedded

Letter from Kozol

Mike Klonsky's Small Talk Blog has a letter from Jonathan Kozol in support of the Chicago teachers...

Kozol's letter of support

In the current climate, where teachers are being blamed for the dire state of our inner-city schools, and where large chunks of our school system are being privatized, it is refreshing to see teachers find their voices. I support the Chicago teachers because they are standing up for quality public education, with more art, music, critical thinking, and with the dignity of educators properly respected. American kids don't need more rhetoric about social justice; they need smaller class sizes, and they need to see adults doing something to solve the problem of priorities in this country. I wish the Chicago teachers all the best. --Jonathan Kozol

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Happy Blogoversary to Me!

Today is the 6th Blogoversary of this blog.

Here are a dozen passages from the last 12 months with which I've given voice to the concerns I have about privatization, the de-professionalization of teaching and the destruction of public education.

There's also a 13th passage written by someone else...an expression of the frustration felt by teachers all over the country.

A Public Trust
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011

Parents have the right to demand that schools meet the needs of their children. Municipalities, however, have the obligation to improve the schools. The trend encouraged by the US DOE, which began with No Child Left Behind and continues unabated with Race to the Top, is to throw schools filled with struggling students away, not fix them. They close schools that are in difficulty, ship the students to other schools, open charter schools, and/or fire teachers and principals. None of those "solutions" deal with the core issues of failing schools. None have any research basis whatsoever. The vast majority of charter* schools don't perform better than the vast majority of regular public schools.

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It's No Stealth Campaign: Privatization is the Goal
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2011

The Friedmanesque obsession with privatizing everything in sight has already brought us high unemployment...and the highest national poverty levels in a generation. Do we want the same people who brought us the banking/Wall Street fiasco telling us what to do with our public schools?

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Lessons Learned: Kimberly's Story...continued
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2012

As educators we try to help our students grow, not just academically, but emotionally and personally. The most important moments in a student's school life are generally not when he or she gets an A in a course or on a test. Just like in "real life" the most important moments in school come when children are challenged. Developing a positive response to those challenges is more important than any test or grade.

The ability to face challenges is perhaps the most important skill we learn in life. Developing the courage to face obstacles can mean the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one. Courage is not the absence of fear...it doesn't mean you're not afraid. Courage means you face what life offers you despite the fear which threatens to immobilize you.

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2012 Medley #2: Obama on education in State of the Union address
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2012

If "teachers matter" why doesn't the President honor teachers by appointing a teacher as the Secretary of Education? He appointed a doctor as Surgeon General...an attorney as Attorney General...isn't the Department of Education important enough to warrant a professional as it's head?

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Retention in Grade as Child Abuse
SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2012

Until the United States is willing to provide the resources needed to educate all our children there will be those who fail and those who fall through the cracks. Since those children are, according to the research on retention, minorities, poor, and the hardest to educate, they get ignored by all those who don’t work with them specifically. Politicians like to pretend they don't exist...or that it's their own fault. They get the fewest resources, the least experienced teachers, and the most “teaching to the test.” Despite lip service from politicians, our nation’s children, unfortunately, aren’t a national priority.

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Democrats Sell out the Public Schools in Indiana
SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 2012

More testing...more teaching to the test...more basing teacher evaluations on test scores...more money for private schools...more corporate control over public money...more charter schools -- these are not reforms. These are gifts of our tax money to privatizers. They are tools for the removal of public oversight from public education. They are tools for the destruction of the single most important democratizing institution in our society -- the public schools.

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Desire to Learn or Need to Achieve?
MONDAY, JULY 30, 2012

The competitive, data driven madness of the current "race to the top" mentality of education, is robbing today's students of the joy of learning. Children are born with the desire to learn. They are natural wonderers...explorers...analysts. Our society's obsessive focus on "data" crushes the wonder and destroys the internal thirst for understanding. The desire to learn is replaced with the need to achieve.

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Facts About the Parent Trigger
MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2012

The parent trigger is not about parental rights...or parental power. The parent trigger is a way for edupreneurs to take over public schools and reap a profit at public expense. It's not for the parents. It's not for the students...The parent trigger bills don't give parents more control. They give parents less control. They allow 51% of current school parents to give away the public school to a charter operator. What happens in two years if 51% of the parents want to take the school back for the public schools? The parent trigger bills don't allow for that. Once the schools have been converted they're stuck with what they get. No parental rights. No public oversight.

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Where are all the "bad" schools?
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2012

American students in schools with low poverty are among the highest achievers in the world. Are there schools which are failing or which need improvement? Of course. The schools most in need are in the same locations where government is failing...where politicians are failing...where our society is failing...

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Ravitch, Rhee and Rankings
TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 2012

The American obsession with rankings and "being number one" has damaged public education. We have never been number one in academic tests yet we've managed to lead the world economically and scientifically (among other things) over the last half century. How is that possible?

Do we blame doctors and hospitals because the United States ranks 37th internationally in health care (behind such places as Luxembourg, Columbia, and Singapore) or 34th in infant mortality rates (which puts us behind Iceland, Slovenia and Cuba)?

We don't have a nation-wide problem with failing schools. What we have is a problem with the failure of our leaders to address the issues facing schools with high levels of poverty. It's time to end the privatization of public education and focus on supporting public schools.

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Reformers' Excuses
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2012

Poverty is not destiny, but in the America of 2012 it's harder to move up the economic ladder than it's ever been. Saying poverty is not destiny is fine...but using it as an excuse to ignore the high levels of poverty in the country and to ignore poverty as a factor in school achievement is wrong...The so-called failure of American education is, in truth, the failure of America. What other nation would accept a poverty rate of almost a quarter of its children?

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 3
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

The teachers are demanding books on the first day of class...manageable class sizes...a well rounded curriculum including the arts...libraries for every school (would Emanuel choose to send his children to a school without a library?) and social workers to help children deal with the violence and the poverty in their lives. The fight is as much about children's working conditions as it is about the teachers' working conditions.

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Teacher Appreciation Week - A Slap in the Face
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012
by Corinne Driscoll from Syracuse NY

On every occasion possible, they talk about incompetent and ineffective teachers as if they are the norm instead of the rare exception. They create policies that tie teachers' hands, making it more and more difficult for them to be effective. They cut budgets, eliminate classroom positions, overload classrooms, remove supports, choose ineffective and downright useless instructional tools, set up barriers to providing academic assistance, and then very quickly stand up and point fingers at teachers, blaming them for every failure of American society, and washing their own hands of any blame.

*References to charters generally imply corporate, for-profit charter schools. Quotes from other writers reflect their opinions only. See It's Important to Look in a Mirror Now and Then

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 5

There's talk that the strike will end Friday...and hopefully the kids will be back in school on Monday. I don't know what the CTU had to give up...but...

I hope that they didn't give up fighting against using test scores to evaluate schools and teachers. We know that the tests are not valid for those purposes. The voices of the testing experts in Chicago, Georgia and all over the country have repeated over and over again that it's a misuse of the tests. My fear is that the facts won't matter and the privatizers are so eager to line their pockets with public money they don't care what they do. It doesn't matter who they hurt...children, teachers, principals...they just want the money.

I hope they didn't give up fighting for adequate educational services for their students. The 1% aren't satisfied with schools that have large class sizes, no libraries, lack of art, music and physical education. The rest of us shouldn't be satisfied with that either. All children, no matter what their parents' income, should be guaranteed a public school complete with the arts, books, and plenty of room to run and grow. Our nation's future adults deserve to have a chance...all of them.

I hope they didn't give up fighting for adequate social services for their students. How can we accept the levels of poverty in this country? What other nation would allow a fourth of all their children to live in poverty? We need to provide the services they need to survive.

I hope they didn't give up demanding reasonable class sizes. The average class size in private schools is 18...all children deserve that. We have become a nation of selfish misers, only thinking about our own...only thinking about today. Children, especially poor children and children who are not native English speakers, need more help...not less. I've taught classes of 37 and 38...there's no way to reach all the children. Someone is bound to get lost. The fewer students per class, especially in the younger grades, the better chance a child has.

I know they had to give up some things...I've been at the negotiations table...I know you have to give up some things you really don't want to give up...

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools

3. In CPS, 86% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The relationship between poverty and academics is well documented, but CPS pays little attention to ameliorating poverty’s effects. Poverty is rising in the city, and the percentage of students who are lunch-eligible does not capture the fact that many who were poor before are now even poorer. While CPS has a well-developed program to identify schools to be put on probation, closed, consolidated or turned-around, it does not have an equally robust program for supporting schools in trouble...

...Family income and wealth play a major role in students’ educational development. CTU recognizes that CPS cannot tackle all the housing, health, transportation, and employment inequities that intersect school issues and shape student’s performance in schools. However, as CPS students are 86% low-income and 87% African American or Latino, CPS has a moral and ethical responsibility to put school-level policies in place to mitigate racial and economic inequities.

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CTU chief: Deal likely today but classes may not resume until Monday

Thank you Chicago teachers for telling the world what America's teachers already know -- that our children are being cheated by "reformers" who don't know anything about education. Thank you for standing up and making someone listen.

Fran Feeley, 44, a librarian at Inter-American Magnet School, said he had "mixed-feelings" about the news. While Feeley doesn't want the strike to carry on, he said certain issues need to be addressed.

"I don't accept the idea that charter schools and vouchers and testing kids eight weeks a year is going to solve the problems facing the public schools," he said...

Christopher Barker said he too is ready to be back in the classroom. “I feel like everything has slid a week back,” he said.

Barker, who teaches math and humanities at George Manierre Elementary School, said he needs to finish evaluating his new students, call parents and build his student library.

One of the first things on the agenda, however, will be talking to his students about what the strike meant. “Is there anywhere that you go in life when you do have to speak up for yourself when there’s a perceived injustice?”

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A Chicago Teacher Writes: The Joy of Finally Fighting Back
By Anthony Cody on September 13, 2012 11:06 AM

Guest post by Katie Osgood.

There is jubilation on the streets of Chicago.

When the teachers of Chicago rise up, they are not defending politics or ideology, they are speaking for actual human beings. They are crying out for the child who could not get appropriate special education services due to lack of staff. They are speaking for the many kids being punished, held back, treated like failures by the cruel standardized tests. They are saying "no" to the truly outrageous class sizes which prevent too many of their most fragile students from getting that individualized attention they deserve. They are begging the district to hire more of the support staff like social workers, nurses, and counselors their students desperately need. They are exposing a system that views students who struggle as liabilities and schools as places of cutthroat competition.

Chicago's teachers are saying "no more". I thank them, and the parents and students, for their sacrifice. The joy of people power is infectious. I hope it spreads.

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I Ruined Everything (& Why It Was More Work Than You Thought) @INTERNETTAXTROLLS

The media doesn't really tell the story...comments on blogs and news articles reflect the hate and anger that people direct towards teachers. It's born of a jealousy...perhaps because teachers love their work...perhaps because teachers have organizations to help them.

This is not a new article, but it's an answer to all those haters.

So do it. Reduce my pension. Make me poor, since I don't qualify for Social Security. Make my medicine unaffordable. Make my raise contingent upon proof that my art lessons somehow improved state math scores. Continue firing at my feet to see how long you can make me dance. It still won't change the fact that life did not work out as you planned and you're now a bitter little turd. AND I will STILL...love my job, because I am rocking this for all the right reasons. After you take every tool and incentive and support away from me, and millions like me, you won't suddenly have anything great that you don't already have. And then you will be terribly disappointed to find out that this isn't a scam after all. Whether decorated or destroyed, inside every school we run on something you can't legislate, isolate, measure or destroy. Much to your inarticulate all caps despair.

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Letter from CTU President Karen Lewis: ‘Students Suffer in Low-Performing Charter Schools’

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is so cash-strapped that it plans to close and consolidate under-utilized schools, with rumors that it could be upwards of 120 schools this coming year. Many people would consider this to be fiscally prudent. Mayor Emanuel is of course going to blame the soon-to-be agreed upon new union contract.

What the public does not understand, however, even though both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times have been writing about it for months, is that CPS is also simultaneously planning to open 60 new charter schools in the next few years. That decision was made last year under the “Gates Compact” in which CPS went into an agreement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to increase charter schools in Chicago.

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Standardized test scores are worst way to evaluate teachers

The way that CPS plans to use test scores in teacher evaluation, referred to as value-added, is so incredibly flawed that almost no one with a knowledge base in this area thinks it’s a good idea.

The National Research Council wrote a letter to the Obama administration warning against including value-added in Race to the Top federal grant program because of a lack of research support. The Educational Testing Service, an organization that stands to benefit tremendously from any expansion of testing, issued a report concluding that value-added is improper test use.

These are the people who know the statistics, and none of them thinks the models work.

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Unions Are Necessary to Rebuilding Our Middle Class

Last year the middle class received the smallest share of the nation’s income since these data were first reported, according to U.S. Census Bureau numbers released today. The middle 60 percent of households received only 45.7 percent of the nation’s income in 2011, down from the historical peak of 53.2 percent in 1968.

The declining share of income received by the nation’s middle class has been driven by stagnant incomes for middle-class earners coupled with rapidly rising incomes for the highest earners...And then there is another often overlooked dynamic: the decline of labor unions.

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Melting the Rubber Stamp: Chicago’s Unelected Board of Education

The seven members of Chicago’s Board of Education, along with CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, are, in theory, responsible for the governance of the city’s schools. In reality, they are only accountable to the man that appointed them—Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

As anyone who has ever witnessed a board hearing knows, members like Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker and former Northwestern President Henry Bienen, when they bother to show up at all, nod indifferently to public testimony, toy with their smart phones, and reliably vote in the interests of their boss. This past winter, after the board voted unanimously to close or turnaround 17 schools, frustrated parents burst into tears, and community members chanted “Rubber Stamp!” until CPS security escorted them out of the room.

Unwilling to accept such belligerent disregard for community input, education organizers and activists have launched a campaign for an elected, representative school board. Communities Organized for Democracy in Education (CODE), a coalition of education groups, circulated petitions this summer to put the question to Chicagoans in an advisory referendum: should the Board of Education be elected instead of appointed by the mayor?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 4

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools

This is what the Chicago Teachers are fighting for. It still takes my breath away to hear that there are more than 150 elementary schools in Chicago without a library. [I remember my elementary school when I was growing up in Chicago. Our principal, Benjamin Elkin, was a children's author. Do you think he would have allowed his school to be without a library?]

Read the CTU's whole booklet.

2. Educate The Whole Child. Invest to ensure that all schools have recess and physical education equipment, healthy food offerings, and classes in art, theater, dance, and music in every school. Offer world languages and a variety of subject choices. Provide every school with a library and assign the commensurate number of librarians to staff them.

At the private and selective-enrollment University of Chicago Laboratory School, elementary students have classes in art, music, physical education and world languages several times a week, as well as language arts, social studies, mathematics and science daily. At private and selective-enrollment Francis Parker School, students from 3rd to 12th grade participate in a program called “Morning Ex” (for “Exercise”) three times a week. This program provides students the opportunity to plan and carry out a variety of activities, including teach-ins, sharing of class projects, dramatic performances, outside speakers, and other enriching activities.

In CPS, on the other hand, many elementary students have limited access to physical education, arts education (music, drama, art, dance, choir, band, etc.), library/media instruction, science laboratories, or computer science. Few CPS schools provide world language classes and 160 CPS elementary schools do not even have libraries. Although access to libraries and books can mitigate the impact of poverty on achievement, CPS denies this vital resource to some of its students who need it most.

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Stand Against Rahm! The Chicago Teachers' Strike Is the Next Chapter in the Fight Against Plutocracy

Those of you who hate teachers and teachers unions: If your boss told you to add 2 more hours to your work day without an increase in pay would you just quietly accept it? What if you already volunteered extra hours every day, on weekends and during vacations?

Overwhelmingly, Chicago’s teachers support lengthening the day, which is the shortest of any major district in the country. Just not the way Rahm wanted to ram it down their throats: 20 percent more work; 2 percent more pay.

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Their Fight is Our Fight

At my school, I looked at the calendar for the year, and there are about 15 days where students are being tested on standardized tests. These tests are not designed to help the students. Many of these tests are designed because of No Child Left Behind to measure the school. And now, because of Race to the Top and these new reforms, now these tests are being used to measure teacher performance. So what does that mean? It means that rather than planning rich-inquiry, interesting lessons for our students, we have to focus on very specific tested standards in a very narrow way...

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Chicago Reminds Us Why we have Unions

Teachers in Chicago have done their homework. They did not just decide to strike this month. They have laid the groundwork, in a way that should be studied by others around the country. They have made it clear what they are fighting for, and done tremendous work with parents and in the community to build support. While the media has been critical of the union, public support remains strong, with 47% of voters in support, and only 39% in opposition.

This support was hard-won. Teachers in Chicago have been working for several years to build an understanding of what the schools there need. They have presented their OWN vision of reform. In February of this year, they released this report, The Schools Chicago's Students Deserve.

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Unions aren’t the enemy, and teachers shouldn’t back down, either

If organized labor is at the heart of the problem, though, why are outcomes in different areas of the country no different whether teachers are unionized or not?

...And let’s not forget why we have teachers unions in the first place: It’s because in the not-so-great old days, mostly female teachers had no recourse when they were fired for no good reason, or were otherwise treated unfairly.

...Teachers in Chicago have decided they won’t back down at an inconvenient time for the president, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. If we really wanted to improve schools, we’d do what education powerhouse Finland does — fund schools equally, value teachers more, and administer standardized testing almost never.

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The Worst Teacher in Chicago

It's the money.

A veteran teacher was "no good" when she was in the public schools at the top of the salary scale...she got fired (so much for the myth that you can't fire teachers). She was rehired at slightly more than half her salary by a local charter school...where she was hailed as "an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field."

Is it improvement that "reformers" want? or is it union-busting and profits?

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Thoughts About the Chicago Teachers Strike - Part 3

The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools

The first item in the Chicago Teachers Union report is about class size. Research has shown that class size is especially important in the early grades.

1. Recognize That Class Size Matters. Drastically reduce class size. We currently have one of the largest class sizes in the state. This greatly inhibits the ability of our students to learn and thrive.

Outside of Chicago and within private schools, class size is monitored and small classes are prioritized. For example, in the Matteson School District southwest of Chicago, the average class sizes per grade for elementary and high school are between 16 and 23, with most classes below 20. Compared to CPS, 15% more students meet or exceed Illinois standards in Matteson. At Chicago’s well-regarded Francis Parker School, class sizes reflect the national private school average of 18 students, but high school classes are often smaller. If smaller classes are good for private and suburban students, why are they not a priority for our children?

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Got a red shirt?
Brian Jones is one of the teachers prominent in The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.

Does this mean we now have a national movement of teachers united in a collective struggle to defend and improve public education? Not quite. Where teachers already have large organizations — their unions — they rely on them to defend their interests. The problem is that those unions have, by and large, conceded much of the ideological terrain to the billionaire privatizers.

Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, says he wants a longer school day, for example. The CTU has responded, effectively: “No, we want a BETTER school day!” The CTU...demands that funding be restored to the arts, sciences, physical education, counseling, and smaller class sizes. Their research document, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve is a must read.

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Messages of Solidarity: We Stand with the CTU

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Chicago’s school shadow

Evaluations tied to student test performance, class size, job security and more are at the heart of the Chicago dispute and at the center of a national education debate. Are teachers professionals who know the needs of their students and deserve the respect and compensation afforded to professionals? Or are they public workers who can be easily replaced?

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Randi Weingarten: Treat teachers as equal partners

The issues that teachers are fighting for go to the heart of improving Chicago's public schools. Chicago has had 15 years of mayoral control, and it hasn't helped improve our schools. Today, 42% of neighborhood elementary schools are not funded for a full-time art or music teacher; 160 Chicago elementary schools don't have libraries. Teachers report classes of more than 43 students and not even enough chairs for them all. And teachers often lack textbooks and other materials up to six weeks after the start of school.

Chicago teachers are calling for a better day, not just a longer day, by investing in art, music and libraries. They are calling for smaller class sizes, investments in neighborhood schools and health care, social workers, meal services and additional services for students.

They want to focus on teaching and learning, and have legitimately objected to the district's fixation on high-stakes testing that is narrowing the curriculum and being used to sanction teachers. And they are calling for a fair evaluation process and additional professional development to help all teachers improve.

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Chicago Teachers Push Back Against Neoliberal Education Reform

I can sense a pattern in these articles. They're all talking about what's really important...the education of the children. Here it is again...social services, libraries, a well rounded curriculum...

...educators are fired up to fight for wraparound services for students, with more school social workers, counselors and psychologists; a holistic educational environment where all students have access to school libraries, world languages, art, music, physical education; and the preservation of the tenure system—because good teachers are made through experience in the classroom.

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National Schools Debate Is on Display in Chicago

...and then we come to the New York Times. It's true that, as the Times says, the teacher evaluation system in Chicago is one of the focuses of the strike. There are questions which need to be answered. Do standardized tests reflect what the students have learned or do they reflect where the students live, the amount of income their parents bring home, the violence outside the students' windows at home, whether or not the students even have a home, or the lack of health care in the students' lives? Are those same standardized tests appropriate tools with which to measure a teacher's ability to teach?

The article frames this as a "traditional labor fight over pay, benefits and working conditions." That's correct to a point. Both sides have said that they are close on pay disputes. Benefits are still an issue. It's the demands about working conditions, however, which are not at all "traditional." The teachers are demanding books on the first day of class...manageable class sizes...a well rounded curriculum including the arts...libraries for every school (would Emanuel choose to send his children to a school without a library?) and social workers to help children deal with the violence and the poverty in their lives. The fight is as much about children's working conditions as it is about the teachers' working conditions.

What started here as a traditional labor fight over pay, benefits and working conditions has exploded into a dramatic illustration of the national debate over how public school districts should rate teachers.

At stake are profound policy questions about how teachers should be granted tenure, promoted or fired, as well as the place standardized tests will have in the lives of elementary and high school students.

One of the main sticking points in the negotiations here between the teachers union and Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a new teacher evaluation system that gives significant and increasing weight to student performance on standardized tests. Personnel decisions would be based on those evaluations.

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Report calls for more teacher training, limiting use of test scores

This article is not directly about the CTU strike, however it speaks to the issue of how much weight should be given to standardized tests This task force rejected using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

The state needs to focus on recruiting, educating and retaining teachers if it wants to improve student academic performance, a state task force has concluded. Recent budget cuts, however, have pushed the state in the opposite direction, according to the task force's report, which was released Monday.

The advisory task force, which was brought together by state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, also rejected making any link between students' standardized test scores and teachers' performance evaluations.

The report said,

...leading research organizations have counseled against the use of VAM for high-stakes decisions about teachers. The National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment concluded that: “VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness ... should not be used to make operational decisions because such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable.”

It didn't say use test scores for 30% of a teacher's evaluation...or 40%...or 50%. It said that tests should not be used for teacher evaluation. Period.

The entire report can be read HERE

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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