SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
2016 Medley #31
from Arthur H. Camins
...it is democratically governed public schools that have made America great — not private schools and not charter schools. We all know that we can love what is imperfect. We need to strengthen the marriage between public schools and equity, not a divorce.
TEST SCORES ARE SOCIETY'S REFLECTION
2015
Berliner in Australia: The Testing Fiasco
from David C. Berliner
Blaming institutions and individual teachers directs our gaze away from the inequality and poverty that actually gives rise to those scores. In the same way a magician can divert attention of an entire audience when they make a person or a rabbit disappear.
CAN WE JUDGE TEACHERS BY THE SUCCESS OF THEIR STUDENTS?
2014
Evaluate Harvard
During his college days Harvard should have trained Duncan in the correct use of tests. They apparently didn't.
I think that means that Harvard has failed in its preparation of social scientists and Harvard students shouldn't be allowed any federal grants.
TEST SCORES ARE SOCIETY'S REFLECTION
2013
Our Nation is More Than a Test Score
from The AFT
One thing PISA research makes clear is that poverty's effect on educational equity matters.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS HELP ALL OF US
2012
Darling-Hammond on American Education
from Linda Darling-Hammond
We all now have to care about the education of every person's children. It's not going to be enough to say my kids got educated because for every person who is not in the labor force, not paying taxes, not contributing to our health care system, to our Social Security, the social bargain that we have as Americans cannot be maintained. All of us have a vested interest in every child being educated, and yet kids who we wouldn't spend $10,000 on to get them good teaching in Oakland, when they were second graders...to be sure they could learn to read...we're spending $50,000 on them in prison ten years later.
NO MORE LOSERS
2011
The Most Important Speech on Education in Years
from Diane Ravitch
The free market works very well in producing goods and services, but it works through competition. In competition, the weakest fall behind. The market does not produce equity. In the free market, there are a few winners and a lot of losers. Some corporate reformers today advocate that schools should be run like a stock portfolio: Keep the winners and sell the losers. Close schools where the students have low scores and open new ones. But this doesn’t help the students who are struggling. No student learns better because his school was closed; closing schools does not reduce the achievement gap. Poor kids get bounced from school to school. No one wants the ones with low scores because they threaten the reputation and survival of the school.
ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL
2010
NY Student Play Banned
from a student play (N.Y.) on school reform
Tireseus (the blind prophet): Do you really think closing schools is the answer?
Chancellor: The school is failing.
Tireseus: Or maybe you are failing the school. Why not give them what they need to succeed?
Chancellor: But schools must be held accountable.
Tireseus: And what about you, Chancellor? Who’s holding you accountable?
ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL
2009 (November)
What Are You Doing Wrong?
The obsession with testing is so that schools will be "accountable" to the greater society. Where is the society's accountability, though? Why is it that we can spend billions of dollars on a contrived war, and ignore the "economy gap" in our society? Why is it that educators have to accept No Child Left Behind to eliminate the "soft bigotry of low expectations" yet local, state and national governments don't have to be accountable for the "soft bigotry of urban neglect?"
ON TEACHING
2008
Top 10 Reasons Why Teaching Jobs Based on Test Scores Is A Bad Idea
8. Teaching jobs based on test scores will contribute to cutthroat competition among teachers for positions most likely to produce the best test results.
PLAY IS CHILDREN'S WORK
2007
Kindergarten and Developmentally Appropriate Education
Play is children's work. They learn how to live in the world, how to get along, to solve problems, and to share by playing. They can't learn these things, though, unless they are allowed to get up from their chairs and interact with each other.
Skills based, academically oriented kindergartens are now the rule rather than the exception. Developmentally appropriate practice does not exist in some places any more. Does this help children? No long term studies have been done at this point, but my hunch is that by taking the opportunity to grow at their own rate away from children we are asking many of them to do what they can't do...we're asking them to touch the ceiling without a ladder.
2006
Leave this law behind...
At one time standardized tests were designed to show how students were progressing and what areas they were weak in. The tests were designed to be used diagnostically...to guide teaching and learning.
The tests are still designed to do that...and, in some places, they are even used correctly. But even schools which use standardized test scores correctly are having their scores published and compared to others.
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