Education Reform: Let the Debates Begin

Grumpy note:  Last week Jonathon Alter posted an opinion piece about the people opposed to education reform on Bloomburg..  Some of you may recall Alter from his days at Newsweek.  He's an arrogant elitest who distains anyone of lower caste, (most people) and a shrill for the White House... Last week instead of calling the Tea Partiers uneducated racist neandrathals he was picking on educators who disagree with the administration.(how dare they disagree with Obama or Ducan)  Except for not playing the race card, the treated the educatiors the same way he treats conservatives..
 
Now I'll turn you back over to Sandra

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Sandra in Brevard



Education reformers have thus far controlled the narrative, with national media outlets by and large cooperating. Those interested in education are covering the developments in education-oriented news sites and in the blogosphere; however, wider coverage is missing and the general public underinformed. This state of affairs may be changing.

Diane Ravitch is the most visible voice questioning current educational reform initiatives. While she is not the only voice, she has emerged as a favorite for personal attack versus healthy debate on the facts of the matter. One outcome of journalist Jonathan Alter's recent Bloomberg article asking the public to "believe" in education reform, is an online debate:

Diane Ravitch will debate Jonathan Alter on David Sirota's Denver radio show, at 7 am Denver time, 9 am Eastern time, on the morning of Wednesday, June 8.

Live online here and later by podcast here.

Ravitch has several debates scheduled this summer including one with Michelle Rhee, which will get C-SPAN coverage. Grumpy Educators will post reminders as these debates come up.

Many are questioning and uncomfortable with the role the Gates Foundation is playing in molding American education. Many see the Gates Foundation dominated the process and the public narrative. NPR reporter Wendy Kaufman asked Jeff Raikes, Gates Foundation CEO to respond to Ravitch's views that opposing voices are drowned-out:

I think Diane is really underestimating the number of voices that are out there, including her own," says Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Gates Foundation.

He dismisses Ravitch's contention that the foundation has commandeered the education debate. At the same time he makes no apologies for the organization's doggedness in trying to achieve its objectives.

NPR is partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Foundation recently announced a new initiative called Teach First. The plan includes the Foundations intention to ensure “frequent placement ... in local media coverage of issues related to teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers” in accordance with the Gates approach, "to build “strong ties to local journalists, opinion elites, and local/state policymakers and their staffs.” The plan includes "campaigns to reach out to parents, teachers, students, business and civic and religious leaders."

With Gates money and powerful connections, I wonder who exactly is underestimating what. Tune in tomorrow morning or listen to the podcast when convenient. Get informed.

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Education Reform: Basic Questions Go Unanswered

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Sandra in Brevard





Billionaires donating their wealth to causes that are intended to improve the quality of life for humankind is not bad, evil, or conspiratorial. However, it is anti-democratic when those billionaires, in a highly organized effort, push out parents, the public, all critical views, and the taxpayer from any role whatsoever in shaping or reshaping the educational landscape. In an extraordinarily dramatic federal education reform policy, fueled by a multitude of non-profits funded by unending stream of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, parent and local control has been lost.

News outlets have failed to provide basic descriptions, commentary, analysis, and critique. A few hundred articles have been published on the subject By and large, critical voices have been shut out completely. Questions that demand answers regarding elevated testing requirements, complex longitudinal data systems, and serious privacy concerns go unanswered, ignored, or trivialized. I do not recall electing non-profits to legislative and regulatory roles. Is the May 22 New York Times article a sign that current policies will finally get the media attention the public rightly deserves? Looks like the Times article got the attention of the Tampa Gradebook, so at least one Florida newspaper covered the story. Will the topic make it to Meet the Nation, Fox News, or talk radio in ways that ordinary people can understand? In the end, we are stuck with the goods.

In the the blogosphere, I found smart fact-based Conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, parents, community members, and education experts voicing legitimate and reasonable concerns. On the heels of the NY Times article, long-time blogger Susan Ohanian fills in significant details regarding the players and extent of the Gates Foundation influence. There are some surprises. Read the list of players and their funding sources here.

Ohanian also describes the apparent news blackout:

Wanting to see which "independent experts" reporters called upon to explain Race to the Top and the Common Core standards, I examined over 700 articles published between mid-May 2009 and mid-July 2010. I eliminated cites from state ed officials, union officials and politicos. This left me with 152 outside experts quoted in 414 articles. Of the 23 experts quoted five times or more, 15 have connections with institutions receiving Gates funding and 13 with strong charter advocacy institutions. Who doesn't gets cited, raised very troubling questions.

Frederick M. Hess, American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies writes a blog for Education Week, is quoted in the NY Times article:

Mr. Hess, a frequent blogger on education whose institute received $500,000 from the Gates foundation in 2009 “to influence the national education debates,” acknowledged that he and others sometimes felt constrained. “As researchers, we have a reasonable self-preservation instinct,” he said. “There can be an exquisite carefulness about how we’re going to say anything that could reflect badly on a foundation.”

“Everybody’s implicated,” he added.

Something must change in this regard. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it was starting another foundation, called Teaching First and covered by Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss.

The plan includes campaigns to reach out to parents, teachers, students, business and civic and religious leaders, and to build “strong ties to local journalists, opinion elites, and local/state policymakers and their staffs.” The plan explains how the organization will ensure “frequent placement ... in local media coverage of issues related to teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers” in accordance with the Gates approach.

The proposal calls for supporting local groups that promote the value-added evaluation systems, and who even get involved in unions so they can demand this approach in collective bargaining for teachers contracts.

The motives of billionaire venture capitalists are really not the issue in my opinion. The issue is a lack of critical analysis and inclusion of the public on the massive education reform initiative underway right now. Hess wrote an interesting blog titled "What We've Got Here Is...Failure to Communicate" stepping over the Gates controversy into the policy itself.

Even mainstream conservatives are being radicalized. Last weekend, standards guru Sandra Stotsky, a longtime champion of standards-based reform and generally regarded as an NCLB supporter, blasted the very notion of federal involvement in schooling. In an e-mail exchange regarding the Common Core, she wrote, "I've tried to think of sound federal policies in education (with positive effects on student achievement), and the closest I've come are the Land Grant Acts of the 19th century...In my lifetime, I can't think of ONE federal policy that has improved student achievement."


It's kind of amusing, really. The self-proclaimed reformers just can't imagine that, confronted with data showing that many children are poorly served, any sensible adult could look askance at their favored policies. When confronted with skepticism that the measures will work as intended, the would-be reformers ask with wide-eyed shock, "Are you willing to just let those children fail?" If a conservative House staffer suggests that maybe the feds lack the ability or purview to solve the problem, would-be reformers seem to think they've stepped through the looking glass.

The problem is deeper than a failure to communicate.


Read the rest of Sandra's Education Reform Blogs

Common Core Standards Spur the Marketplace

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Sandra in Brevard




According to press reports, the Bill Gates Foundation and the Pearson Foundation are partnering to create "complete, online curricula" for English/Language Arts and mathematics, based on the recently completed Common Core Standards. The effort is to offer school districts across the county a smooth transition to implementing the standards. Six states have not adopted the standards, the New Hampshire legislature will vote soon to reverse their decision to adopt them, and a similar proposal was presented to the Massachusetts legislature. School boards, organizations, experts, and parents have concerns about the Common Core Standards and their implications. One group expresses these shared concerns in a document called "What Parents, Taxpayers, and School Boards Should Know."


The Gates/Pearson partnership will offer 24 courses using "technological advances such as social networking, animation, and gaming to better engage and motivate students." Four courses will be available for free through the Gates Foundation. The rapid development process will release the math courseware for secondary students, and English/language arts for elementary students in the 2013-2014 school year, with "accompanying tools" to follow in 2014-2015.

Teachers will be part of the development process as well as experts from abroad.

"

Officials from the two foundations also said they are working with a range of experts not only in the United States, but also from such countries as Japan, Singapore, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Australia in building the new curricula."

The article does not specify the precise type of input that will be provided by the international community.

Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, a former director of the U.S. Department of Education research arm, expresses concern over the initiative this way:

“The question will be, and it’s a reasonable one to ask: Who profits from this? People will have to profit from it; you can’t deliver education products into the marketplace for free. But it will be interesting to follow the money and see who manages to monetize the nation’s investment in common-core standards and assessments.

Nevertheless, Mr. Whitehurst said, it’s good to see someone tackle a curriculum spanning so many grades, so one grade can build effectively upon another. And done well, the work could serve as a valuable lever in the industry to prompt more curriculum development, he said.

Still, Mr. Whitehurst said, it will be a daunting task to complete the curriculum systems in three years."

What do you think?


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/27/30pearson.h30.html?tkn=WNPFBe2J3HKGwyQI5rTI4uAlCURTf%2FytzB26&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

Read all of Sandra's Education Reform Blogs at Grumpy Educators 

Education Reform: Boondoggling along

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Sandra In Brevard









As SB736/HB7019 heads to Governor Scott's desk for signature, questions continue on costs. The Senate Pre-K12 Appropriations subcommittee peppered Commissioner Smith on costs, even though these committee members are the most knowledgeable on the question of costs. An article in the Tampa Gradebook asked if the questions indicate the bill went through too fast. Race to the Top funds will pay for most of the development of new tests, but no word on funding after federal funds run out. The merit pay portion of the bill receives no new money. Governor Scott indicates that he will sign the bill without answers to basic costs question indicating he is apparently satisfied that there will be no impact on taxpayers.


President Obama has presented his educational reform "Blueprint" modifying portions of No Child Left Behind, a welcome aspect; however, the plan includes additional testing to measure growth before the high-stakes test and pinpoint areas that require more attention. The rationale is that the correct things are not being tested. Congress is in a budget cutting mood and education will not get special attention on the chopping block.

Nationwide, parent unhappiness over the obsession with testing is getting some notice.

Duncan last September said he has visited 42 states and that nearly everywhere he went, teachers, parents, principals and lawmakers complained that what's taught in school is narrowing as more teachers focus on improving scores in standardized tests, especially in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students

Pennsylvania allows parents to "opt out" of standardized testing and there is a movement to do just that in order to cause a shift away from schools as testing factories.

Under Pennsylvania Code Title 22 Chapter 4, section 4 (d)(5), parents have the right to opt out of testing for their children. The exemption is “religious,” but the Pennsylvania Department of Education confirmed this includes any moral, psychological, philosophical or even medical objection. The reason cannot be challenged.

A large national "opt-out" movement, will impact the quantity and frequency of tests and the way the results are used. Such a movement would impact the vast amount of dollars spent on test development, scoring, and implementation costs. Apparently, the only "opt-out" provision available in Florida is to homeschool or find a private school, where other accountability rules apply.


Against this backdrop, there are clear supporters of maintaining the status quo on the testing routine.

http://www.centredaily.com/2011/03/11/2575400/pssas-put-burden-on-schools-students.html#ixzz1H75J7RSo

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-18-schooltesting18_ST_N.htm

Avitar:   http://www.clipartheaven.com/


Grumpy Note  Ducan openly admitts kids parents, teachers, smart politicians and Obama's dog Bo have had it with the all the testing,  As always Obama could care less about public opinion.  Besides his close buddies Jeb Bush and Bill Gates are all for it.  I'm beginning to wonder why when Gates barks, Obama jumps.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/gates-spends-millions-to-sway.html  

To see the rest of Sandra's blogs on Education Reform, visit Grumpy Educators

Follow Up to Data Mining

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Sandra in Brevard





The United Way is hosting community conversations to promote civil discourse on education reform across Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee this month. This “listening tour” on teacher effectiveness is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. If the scheduled ones are inconvenient, the United Way offers a way to form a convenient one, call them and they will explain how. Looks to me as though a civil conversation on educational reform is happening right here at Grumpyelder's place where there is no need to leave any personal information or details that could be mined later by an algorithm.


http://wiki.tothevillagesquare.org/display/EET/About+the+grant

Here’s some additional information:


Hillsborough County has a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

According to the Broad Foundation, Data Quality Control (DQC) begia assisting states in 2005 to build educational longitudinal data bases. The DQC website, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is listed as its founder.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation is a national venture philanthropy established by philanthropist Eli Broad to advance entrepreneurship for the public good in education, science and the arts. The Foundation funds the Broad Residency, which searches for individuals with MBA's and in industry for candidates to take rapid training to take on positions as superintendents and other managerial positions in our nation's school districts. The Broad Foundation subsidizes salaries once hired on. The Broad Center announced it's placed "the largest class of 42 early career executives into 28 public education systems, expanding for the first tie into state departments of education." One Broad Resident now works for Hillsborough County Public Schools.

The Broad Foundation received a $3.6 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to recruit and train as many as 18 Broad Residents over the next four years to provide management support to school districts and charter management organizations addressing the issue of teacher effectiveness. "Broad Residents will help school systems dramatically improve the recruitment, selection, training, placement and evaluation of teachers". The Gates Foundation grant is the first multi-million-dollar grant The Broad Residency has received from a funder other than The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

"http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/0-100908tbrnewclassgates.pdf


All Broad Residents have M.B.A.s or other advanced degrees. Seventy-four percent of this year’s class, selected from a candidate pool of more than 2,500 applicants, come from leading business and law schools such as Harvard University, Duke University or the University of Michigan. Participants have an average of 10 years of experience, typically from a Fortune 500 or other major company. Fifty-two percent are people of color. The Broad Residency continues to be far more selective—at 2 percent—than the highest-rated M.B.A. programs. The Broad Residency (www.broadresidency.org) pays 50 percent of each Resident’s salary the first year, and 25 percent the second year, with the partner organization paying the balance, except where a Resident is already employed by that organization.

http://www.broadeducation.org/asset/0-100908tbrnewclassgates.pdf



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