Several of us have linked together and, today, our letter to President Obama was posted on Valerie Strauss' The Answer Sheet (a Washington Post education blog). If you agree with its sentiments you can send your own message to the President by going to the online form at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact.
This letter is a follow-up to a one we sent in May about Obama's Blueprint for Reform, (re the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA) which you can find here. As you may or may not know, the decision about keeping, altering, or scrapping the current version of ESEA, aka NCLB, was supposed to be done in 2007, but Congress never attended to the task. So, as a result, this despised and damaging law was rolled over and has now been enforced for at least three years beyond its natural lifespan.
In late 2006, Washington insiders predicted a delay with reauthorization, but wrongly imagined it might be as late as 2009. Boy, oh boy, were they wrong!
Several weeks ago, we wrote to you about our concern that your proposed “Blueprint for Reform” did not acknowledge the critical role parents must play in any meaningful school improvement process. We also expressed our serious reservations about some of the Blueprint's strategies.
Our goal is simple – to ensure that our children receive the best possible education. As parents, we are the first to see the positive effects of good programs, and the first line of defense when our children's well-being is threatened. Our input is unique and essential.
Recently, Secretary Duncan announced that he would require districts that receive federal school improvement grants (SIG) to involve parents and the community in planning for schools identified for intervention. We appreciate this response as a first step; however, more needs to be done.
First, leadership must come from the top. We would like to see meaningful, broad-based parent participation not just in our local districts, but at the U.S. Department of Education, where critical decisions are being made about our children's education.
Second, we need more than rhetoric to feel confident that only educationally sound strategies will be used in our children's schools. The current emphasis on more charter schools, high-stakes testing, and privatization is simply not supported by research.
Disagreement on these matters is not a result of parents clinging to the “status quo,” as you have recently asserted. No one has more at stake in better schools than we do – but we disagree with you and Secretary Duncan about how to get them.
We need effective, proven, common-sense practices that will strengthen our existing schools, rather than undermine them. These include parent input into teacher evaluation systems, fairly-funded schools, smaller class sizes and experienced teachers who are respected as professionals, not seen as interchangeable cogs in a machine. We want our children to be treated as individuals, not data points. And we want a real, substantial role in all decisions that affect our children’s schools.
More specifically, and urgently, we insist on being active partners in the formulation of federal school improvement policies. The models proposed by the U.S. Department of Education are rigid and punitive, involving either closure, conversion to charters, or the firing of large portions of the teaching staff. All of these strategies disrupt children’s education and destabilize communities; none adequately addresses the challenges these schools face.
We also insist on being active partners in reforms at the school level, with the power to devise our own local solutions, using research-based methods, after a collaborative needs assessment at each individual school.
Our voices must count. If you listen, you will make real changes in your School Improvement Grant proposals as well as your “Blueprint” for education reform.
We look forward to your response and a brighter future for our children and our nation.
Sincerely, Parents Across America (signatories attached)
Natalie Beyer, Durham Allies for Responsive Education (DARE), NC
Caroline Grannan, San Francisco public school parent, volunteer and advocate, CA
Pamela Grundy, Mecklenburg Area Coming Together for Schools, NC
Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters, New York, NY
Sharon Higgins, public school parent, Oakland, CA
Susan Magers, Parent Advocate, FL
Mark Mishler, active public school parent, former president, Albany City PTA*, NY
Bill Ring, TransParent®, Los Angeles, CA
Lisa Schiff, San Francisco public school parent, board member of Parents for Public Schools*, member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco*, "School Beat" columnist for BeyondChron, CA
Rita M. Solnet, President, CDS, Inc.; Director, Testing is Not Teaching, FL
Dora Taylor, Parent and co-editor of Seattle Education 2010, WA
Julie Woestehoff, Parents United for Responsible Education, Chicago, IL
Parents Across America: Join us in sending a message to President Obama and the Congress by signing on here; also please join our Facebook page and leave a comment.
Today, eighteen parent activists from across the nation sent a letter to Obama and the Congress, opposing his administration's wrong-headed, pro-privatization version of education reform, and calling for new priorities for our public schools, including more parent involvement and smaller classes.
As we wrote, "So far, the parent voice has been missing from the debate over education and is entirely absent from the top-down and often draconian proposals being put forward by the administration. We strongly believe that the Blueprint’s proposals would undermine rather than strengthen our public school system, particularly in the urban districts whose parents we represent. "
Read the full letter here, and the press release here. We also point out that Blueprint’s proposals represent large-scale experiments on our kids, and yet lack informed parental consent -- which would never be allowed in the field of medicine.
Incredibly, the only mention of the word "parents" in Duncan's entire "Blueprint" for the reauthorization of ESEA is that parents of American Indian children should have input as to the curriculum in their schools. No wonder that the US Department of Education's approval rating has dropped more sharply than any other government agency, according to the Pew Research Center.
The letter points out that "Education is a public trust and the very foundation of our democracy. We urge you to be wary of the influence of venture philanthropy on our public education system. We are well aware that powerful foundations -- such as those of Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, and others – are shaping many of our federal and local education policies with dollars rather than evidence-based solutions."
We conclude our message to Congress this way: “You hold a great responsibility in your hands this year in reauthorizing the ESEA. ....We urge you to insist that the next version of the ESEA formally incorporates the views of public school parents as well. As highly knowledgeable primary stakeholders, we must be permitted to have a seat at the decision-making table."
For an article about our letter, check out Gotham Schools.
Diane Ravitch, education historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education, has been traveling across the United States to inform audiences how Race to the Top is using exactly the same "measure and punish" philosophy as No Child Left Behind. RTTT is considered to be the prototype for what is certain to become another cleverly named version of NCLB II. Ravitch warns if the bill is approved it will turn out to be a poison pill for American education.
This guest post by Caroline Grannan features the essential arguments.
Noted education commentator and author Diane Ravitch was in the Bay Area last week urging Bay Area residents to launch a protest campaign to pressure Rep. George Miller to stop defending the No Child Left Behind law -- based on (as Ravitch says) "measure and punish." Miller co-sponsored the original law, but I asked her why there's any reason to pressure him at this point. She explained that he can control reauthorization of the law, and that Nancy Pelosi and the House Education Committee do what he wants. Miller’s district is in the Easy Bay, and he has offices in Richmond, Concord and Vallejo. Contact info at the end of this post.
I'm posting a string of quotes from Ravitch -- both from her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" and from commentaries by her and interviews with her -- to clarify why No Child Left Behind should be viewed as harming schools and even as a threat to the future of public education.
Quotes:
"As 2014 draws nearer, growing numbers of schools across the nation are approaching an abyss. Because NCLB requires states to promise that they will reach an impossible goal, the states have adopted timetables agreeing to do what they can't do, no matter how hard teachers and principals try. Most have stretched out the timetable—putting off the biggest gains for the future—to stave off their inevitable failure. The school officials who wrote the timetables in the early years of implementation must have hoped or expected that they would be retired and gone long before 2014 arrived. With every passing year that brought the target date closer, more and more public schools failed to make AYP and were labeled as "failing." Even though some states lowered the cut scores (or passing marks) on their tests to make it easier for schools to meet their target, many still failed to make AYP toward 100 percent proficiency for every subgroup. And in states that maintained high standards and did not lower the cut scores, even more schools fell behind."
***
"One of the unintended consequences of NCLB was the shrinkage of time available to teach anything other than reading and math. Other subjects, including history, science, the arts, geography, even recess, were curtailed in many schools. Reading and mathematics were the only subjects that counted in calculating a school's adequate yearly progress, and even in these subjects, instruction gave way to intensive test preparation. Test scores became an obsession. Many school districts invested heavily in test-preparation materials and activities. Test-taking skills and strategies took precedence over knowledge. Teachers used the tests from previous years to prepare their students, and many of the questions appeared in precisely the same format every year; sometimes the exact same questions reappeared on the state tests. In urban schools, where there are many low-performing students, drill and practice became a significant part of the daily routine."
***
"NCLB was a punitive law based on erroneous assumptions about how to improve schools. It assumed that reporting test scores to the public would be an effective lever for school reform. It assumed that changes in governance would lead to school improvement. It assumed that shaming schools that were unable to lift test scores every year—and the people who work in them—would lead to higher scores. It assumed that low scores are caused by lazy teachers and lazy principals, who need to be threatened with the loss of their jobs. Perhaps most naively, it assumed that higher test scores on standardized tests of basic skills are synonymous with good education. Its assumptions were wrong. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools."
***
"In the NCLB era, when the ultimate penalty for a low-performing school was to close it, punitive accountability achieved a certain luster, at least among the media and politicians. Politicians and non-educator superintendents boasted of how many schools they had shuttered. Their boasts won them headlines for "getting tough" and cracking down on bad schools. But closing down a school is punitive accountability, which should happen only in the most extreme cases, when a school is beyond help. Closing schools should be considered a last step and a rare one. It disrupts lives and communities, especially those of children and their families. It destroys established institutions, in the hope that something better is likely to arise out of the ashes of the old, now-defunct school. It accelerates a sense of transiency and impermanence, while dismissing the values of continuity and tradition, which children, families, and communities need as anchors in their lives. It teaches students that institutions and adults they once trusted can be tossed aside like squeezed lemons, and that data of questionable validity can be deployed to ruin people's lives."
***
"Tests are necessary and helpful. But tests must be supplemented by human judgment. When we define what matters in education only by what we can measure, we are in serious trouble. When that happens, we tend to forget that schools are responsible for shaping character, developing sound minds in healthy bodies (mens sana in corpore sano), and forming citizens for our democracy, not just for teaching basic skills. We even forget to reflect on what we mean when we speak of a good education. Surely we have more in mind than just bare literacy and numeracy. And when we use the results of tests, with all their limitations, as a routine means to fire educators, hand out bonuses, and close schools, then we distort the purpose of schooling altogether."
***
"Results from this multibillion-dollar undertaking have been disappointing. Gains in achievement have been meager, as we have seen not only on NAEP's long-term-trend report, but also on the NAEP tests that are administered every other year. In national assessments since the No Child Left Behind legislation was passed, 4th grade reading scores went up by 3 points, about the same as in the years preceding the law's enactment. In 8th grade reading, there have been no gains since 1998. In mathematics, the gains were larger before NCLB in both 4th grade and 8th grade.
"In the latest international assessment of mathematics and science, released this past December, U.S. students again scored well behind students in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Taipei. Our 4th grade and 8th grade students recorded small improvements in mathematics, but not in science, where those in both grades scored lower than in years predating No Child Left Behind.
"The decline of 8th grade test scores in science from 2003 to 2007 demonstrates the consequences of ignoring everything but reading and mathematics. Because NCLB counts only those basic skills, it has necessarily reduced attention to such non-tested subjects as science, history, civics, the arts, and geography."
***
"(NCLB) has encouraged the states to dumb down the standards by saying that every state would have its own definition of proficiency, every state would use its own test, by setting a deadline of 2014—which is totally unrealistic—by which all students are supposed to be proficient, and then having very onerous sanctions for schools that are unable to meet this completely unrealistic deadline. It's meant that everyone is encouraged to find ways to produce the numbers, and one thing we know from the market sector is that when the numbers are what counts, people meet the numbers, even though they sacrifice the goals of the organization. What we're doing instead of producing well-educated people is producing the numbers. The gains since No Child Left Behind was adopted are smaller than before No Child Left Behind was adopted."
***
"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing. And it turns out that as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on; there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards, it's actually lowered standards because many states have dumbed down their tests, or changed the scoring of the tests, to say that more kids are passing than actually are.
There are states that say that 80 to 90 percent of their children are proficient readers and proficient in math. But when the national test is given, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the same state will have not 90 percent proficient, but 25 or 30 percent."
***
"The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style."
From 2001 to 2006, U.S. Congressman George Miller was the ranking Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee. With that committee's chairman and their Senate counterparts, Miller helped draft the No Child Left Behind Law. Today he is the Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. He was elected by California's California's 7th congressional districtwhich includes:
Benicia
Concord
El Cerrito
Martinez
Pittsburg
Richmond
San Pablo
Vacaville
Vallejo
---
Miller’s staff:
Chief of Staff: Danny Weiss
Scheduler: Courtney Rochelle
Legislative Director: Ben Miller (not Miller’s son)
Press Secretary: Amy Peake
---
Miller’s bio:
George Miller was born in Richmond, CA, on May 17, 1945 and lives in Martinez. He graduated from Diablo Valley Community College, San Francisco State University, and earned his law degree from the University of California, Davis, Law School. He served on the staff of then-State Senate Majority Leader George Moscone in Sacramento. He is married to Cynthia Caccavo Miller, a life-long resident of Contra Costa County. They have two sons and five grandchildren.
Tom Vander Ark is a participant on the National Journal’s Education blog. Recently he posted a comment on Crist's veto of the Florida teacher bill (SB-6) and called it “Putting the Brakes on Progress.” The bill sought to tie 50% of a teacher’s evaluation and pay to test scores, and to make it easier for them to be fired.
As an ed defomer mouthpiece responding to a defeat, here’s Vander Ark description of what happened in Florida: “…despite overwhelming public, philanthropic, and federal support for teacher effectiveness, the brakes have been applied by well organized and funded forces protecting the status quo.” Funny how he can put a negative spin on people in a democracy organizing themselves for a cause they believe in.
Indeed, Florida’s resistance forces became well organized, but the movement didn’t turn into a flood of opposition because of money. This movement was generated at the grassroots level using online social networking tools. Anthony Cody described how it worked in “From Facebook to YouTube: A Teacher Movement is Born.”
The large response in Florida may be an indication that a major pushback to the ed deform movement is finally getting underway. The drive is coming deep from people’s hearts and is emerging out of a sense of frustration and a desire for the truth to be told. It taps into anger that has been produced by one’s hard work being publicly insulted and disregarded for years.
People in the ed deformer crowd like to present themselves as supremely righteous warriors on a battleground where they are fighting for “teacher effectiveness” (their own personal view). They broad brush their opposition (= public school supporters) as an entity who never wants the public schools to improve, and doesn't mind if bad, lazy teachers are running the classrooms. And the ed deform propaganda constantly blurts that public school teachers ARE “bad, lazy” teachers who all deserve to be fired. The media and politicians have come to parrot and support their message.
But this oft-repeated, skewed outlook on teachers has never made sense, and, to me, has always been the main clue that something about their message just isn’t right. Anyone with a pinch of practical experience in an urban public school knows that the volume of teacher-bashing is turned up way too high. Any critical thinker can deduce that ulterior motives must be at work.
The presence of a tiny number of flawed employees – which will exist in any workplace – has been magnified and dwelled upon and talked about incessantly and loudly. What is being ignored is the fact that the majority of teachers in public schools are either perfectly okay or good, and some of them are even great.
If public school teachers were as bad as the ed deformers like to say, one would think that public school parents would be greatly dissatisfied. But as it happens, this is not the case.
In 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted a Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) as a part of its National Household Education Surveys Program.* The final report, “Parent and Family Involvement in Education, 2006-07 School Year” was released in August 2008.
This study asked a large number of K-12 parents if they were 1. “very satisfied,” 2. “somewhat satisfied,” 3. “somewhat dissatisfied,” or 4. “very dissatisfied” with their child’s teachers. Interestingly, the report only revealed the first of the four possible responses. But it was produced under the Bush/Spellings regime, so it might have been intentionally written in such a way to make public school teacher satisfaction appear worse than it actually is.
Overall, 64% of surveyed parents were “very satisfied” with their teachers. Here’s the breakdown:
When a clear majority of parents are reporting that they are “very satisfied” with their child’s teachers, things are certainly not as bad as the ed deform camp has been trying to make it seem.
I wanted to see a breakdown of the remaining three possible responses for all school types, because if the truth was as bad as we hear about public school teachers these days, I'd expect to see at least 50% of the parents report that they were "very dissatisfied."
I inquired with a staff member at the National Center for Education Statistics who promptly and politely directed me to “Trends in the Use of School Choice.”(so much for 'dissing' federal government employees!). He suggested the variability seen in the figures (eg. 61% vs. 57%) might due to the fact that the second report used data for grades 3-12, while the other used K-12. (He's put out that query and if I get a response I'll post it in the comments).
So here is the data-based truth about what parents think about their child’s teachers.
TEACHER SATISFACTION
Public, assigned
1993
1999
2003
2007
Satisfied
(very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)
91%
(56+35)
92%
(54+38)
91%
(56+35)
91%
(57+34)
Dissatisfied
(somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)
9%
(7+2)
8%
(6+2)
8%
(6+2)
10%
(7+3)
Public, chosen
1993
1999
2003
2007
Satisfied
(very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)
95%
(62+33)
93%
(62+31)
94%
(65+29)
94%
(64+30)
Dissatisfied
(somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)
6%
(4+2)
6%
(5+1)
6%
(4+2)
7%
(6+1)
Private, religious
1993
1999
2003
2007
Satisfied
(very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)
98%
(75+23)
98%
(76+22)
95%
(72+23)
97%
(76+21)
Dissatisfied
(somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)
2%
(2+0)
2%
(2+0)
4%
(3+1)
3%
(2+1)
Private, nonreligious
1993
1999
2003
2007
Satisfied
(very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)
97%
(77+20)
97%
(75+22)
94%
(70+24)
97%
(74+23)
Dissatisfied
(somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)
3%
(1+2)
3%
(2+1)
6%
(4+2)
3%
(3+0)
The difference in overall satisfaction between the assigned public schools and other school types only ranges from 3% to 6%.
So, why would some people be working so hard to convince the public that 99.9% of the public school teachers are lazy, ineffective bums?
Because one of the things that the ed deform movement is after is to kill off the morale of public school teachers, and undermine any citizen support. They want to make the teachers weak, demoralized, and submissive, and they want to destroy their unions. This is the oligarchs' current national economic agenda.
And going back to Vander Ark’s original statement: “…despite overwhelming public, philanthropic, and federal support for teacher effectiveness…”
Broad, Gates, Bloomberg, the Waltons, the Dells, and other corporate malanthropies have poured billions of dollars into making their version of market-based ed deform happen. I hate that this country has become an oligarchy, as Simon Johnson defines as “political power based on economic power.”*** I hate that national education policy is now being dictated by a handful of wealthy, powerful forces who do their dirty work behind the scenes and never appear before the public for challenge or questioning. But enough about me.
Don’t forget that Teacher Appreciation Week & Day for 2010 are just around the corner:
Teacher Appreciation Week is May 3-7
Teacher Appreciation Day is Wednesday, May 4th
The big foundations should send each of the nation’s urban school teachers a thank-you-for-your-hard-work note, a bouquet of flowers, and a box of chocolate. At least.
` ` ` ` ` ` `
*From the report:
The survey addressed many topics, including school choice, homeschooling, family involvement in children’s schools, factors affecting parent and family participation in school, parent support for and satisfaction with the school, parents’ communication with other parents, school efforts to involve families, parent involvement with children’s homework, parent and family involvement in activities outside of school, parent and family plans for postsecondary education, and child health and disability status.
The sample was selected using random-digit-dial methods, and the data were collected using computer assisted telephone interviewing technology. NHES:2007 was conducted by Westat, a social science research firm, from January 2 through May 6, 2007. PFI interviews were conducted with parents or guardians of a nationally representative sample of children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade including children who were enrolled in public or private schools or homeschooled. The total number of completed PFI interviews was 10,681, which represents a population of 53.2 million students in grades K through 12, when weighted to reflect national totals.
**Here’s something interesting about the “School Characteristics” definition in the glossary of the original report:
“Schools that are public are further classified using the variable SCHOICE according to whether the parent reported having chosen the school or whether the school had been assigned to the student by the school district. Students in public school whose parents reported that their assigned school is their school of choice are categorized as attending a chosen school.”
So, someone like me who is required to participate in my district’s “Options” program by filling out a form in which I list my neighborhood school as my first choice can be interpreted by the Department of Education as engaging in school choice. It just seems odd and a bit off.
"Oligarchy is just- it's a very simple, straightforward idea from Aristotle. It's political power based on economic power… I know people react a little negatively when you use this term for the United States. But it means political power derived from economic power. That's what we're looking at here. It's disproportionate, it's unfair, it is very unproductive, by the way. Undermines business in this society. And it's an oligarchy like we see in other countries."
