It May Take a Parent Revolt

to stop the standardized testing madness. These tests were originally used as "diagnostic" tools; they were never designed to measure teacher "effectiveness," especially when the tests are so obviously flawed:

There is madness in tying teachers' careers and reputations to their students' scores on such low-quality and incoherent examinations. Our policymakers have chosen to ignore the research warning that value-added assessment is inherently fraught with error, instability, and unreliability. Children are not wheat, their growth is not utterly predictable, and the standardized tests capture only a subset of what matters most in education.

The ONLY Way the Testing Madness Will Stop

is if parents all over the country refuse to have their kids tested. Teachers have very little say or power to do it for fear of retaliation.

There may be hope after all:

Parents have the right to opt their kids out of the tests. There's no punishment, though the kids get a zero. Handfuls have opted out over the years, often at alternative schools. A few years back a Seattle science teacher refused to give the test, saying it was harmful to students.

But state officials say parents have never pulled their kids on this large a scale.

"We're kind of shocked at the size of it," said Nathan Olson, spokesman for the state superintendent of public instruction. "No Child Left Behind is still the law of the land."

Parents at Seattle Hill say budget cuts drove them to conclude the tests were a poor use of money and classroom time.

The Assholery of Arne

Arne is going around promoting his harebrained scheme of tying teacher evaluations to student test scores.

Given few students even take these tests seriously and thus don't give their best effort, the whole idea is ridiculous.

Still More Education Wars

Just because 97 percent of NYC's elementary and middle schools get A's and B's for their efforts in "making progress" in raising standardized test scores doesn't mean anything. As we know, since these are public schools the administrators ALL grade on a curve.

The progress reports, which help determine bonuses for teachers and principals, have become one of the most contentious policies in Chancellor Joel I. Klein’s administration. Dozens of school districts from cities around the country and as far as Australia have worked with the city’s Department of Education to develop their own progress reports, but the grades have been widely criticized by those within the city system who say that they do not accurately reflect a school’s strengths and shortcomings.

New York’s report cards focus on how much students at a school have improved on state standardized tests, unlike most accountability systems throughout the country, which are based primarily on how well students perform on tests. The grades are assigned using a complicated formula intended to compare schools with similar student populations to one another.

The tests are a total crock of shit anyway, for students in general don't take the tests seriously and therefore the tests are NOT an accurate measure of student achievement or of anything, for that matter.

The Education Wars

Gerald Bracey takes on Barack and Arne's harebrained attempt to pervert the use of test scores in order to "evaluate" teachers. It's utterly stupid to pin education problems on the people least guilty of it.

Meanwhile, principals and other administrators can do whatever the fuck they want. There's NOBODY around to hold them accountable. School boards don't count, either.

States are rolling over and playing dead on this issue because a) they are desperate for money and b) it is unlikely that people like Bloomberg or the Governator--or Duncan-- have a clue about the abuse they are permitting.

Duncan's enthusiastic championing of a "reform" that has been shown not to work very well--charter schools--can only be taken as an instrument for union busting. If the NEA and AFT won't stand up to this abuse of testing, they deserve to be busted.

As I found in my own experience, unions are basically worthless in defending individual teachers. They are nothing but subsidiaries of the districts.
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The New York City public school district is arguably the worst and most corrupt in the United States. Apparently there were scads of so-called "U-ratings" of teachers, which translated means "unsatisfactory" and threatens teachers with termination if not stripping them of their licenses. This is a notoriously abusive system of an institution which already has numerous abusive public school districts, thanks in large part to "reforms" of the past thirty years forcing privatization models and schooling inept administrators in the worst aspects of businesses. I like this response from a dissent teacher explaining all of those "U-ratings":

On 7/25/09, And how many are bogus? wrote:
> My guess is about 80%.
>
> What's the definition of an "unsatisfactory" teacher?
>
> Anyone know?

Re: 1,554 U-Ratings Given Out in the NYC Schools for 2008-2009

Unsatisfactory Teacher TO THE *AGW'S :
*(Administrators-Gone-Wild)

One who questions.
One who asks too many questions.
One who points out wrongdoings.
One who reports wrongdoings.
One who campaigns for a better way of doing things.
One who doesn't work after work or on Saturdays as much as
they'd like.
One who reports violence or crimes, rather than covering them
up.
One who is out when they are ill, rather than allowing viruses
to spread.
One who tells the truth about the performance of the child or
the school.
One who asserts their rights.
One who defends the union contract.
One who defends the public trust.
One who is opposed to abuse of other teachers, students,
parents, community.
One who files a grievance. One who tries to organize staff.
One who distributes information to help the staff.
One who the principal conswiders a threat because they don't
appear at their parties.
One who is tenured, experienced and/or over 40 years of age.
One who appears eccentric or of with an accent, or with a
cultural or religious difference that the AGW's find
unacceptable.
One who is not content with Everyday Math or The Workshop
Model.
One who's had the misfortune of a combination of illness,
death in the family, religious observances, someone to care
for, etc., which caused latenesses or absences, which
inconvenienced the principal (supposedly inconveniencing the
school).
One who has an either too fast or too slow but deliberate
delivery of a lesson.
One whom the principal wants out so they can stick a friend in
to replace.
One whom a parent or child or other staff member complains
about for standing their ground.
One whom the principal dislikes for any reason whatsoever and
would seek to "gun for", harass, humiliate, belittle, villify,
retaliate against arbitrarily, capriciously and/or
maliciously.
And then there are cases of real incompetence in perhaps 5%.
Polo Colon

The Education Wars

Arne Duncan and his push for charter schools have been dealt a setback.
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The idea of using student test scores to "measure" teacher "performance" is so stupid as to be laughable, especially when you consider kids don't take standardized tests seriously to begin with.

Of course administrators aren't held to any such standards. They already abuse their power as it is, and teachers will be treated even worse with these dumb ideas.

Ohanian says Duncan and politicians like George Miller, a so-called Democrat like Arne, are killing the teaching profession. The profession has already been on life support since the Reagan years. Nobody in his or her right mind would go into this field now with the privatizers and more crooks overtaking the schools.

The Education Wars

As if we didn't know this would be one of the results of No Child Left Behind.
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Some sage advice from a Nevada educator talking about the absolutely shitty school system there. It isn't just confined to Clark County or even to Nevada: bad administrators and ineffective unions are rampant throughout the United States.

It is indeed a crapshoot whether a teacher survives in public schools. One rotten, sociopathic principal, and it's all over, not just in Nevada but in every school district in the entire United States. You are blackballed and prevented from ever teaching again.

A snip:

First, the average annual teacher salary, roughly $46,000, is about half what police officers and firefighters make. In the first three years of this decade, as prices were tripling here, teachers received 0 percent (zero) in cost-of-living increases. In fact, teachers' cost-of-living raises for the entire decade have totaled only 16 percent, while police and firefighters have gotten between 35 and 45 percent.

In this derelict academic climate, psychopathic principals have frequently run rampant to create "lasting wounds and damaged schools," to quote Jo and Joseph Blase, co-authors of the book Breaking the Silence. According to one study cited by the Blases, 40 percent of principals nationally are knuckle-dragging troglodytes. In Vegas, this figure is probably closer to 60 percent. Hence, getting in a school here with a good principal is a crapshoot. The odds are stacked against you.

In a revealing speech to our school board recently, Ruben Murillo, president of the local teachers union, said, "We ask teachers to speak up [about working conditions], and they can't because they're afraid of retaliation." Sadly, Murillo's statement was a tacit admission the union has consistently failed its job of protecting teachers from unethical administrators.

One must understand, however, these "unions" aren't real unions at all and are nothing more than subsidiaries of school districts. And the problems with teachers' unions are the same all over the United States.

The Education Wars

Gerald Bracey, who writes a lot about education issues but not teacher abuse, rips apart Arne.

What do you expect from a bureaucrat who has never been a teacher? From Wikipedia:

Duncan has extensive experience in educational policy and management, but has not been a teacher. In 1992, Duncan became director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program to enhance educational opportunities for children on Chicago's South Side that was started by John W. Rogers, Jr., and in 1998 he joined the Chicago Public Schools. He became Deputy Chief of Staff for former Schools CEO Paul Vallas in 1999. In 1996, along with Rogers, he was part of a network that funded and supported Ariel Community Academy.

Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Duncan to serve as CEO of Chicago Public Schools on June 26, 2001.

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Speaking of the unspeakable Arne, he is gallivanting around the country pushing for national standardized tests, an idea that create even MORE corruption in public education than there already is.
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This editorial says to give Heath a chance as the new WCSD superintendent.

Ten cents he will be a toady like all of the rest of them, and then move on to bigger and better districts like Philadelphia or NYC.
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Dumb Shit Education "Reformers"

NEVER question the validity of standardized tests, so there MUST be "grade inflation" in the classroom.

And more shit about how our schools are "failing"--or not:

Critics have long said the NAEP is a poor measure of how well 12th-graders do, and the new data could give them ammunition: Even students whose transcripts show they took calculus score only, on average, "proficient" in math.

Loveless noted that the test includes no calculus, which forces advanced students to do math work they haven't done in three or four years.

Education researcher Gerald Bracey said 12th-graders take the NAEP in the last semester of their high school careers, and they have no real incentive to do well. Poor results are "senior slump writ large," he said.