NAEP RESULTS ADD TO EVIDENCE OF “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” FAILURE

A federal report released today shows that NAEP score improvement slowed or stopped in both reading and math after NCLB was implemented. 

Add Race To The Top failure too.

http://www.fairtest.org/fairtest-news-release-2013-naep-results-added-evid

FairTest News Release on 2013 NAEP Results, Added Evidence of NCLB Failure

Submitted by fairtest on November 7, 2013 - 1:49pm

for further information:                                                              
Dr. Monty Neill  (617) 477-9792                       
Bob Schaeffer     (239) 395-6773
for immediate release Thursday, November 7, 2013

NAEP RESULTS ADD TO EVIDENCE OF “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” FAILURE;
MORE ACHIEVEMENT GAINS BEFORE LAW WAS ADOPTED THAN AFTER;
TEST-AND-PUNISH EDUCATION POLICIES MUST CHANGE

   The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) “add to existing evidence that the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law has failed,” according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). A federal report released today shows that NAEP score improvement slowed or stopped in both reading and math after NCLB was implemented. NAEP data also show that score gaps between whites and historically disenfranchised groups are generally not narrowing.
   The NAEP trends are consistent with recent results from the ACT and SAT college admissions tests, where average scores continue to stagnate while some racial group score gaps are widening. Gaps are stagnant for 17-year-olds on the long-term NAEP tests.
   “It is well past the time for the federal government to dramatically change course,” said FairTest Executive Director Monty Neill. “The Obama Administration has continued the Bush Administration’s failed test-and-punish approach to the nation’s public schools. These policies, including ‘Race to the Top’ and NCLB waivers, have led to stagnant achievement on independent standardized exams. At the same time, there has been a massive increase in testing our children.”

    Dr. Neill concluded, “Because of the tsunami of high-stakes testing, parents, students and teachers across the nation are rising up in growing numbers. This movement is determined to reverse the tide and bring sanity back to American education.”

Duncan Playing With NCLB Rules is Blatant (and illegal) Attempt to Forcefeed States into More Ed Deform

 Arne Duncan announced that any state promising to lower class size drastically would be eligible for relief from onerous NCLB laws.

NOT!!!!!

In fact, the only states eligible are those meeting the ed deform agenda being pushed by the Obama Admin - and hey gang - let's not make believe that somehow Duncan and Obama are not on the same page- like calls for firing Duncan meam anything. That was one of the weak areas of SOS - the focus on Duncan and not on Obama. How interesting that Obama sat by helpless while Republicans gutted us while he is so blatantly willing to break the law on education. (Like how about him just declaring the debt ceiling is raised and Go Fuck yourselves!) Yes, he views us as patsies.

Well, a lot of people are not buying the Obama/Duncan doodoo.

National organization Parents Across America rejects Duncan's "waiver" proposal and calls for complete overhaul of No Child Left Behind 

The national organization Parents Across America opposes the proposal by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to offer "waivers" to states, exempting them from provisions of the law known as No Child Left Behind if they adopt education policies favored by Duncan.  

While Parents Across America (PAA) agrees that No Child Left Behind is an unrealistic, rigid and punitive law, the waivers that Duncan has now proposed are likely to be equally bad, if not worse. The Department of Education could force more states to adopt the Common Core Curriculum thus continuing to ignore the fact that it is illegal for the federal government to impose a national curriculum. The proposal is also likely to expand the destructive agenda of over-testing, school closings, and privatization, despite the fact that these policies have no scientific evidence to support them and are causing tremendous distress in communities across the nation.   

Natalie Beyer, school board member in Durham NC, says: “Parents agree that American students are spending too much class time on standardized testing, but these new proposals would do nothing to help.  Instead, the proposed waivers would further extend federal control over local school issues.  We request a study from the General Accounting Office of how much No Child Left Behind has already cost states and local districts and the estimated costs of implementing Common Core Standards under Race to the Top.  We implore Congress to include parents, teachers and students in an immediate thorough overhaul of NCLB before going any further down this dangerous road.”   

Adds Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, “Duncan’s heavy-handed and prescriptive approach would only continue the trend of spending billions to build up the bureaucracy and provide excessive profits to testing companies and consultants, while teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing throughout the country.  Whether the system of rewards and punishments will be based on value-added test scores instead of absolute goals, the result is the same for our schools and our children: more money and time spent on testing and test prep instead of real learning.”

Says Karran Harper Royal of the Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center in New Orleans, where more than 70% of students now attend charter schools, “Race to the Top has been far worse than NCLB and has done little to help our most academically needy students.  Yet what Arne Duncan is now proposing through these “waivers” could produce even worse outcomes for our children.” 

Rita Solnet of Palm Beach County School District Curriculum Council agrees:  “Numerous studies conclude that incentives linked to high stakes tests do not increase learning.  In fact, long term studies conclude this leads to a climate of cheating and gaming the system to survive. Every month we read of another major cheating scandal created by high-stakes testing.  Stop wasting taxpayer money on failed policies. I am pleased Secretary Duncan acknowledged the destructive flaws within NCLB.   NCLB is a train wreck. Let's not replace it with another one. Let's do this the right way so every child,  regardless of disability, ELL status, family income level can be assured a high quality public education delivered by respected professionals."

 Pamela Grundy of Mecklenburg Area Coming Together in Charlotte, NC concludes, “We need real reforms based on evidence, and partnerships with parents, teachers and communities, not a unilateral and autocratic agenda imposed from above. As parents watching our children’s education suffer, we are saying, “Enough.”

And at Schools Matter

R Lucido: price of NCLB waiver - agree to much worse Race to the Top

Rog Lucido: The feds are offering "a waiver from an oppressive and failed NCLB policy only to be switched to a much more sinister and stifling program."

Sent to the Fresno Bee:

Yesterday Education Secretary Duncan admitted that this year 82% of America’s schools will have failed under NCLB’s test and punish provisions, which he called an ‘impediment’. So, he is going to offer waivers so that our 100,000 schools who are receiving federal funds (approx. 5-10% of their budgets) will not have to meet NCLB’s test score provisions and the associated sanctions. He admitted that the law is faulty and schools need to be free from this ‘impediment’. But there is a price to pay for the waiver. He will gladly give schools a waiver only if they agree to more testing to judge students, teachers, schools and districts, adopt a new set of standards, then the states would need to replace NCLB’s test score targets with their own. Surprise! These are the core requirements of the ominous and educationally perverted ‘Race to the Top’, which is his blueprint for the replacement of NCLB.
This is nothing more than ‘bait and switch’ applied to education. Offer a waiver from an oppressive and failed NCLB policy only to be switched to a much more sinister and stifling program. States, parents and teachers need to reject this ploy to regain their educational autonomy.

 

Education Radio Blog Launches!

Stay tuned for more information about upcoming shows...our debut show will focus on the issues, people and events of the July 2011 Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action.
 http://education-radio.blogspot.com/
 ======

Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on right for news bits.

Replace No Child Left Behind With A Strong Education Policy

UPDATE - This is now closed. NCLB came in 4th. Teaching Esperanto in schools came in 2nd. Somehow I don't think Obama will take that as a serious issue.

VOTE NOW: Send A Message to Obama and Spread the Word

From Philip Kovacs of The Education Roundtable

I'm not sure if you've heard, but there's a movement of citizens inspired by the presidential campaign who are now submitting ideas for how they think the Obama Administration should change America. It's called "Ideas for Change in America."

One idea is titled: Replace No Child Left Behind With A Strong Education Policy. I thought you might be interested in getting involved and recommend you check it out. You can read more and vote for the idea by clicking the following link:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/replace_no_child_left_behind_with_a_strong_education_policy

At present, this idea is losing to a movement for Esperanto and a movement for implementing national science standards.

Please take 5 minutes to log in and vote for this issue!

The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.

I look forward to hearing what you think,
Philip

Arthur Coddington (former teacher), San Leandro, CA

No Child Left Behind sucked the soul out of education under the guise of accountability. It created no-win situations for school administrators and narrowed the curriculum for students to only test-relevant subjects. Education of children cannot be tracked according to models of productivity and corporate growth.

We need an education policy that encourages critical thinking, embraces science and the arts, empowers school administrators to make the right decisions for their students, and welcomes second career teachers without sending them back to school and into debt.

More from Moore on NCLB

Paul Moore Comment on WaPo article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/14/AR2008121401924.html

NCLB is the evil spawn of the globalization of our economy. That process is at the very foundation of business model for schools, charters, vouchers, data driven instruction, merit pay, standardized testing, and most perversely of all, paying students to consume the corporate version of knowledge. It was the reason the Business Roundtable and Bill Gates were so instrumental in getting this absurd and perverse legislation passed. The CEO's wanted a profit making private school system. In the new economy there would be Wal Mart and security guard jobs or the military for the kids that used to go to public schools.

These Reagan revolutionaries had a good run, in fact their campaign appeared ready to bear its bitter fruit. They had public school system wreckers like Michelle Rhee in place. Just then their rationale for being, their precious global economy, crashed! Why in just the past month they have had to do $326 billion CPR on Citigroup and scrambled to rescue the Big Three. Their pride and joy is on fire. It was supposed to be immutable. It was eternal! Now that attitude's all
gone. There's only panic now.

Any talk of NCLB is prayer said over a corpse.

The great transition is coming!

If It's Good For Obama's Kids....

A Place to Respond says:

[Obama] seems to see only dimly if at all how deceptively Orwellian the big-business driven standards and accountability movement is.

Do you think Obama's kids will be tested to death? Would Obama want Michelle Rhee, who he praised, as a Superintendent for his kids? Or Joel Klein?

She links to Gary Stager's superb piece.

The only times I've heard Obama speak about education, he has called for merit pay, increased accountability, praised D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee (check out this fine article about her) In other words, President-Elect Obama (unless I am proven wrong) believes the same BS that drove NCLB and many of the other bad ideas oppressing children and teachers.

Here is an idea for President-Elect Obama...

The $29,000 per year Sidwell Friends School is a fine learning environment and institution with a proud history of excellence. His daughters will be very happy there.

President and First Lady Obama should study everything done at Sidwell Friends School and copy it in every school across America. If it's good enough for his daughters, it's good enough for the children they are leaving behind.

Teacher Reviews Mr. Fry and NCLB

Andea Mauk a teaching colleague of Jack Freiberger in LA, nails the kind of failures of NCLB that drive people out of teaching in her review of his one man play "They Call Me Mr. Fry." over at her blog (my review is here and not nearly as effective politically and educationally.) Jack has some videos on his site.

Here are some excerpts from Andrea's review:

A former colleague of mine, Jack Freiberger, put on a one man show in Culver City yesterday. Even though I taught Saturday school, I rushed off to see the show with my mom, and we didn't even make it on time. Yet, we went in, and as we did, I was floored. There was my story, so many teachers' stories coming to life on the stage. It was so moving, so fantastically presented. Jack played many characters, but none more poignantly than Anthony, a "problem" student that came from a hard-knock background.

He dealt with the No Child Left Behind Act that has brought misery to so many classrooms across America in such a humorous but telling way. He shared the fact that he was written up for playing King Arthur, using a pink clown's ballon tied as a sword because LAUSD has a zero tolerance weapons policy. He subsequently got called to the principal's office because he was teaching math at the wrong minute of the day.

Yet, this is the reality that I face everyday. I was hired by the former principal because I was creative, and I could bring a plethora of talents to the classroom. Yet, due to our school's lack of progress at meeting our No Child Left Behind progress goals, my talent is no longer needed in the classroom. Instead, what is desired is a robot teacher who can follow the daily schedule to the exact minute, execute the lesson plan without grasping the teachable moments because the teachable moments that pop up are not part of the objective of the lesson, and unless the lesson is delivered in an extremely precise manner, the students "will not learn." I feel as if I am being asked to change my very essence.

So, as of yesterday, between my conversation with our current principal and watching the life of an NCLB teacher played out on stage, I came to realize that what made me a "good" teacher is exactly what the powers that be don't want to see in the classroom.

My mom has a habit of watching CNN endlessly, which to me is depressing, but she tells me almost daily that it is the teachers that are getting blamed for the woes of our educational system. I am not saying the teachers are blameless. However, not one teacher at my school knows exactly what "they" are looking for. In order to be an effective teacher, you are supposed to set clear expectations. Yet, the teachers have no idea exactly what is expected of them. They only hear what they have done wrong.

The fear has been so craftily instilled that I find myself working on various planning sheets that we are expected to have, and doing work for the "well planned lesson" until the moment it is time for me to go to bed. For teachers, bedtime comes early. As Jack said in the play, "Even my alarm clock is pissed off that it has to wake up at 5:30 every morning."

My house is a mess because there's only time to put toward the job, there are papers everywhere from lessons that need to be planned and projects and this and that. It's not a life. It's out of control. I saw it on stage yesterday, a mirror of my life, so touching and yet so ridiculous.

Tyranny of the test: One year as a Kaplan coach in the public schools

A fascinating article at Harper's by a former NYC teacher on the Kaplan and test prep scan. Long, but worth a read as the author, Jeremy Miller (who will probably never be asked to work for Kaplan again) spent serious time at a bunch of NYC schools, including Wadleigh, Truman, John F. Kennedy HS, and the George Washington HS campus.

Excerpts illustrating the true purpose of NCLB, which could have been designed (and probably was) so companies can gain maximum profit follow. Read the entire piece at Harper's.

...failing students become trapped in a foundering system, and the schools where students land en masse are left to carry out the test-heavy requirements of NCLB. For the New York schools “in need of improvement,” this means preparing students—many of whom are utterly lacking in basic academic skills and subject knowledge—to pass a battery of standardized exams.

Toward this end, it also means paying money to outside entities (often private companies such as Kaplan, the Princeton Review, and Newton Learning) up to $2,000 per student for courses focused not on improving content knowledge or on intensive educational counseling but on strategies for a “particular testing task.” (The total annual government expenditure per student in New York City is $15,000.) The failure of schools serving low-income students has been a windfall for the testing industry. Title I funds earmarked for test tutoring increased by 45 percent during the first four years of NCLB, from $1.75 billion in 2001 to $2.55 billion in 2005. With the ever growing stream of funding flowing through the nation’s schools, the number of supplemental-service providers nationwide has exploded. In New York City, the number of providers approved by the state’s department of education jumped from forty-seven in 2002–2003, the first full school year of NCLB, to 202 today.

The company’s revenues have jumped from $354 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion today, and it is now the most profitable subsidiary of its parent, The Washington Post Company, accounting for almost half of the conglomerate’s income. More telling are the margins: in 2003, Kaplan posted a loss of $11.7 million; in 2007, the company reported a $149 million profit.

Kaplan hired former N.Y.C. Chancellor of Education Harold Levy as an executive vice president and general counsel, and in 2006 relocated its headquarters for Kaplan K12, the division of the company that works in schools, from Midtown Manhattan to luxury offices downtown. According to Crain’s, the company made the move “to be closer to the New York City Department of Education.”

“Customization” and the educationally in vogue “differentiation” are two of Kaplan’s professed guiding principles. But Kaplan’s boilerplate assignment sheets and teaching materials hardly reflect the particulars of each of its customers.

I tell Ms. Semidey [who is supposed to be observed] I can teach the class tomorrow, since I’m scheduled to be in the school for two days. A little smile returns to her lips. “I’ve worked my ass off on this lesson,” she says. As I turn to leave, I am met by a small, perky woman. “Are you Jeremy?” she asks. It is the assistant principal, Ms. Campeas. She listens as I explain the conflict and the proposed resolution. “No,” she says. “This is Kaplan day. We will do the observation another day.” She calls Ms. Semidey over and firmly tells her the same. [So much for consideration for a teacher who has prepared for an observation.]

I find myself desperate. I can’t accept that I have not reached a single student in the program. Kaplan was being paid $1,200 per student (attending or not) for a job it knew from the outset it couldn’t complete. The money could have been used for an ESL or special- education teacher. Instead, I was receiving an entire day’s wage for each hour I sat in a nearly deserted classroom.

Kaplan coaches are taught to handle the strangeness of each new workplace by falling back on their highly scripted lessons and by quickly identifying school faculty as one of several possible archetypes; e.g., whether they are “trailblazers” within their schools or dreaded “saboteurs.”¹1. Kaplan’s handbook for coaches suggests that saboteurs be dealt with in a counterintuitive, Sun Tzu-esque way: by keeping them “on the inside where they can be watched rather than on the outside where they can cause trouble without it being detected until their effects are felt.”

I was cut off after I asked the teachers what the SAT was designed to do. It was a lame question, I admit, but the vehemence it unleashed surprised me. “It’s designed to keep people in their places,” a teacher shouted from the back of the room. “It serves the status quo.” There were approving snickers.

Yet as I came under attack at Truman, I found Kaplan’s training reflexively surging into my chest. We had been told in practice seminars to diffuse criticism by acknowledging complaints and then responding with an array of talking points intended to play on teachers’ anxiety over metrics and accountability. As a kind of disclaimer, we were to emphasize our transient and limited role in schools: We, Kaplan, could not ultimately be held accountable for whatever inadequate form of instruction was taking place at the school.

John Merrow, NCLB - and Randi Too

Last week we posted on the clear bias of John Merrow who chaired a loaded on line conference on NCLB which included few if any people who taught for more than 10 minutes.

But AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten was on the panel to defend teacher interests - ha, ha, ha - see one of her quotes below.

Susan Ohanian in her daily Outrages put up quotes from some of the participants.

________________________
Ohanian Comment:
I post a few snippets from this discussion on NCLB, narrated by PBS's John Merrow, Education Correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and President of Learning Matters Incorporated, as a warning. Should you wish to inflict more damage on your psyche, the url for the complete discussion is below.
http://newtalk.org/2008/08/do-we-need-a-basic-rewrite-of.php

Note how Merrow sets the tone: Any talk of abandoning No Child Left Behind is foolish. . . . So nobody who advocates ending NCLB is invited to the table. No grassroots activist was invited. "Activists" by definition in this atmosphere have ties to places like the Manhattan Institute, Hoover Institution, and the American Enterprise Institute. As I’ve been pointing out incessantly, those who come close to saying "dump NCLB" do so only as part of their strident calls for national standards and a national test.

But don't miss these [Merrow] gems:

NCLB as the vehicle for "beaming sunshine" down on public schools.

We as a nation have no aversion to national standards; we set them for everything from food to cars to toys. Why not national standards for all students in reading and math?

[L]et me throw into the mix Education Sector's finding–that we spend 15 cents of every $100 education dollars on NCLB testing. I know from conversations with the folks who make kitty litter, flea powder and other Hartz pet products that it spends at least 10 times that much testing its products.

I am struck by the wisdom of Achieve, Eli Broad [who funds Merrow] and others who talk about 'Common Standards,’ perhaps recognizing that 'national' and 'federal' are widely confused concepts and red flags to many Americans.

Count how many times panelists proclaim, "I agree with Checker/Chester [Finn].
______________________

Here is Randi's namby pamby quote:

Randi Weingarten, newly elected President American Federation of Teachers (AFT); a lawyer and active member of the Democratic National Committee

"John Merrow is right: Helping all kids achieve, particularly kids at risk, was always the main goal of federal education law. NCLB correctly set high standards, but it over-emphasized testing and sanctions at the expense of helping all kids achieve. . . . It's great that Achieve has been able to find a way to move toward national standards by working with the states and moving the consensus outwards, rather than starting at the top and moving down. Their work shows it's doable and I'd like to see more of it, more states, more subjects."

Does Weingarten want NCLB eliminated or modified? Where exactly does she stand? Which direction is the wind blowing? And there's too much testing? Randi made sure to jump into the photo when Bloomberg/Klein got the Broad prize, bragged about high test scores in the NYC test all the time system and agreed to a merit pay scheme based on test scores.

If anyone finds more fun Randi quotes at the site, send them along. I've had enough.

Susan O has a selection of comments from classroom teachers.

Lynn: I got through about 15 responses in this discussion before I got bored. Mainly because these folks keep saying the same thing in different ways. I have two questions for these participants: Have you ever taught in a K-12 public school classroom? If so, how long has it been since you were there? If any of these people have never had K-12 experience, I'm not particularly interested in what they have to say. The only real experts in a discussion like this are current and recently former teachers.

John Thompson: John [Merrow], I'm frustrated by your opening questions. I've always admired your work, but they sound like a "bait and switch." You started with an endorsement of NCLB, but shouldn't the question be about NCLB-type accountability. If I heard correctly, most panelists challenged national test-driven accountability. You said that we spend 15 cents of every $100 on testing, but isn't that the problem with NCLB I? Its another example of "Fire! Ready. Aim." Then when you started off today with the issue of National Standards, you started us off on the path that gave us NCLB. The next step is "better tools, curricula, and instruction stategies." No! That's not the only way!

Read Susan's full treatment http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_outrages.html?id=3492

Spellings on Colbert, Who Says "Why Not Just Bomb Failing Schools

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?episodeId=176381

Klein and Weingarten On the Road

Elizabeth Green has another interesting piece in the NY Sun:
Schools Chancellor Reaches Into Presidential Contest

"In a speech to the National Council of La Raza's convention in California yesterday, Mr. McCain said he supports charter schools, efforts to "weed out" incompetent teachers, and plans to "hold schools accountable" for their results. He also called improving schools attended by poor students "the civil rights challenge of our time" — the same phrasing Mr. Klein often uses."

It looks like McCain will endorse their campaign.

Klein and Sharpton met with Obama yesterday.

Obama will be a little more careful but will sign on to a lot of this plan since most politicians love to talk about accountability and quality teachers. And the tough liberals like Kahlenberg (include the AFT/UFT/Clinton wing) bring up student/parent accountability to justify their support for a phony system of school and teacher accountability.

Green also reports on Weingarten's plan to call for revisions in NCLB.

Speaking at the union's national convention in Chicago, Ms. Weingarten yesterday laid out a vision for a revamped federal education law that would promote "community schools."

She said such schools would serve needy children by incorporating many government services into one building, services that do not just include schooling but medical care, child care, and homework assistance.

Funny how Weingarten did not propose these ideas all these years in NYC where the union could have used its muscle with the state legislature to try it out in a few schools. Just one reason why I view the entire plan as a PR move to make it appear she is for the more comprehensive Richard Rothstein approach to educational reform, while in NYC she went along with much of Klein's plans.

I mean, if you never tried to get this done in NY where the UFT was one of the major lobbyists, why would you would people take it seriously when it is proposed on a national level?

I guess on the national level she can take stronger stands since she will never have to negotiate a contract. This will lead to favorable press similar to what BloomKlein have gotten - much of the praise has been due to their ability to get Weingarten to capitulate in exchange for money.


Ed Week's blogger reports on the convention (live feeds on the sidebar) also talked about how Randi attacked NCLB in her speech.

She called the federal law a four-letter word, and vowed to work to overhaul it. NCLB, she said, is not about teaching, but about testing.


The Ed Week blogger even used the word, "Ouch!"

I would use multiple 4 letter words to describe just how much bullshit this is.

Watch what Randi Weingarten does, not what she says when it comes to testing and NCLB. Note she says she will work to "overhaul" not abolish NCLB. She and her predecessor Sandy Feldman were supporters of the original NCLB and Sandy sat on the commission to draft it. Has Randi ever said it was wrong to play this role?

She talks about the evils of testing in NYC but then signed on to an agreement that will give teachers bonuses for raising test scores that have proven to be bogus.

When mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein bragged about their high test scores, who was standing on the podium with them?

When Eli Broad gave Bloomberg and Klein the Broad prize for raising test scores and phone grad rates, who was there in Washington with them to accept congratulations? Guess?

TRIPLE OUCH!

No Child Left Behind - Football Version

I posted an excellent commentary from Ed Week on testing and NCLB at Norm's Notes. It is called NCLB: Tests' Insensitivity: Time Bomb Ticketh. Check it out.

Here's one of the little nclb ditties going around. Some poor use of words in some of this - number 3 in particular - but the idea is a variation of many others out there.

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child gets left behind!

If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

Leaving "No Child Left Behind" Behind by Richard Rothstein

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=leaving_nclb_behind

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB

This is the first piece of 23 parts (so far). Kathy Emory attended the high stakes testing conference John Lawhead and I attended in Birmingham Al. in 2003. Here, Emory "detailed the convergence of two heretofore unconjoined worlds: the world of big business, and the world of educating kids."

We hope to examine the considerable role Albert Shanker and the AFT/UFT played in this conjoining at our upcoming conference on December 27.

All parts accessible here:
http://www.diatribune.com/bush-profiteers-collect-billions-nclb

Bush Profiteers collect billions from NCLB

Much was said about George W. Bush’s fundraising prowess in 2000 and 2004, when he created labels like "Bush Pioneers" to identify those who shook down donors and bundled the lucre for his campaigns. But hard on the heels of his inauguration, he might’ve just as appropriately created a new label, "Bush Profiteers," to identify those who first turned his decayed ideologies into law – inventing new spigots through which Bush’s businessmen-backers could suck federal funds – and who then vacated public service to collect their own lucre as lobbyists for those businessmen and their companies.

If you needed a perfect example of this model of lawmaking-turned-moneymaking, you might consider Bush’s vaunted No Child Left Behind. And if you needed a perfect example of the Bush Profiteer, you might consider the first "senior education advisor" he imported from Texas, the architect of NCLB himself.

I offer a simple thesis: Several large corporations and their lobbyists have profited from Bush’s NCLB by tapping billions of dollars in standardized testing and in "supplemental education services" funds since its passage in 2001. They’re lining up now to expand their profit margins for the next six years as NCLB is being re-authorized. And the one man who stands to personally profit the most this year isn’t Bush himself, but advisor-turned-lobbyist Sandy Kress, the architect of Bush’s old high-stakes testing model in Texas and the overhaul of ESEA in 2001.

As Bush himself might put it, "Heck of a job, Sandy." Ahem: http://www.whitehouse.gov/...

KATHY EMERY KNOWS something about educating kids. Her resume, found here http://www.educationanddemocracy.org... , documents a 30-year career as a history teacher-turned-education researcher. Credentials impeccable. She’s published and presented and given workshops and been interviewed on testing and assessment and good education practices, so she’s got skills. And she writes, "When Ted Kennedy and George Bush agree on something, one needs to worry about who the man behind the curtain is. After doing research for my dissertation (which is now a book) it became clear to me that the men behind the curtain are the members of the Business Roundtable."

In a speech given in January 2005 to the San Francisco State University faculty retreat in Asilomar, California, she detailed the convergence of two heretofore unconjoined worlds: the world of big business, and the world of educating kids. The convergence was given birth in the passage of NCLB, she says, but the pregnancy was more than a decade long. Its unsuspecting mother was the Education and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), first adopted under Lyndon Johnson’s administration in 1965 in partial fulfillment of John Kennedy’s domestic agenda. Its father? "...a bipartisan bandwagon of standards based advocates – a bandwagon built in the summer of 1989 by the top 300 CEOs in our country."

The Richard Kahlenberg Shanker bio details this event in detail. Now we are hearing the "Big Oops" from Shanker apologists. "This is not what Al intended." Gee! How come people in those years somehow knew what would be the outcome? Oh, what have they wrought!

Data Driven Destruction

by Paul A. Moore

Teacher, Miami Carol City Senior High School

One of the corporate wrecking balls brought down recently on America’s public schools is “data driven” education. The charade is a creation of the Business Roundtable and other forces that dream of a privatized school system that serves only their global profit making schemes.

Because their sinister intentions must be kept on the down low, data driven education is packaged and sold as economical but revolutionary pedagogy come to the classroom. Absurdity is the inevitable result. And so it is that our system of universal public education is now trapped in a scene from Woody Allen’s farce Bananas. The new leader has decreed that, “From this day on the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16-years-old are now…16-years-old!”

Promoting insanity in the classroom has proven to be quite an effective weapon of public school destruction. Teachers are being broken down and driven away at an unprecedented rate. One in five new teachers will not make it through their first year. Half of them will be gone inside of five years.

In still sane sectors of our society data is collected on a rational basis. The U.S. Census Bureau gathers data on population, infant mortality, life expectancy, health insurance and the distribution of wealth for the sake of a more effective government. In a sector of our society targeted for demoralization and destruction, data is collected for data’s sake. There is no earthly reason for most of the information teachers are now being ordered to collect and analyze through incessant testing of students. If the Census Bureau was put on the same footing they would be checking people’s underwear every half hour.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is a high ranking leader of the corporate assault on public schools, right up there with Michael R. Bloomberg, Eli Broad, and the Walton (Wal-Mart) Family. Jeb Bush is not just a friend of big business; he is a big business! One of his wholly-owned subsidiaries is his brother Neil Bush and Ignite! Learning. Ignite is a software company that “helps” students prepare for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) with “portable learning centers” at $3,000 per kid. The business has contracts in 13 Florida school districts and rakes in millions.

During Jeb Bush’s final year in office there is strong evidence to suggest that FCAT scores were manipulated and artificially inflated. The “education governor” was apparently going to barnstorm with the “education mayor” Mr. Bloomberg as a prelude to a run for the White House. Big brother has poisoned that well for the time being but in those days there was speculation over another possible career path for Jeb.

Imagine if Jeb Bush had been tapped by National Football League owners rather than Roger Goodell as the league’s commissioner. The new commissioner could have applied his education philosophy to the NFL. Certainly the players would be more effective if they spent less time on the practice field and in the weight room and more time being tested daily in the 40-yard dash, shuttle run, vertical leap and bench press. Less time practicing football plays and more time being tested on the playbook. Or imagine the new policy if President Bush had named his brother to the Cabinet? As U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Jeb Bush would surely have ordered the nation’s livestock weighed every few hours because even if it did cut into their feeding time it would certainly result in fatter cows.

Secretary Spellings Forced to Admit Lack of Qualifications for the Job

Thank goodness Susan Ohanian is back from vacation. She came up with this gem where a member of Congress who actually was a teacher and principal questions the education chief officer of the USA. Oy vey!

I got to see Spellings in person at the Manhattan Institute luncheon where there was an entire table of UFT suits (and suitesses) hobnobbing with the very people who are killing real education. See that post here. And Susan's satirical (and hysterical) post on Spellings' declaration of a non-testing day.

Ohanian Comment: Take a look at this short segment of Rep Mike Honda's questioning of Secretary Spellings on if and how she is highly qualified for her current position. It is refreshing to see a politico cut through her hot air snowballing and get right to the point.

— Congressman Mike Honda
House subcommittee hearing
2007-03-26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zSJexw0Gvs&mode=related&search=

And while you're at YouTube, take another look at these excellent videos:

Test the Kids

NCLB Truths and Consequences

UFT Suppresses Report Critical of Test

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that testing is going on in here!"
- Captain Randi Renault*

I don't know nothin' 'bout testin' - Prissy Weingarten**

It takes me a lot of time to convince people that the UFT leadership are collaborationists with Bloomberg/Klein, Broad, Gates, NCLB, etc. because people listen to what Randi Weingarten says instead of watching what she does. Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun has further exploded the myth of the BloomKlein miracle on rising test scores. (Full article is also on Norm's Notes). The UFT had a smoking gun against the people who have hammered teachers into submission and chose not to use it.

Since this study was commissioned by the UFT and written in March, 2006, a year and a half ago and would still be suppressed if not for the efforts of Green, the following quote from Randi Weingarten is oh, so telling, especially in the light of our post on this very issue this past week.

"In an interview yesterday, Ms. Weingarten said she chose not to publicize the study out of concerns that doing so would make her appear "anti-test." She also said the study could not be considered comprehensive because her researchers are not psychometricians and lack access to some specific data about the test."

So nice to be ahead of the curve.

Randi Weingarten's lame excuse that she does not want to be looked at as anti-testing, the very issue her members have been screaming about for many years. The overwhelming majority of teachers have been dying to see the sham of the high scores exposed. All of us critics of NCLB and the other mumbo jumbo are not anti-test, but anti- high stakes test and also anti tests being used for political reasons. That the UFT did such a study is great, but not to use effectively politically makes it a waste. Maybe Randi was hoping it would show the tests were not easy so she could try to claim it was due to the efforts of teachers. Remember she said that when the 4th grade scores went up but what about the corollary when the 8th grade scores were bad. A careless and slippery slope she is on.

Even the above argument is simplistic. The UFT is the father and mother of the standards/testing/charter school movement and philosophically supports all the ills no matter what they say. when the 2nd UFT task force on testing issued what was a pretty good critique, that was just the end of it. No action top back it up. Just a way to deflect internal criticism that they were doing nothing. "See, we created a committee and issue a report. That was enough."

But when they held a smoking gun all along, they didn't use it or even discuss it with their own committee. There's the democratic process inaction for you.

Let me repeat a section of what I wrote on the Ed Notes blog earlier in the week (read the full post here).


"The UFT will never explode any testing myths because they want to play both sides against the middle, claiming high scores are due to teachers, not the other machinations that rank and file teachers know are going on.

When tests were being marked a few years ago during mid-winter break, calls and emails started coming in to our Ed Notes call-in center (based in my kitchen) that the rubric being passed down from the state ed dept was a total joke and supervisors were telling teachers to jump levels when they could. I sent around an email to my press list and immediately started getting responses from reporters.

Even the NY Times called, the reporter wanting me to give names. I suggested a visit to a testing center to interview people and the reporter was shocked. To his credit, former NY Post reporter Dave Andreatta was ready to come out to Rockaway but teachers involved seemed to be getting cold feet over possible repercussions.

Calls started coming into UFT HQ to such an extent, Randi Weingarten went over to the Region 8 marking center to check it out. Naturally, she found nothing wrong and the UFT PR machine's response killed the activity.

The UFT covering up for BloomKlein and the state ed dept? How shocking!


For today's youts with no movie memory:
* Claude Rains upon finding out there's gambling going on at Humphrey Bogart's Rick's in "Casablanca."
** Butterfly McQueen's Prissy in "Gone with the Wind"

Vermont Design for Education

Susan Ohanian Notes:
The good news is that such a document exists. The reality is that it was written in a more hopeful time, 1968. After it was published by the state department of education, 30,000 teachers applied from out of state for 900 jobs. And now we have No Child Left Behind. This is the vision that inspired me to go into teaching eons ago. We must revive it. This is what children deserve--rather than the scholastic boot camp that is the regime in schools today.
Contrast this 31-page Design with the 435-page offal Miller and crew call a draft of NCLB revisions.

Read the entire document at Susan's web site. http://susanohanian.org/show_yahoo.html?id=321

Kill NCLB

Updated

What has No Child Left Behind meant to your school/student/child? The ability to teach relevant curriculum? True educators know the entire underpinnings are wrong. It is time to stop politicians from deciding on educational policy. Unfortunately, groups like the UFT and the AFT, which should be leading a fight to stop any renewal of NCLB, are playing footsie with Democratic politicians who just want to tinker.








http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_cartoons.html
Hundreds more cartoons available.

It is time to KILL NCLB.

NCLB: Test the Kids

Susan Ohanian and the gang at the Educator Roundtable have concocted this fabulous video:

Now showing at:
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_stories.html?id=347
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=520DAgjCHdc

Secretary of Education Announces National Non-Testing Day

Susan is a leader in the national test resista movement. She was one of the organizers of the ACTNOW conference John Lawhead and I attended in Birmingham, AL at the WOO a few years ago, a remarkable group of people. Her daily updates are loaded with goodies. This is one of the best. Check out her series of Margaret Spellings walks into a bar jokes.

by Susan Ohanian
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_stories.html?id=337

Washington, D. C.

In a bold move to forestall the national testing industry meltdown, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, nicknamed the "princess of darkness" by teachers in her home state of Texas, has declared October 21, 2007, as National Non-testing Day for Children in Grades K-3. "This will give our friends at Harcourt and CTB McGraw-Hill a week to clean the vomit off returned tests," announced Spellings. "And minority kids can use a break."

Such a move struck many Washington insiders as a last-ditch effort to forestall a Rupert Murdoch takeover of the U. S. Department of Education. With the imminent Murdochrization at The Wall Street Journal, can the U. S. Department of Education be far behind?

Several key details in the Secretary’s plan still need to be worked out, such as what role Bill Gates and Eli Broad will play during the testing downtime. Gates, busy changing the lightbulbs in his 40,000-square-foot bungalow, was unavailable for comment. Eli Broad, famous for the long hours his employees work, pointed out that a business model should be applied to schools. "If people are golfers and their handicap doesn't go up, they're not doing their job."

"American youth cannot afford to go a day without testing if they are to keep with international competition," warned Harold McGraw III, chairman of the Business Roundtable and Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, McGraw-Hill Companies. "If the U. S. hopes to regain its position in preparing tomorrow’s workers for the Global Economy, kindergartners must learn that life is no bowl of cherries. Schools must maintain rigor and continue to raise the bar."

A spokesman for Pearson Educational Measurement said that top executives are too busy trying to figure out how to buy the Wall Street Journal to comment at this time.

Speaking beyond the grave, longtime American Federation of Teachers leader Albert Shanker pointed out that the AFT has always stood for accountability. "We have, in fact, created a paradigm for accountability." Shanker offered union distribution of incentives for students who work hard during the day of no testing.

Professor Snig Diddleworth, scholar-in-perpetuity at the think tank wannabe Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, pointed to research showing the increased test scores of five-year-olds who were force-fed All Bran when compared to those who eat Lucky Charms. Barack Obama’s campaign office made available his landmark speech on the importance of breakfast, prepared by the Center for American Progress.

Secretary Spellings will moderate a nationally televised debate between 143 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, where each candidate is expected to stake claim to the title of offering the most rigorous school reform agenda.

As a pre-debate special, Education Trust, furthering its mission to help teachers improve instruction in their classrooms, will sponsor a mud-wrestle between Secretary Spellings and presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton.

Saying that it is too early to assess the effects of a week without testing, President Bush reminded the nation of the real question, first uttered in Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000, and still of paramount importance: "Is our children learning?" Bush’s office refused to comment on whether this decrease on testing is a step toward implementing the policy hinted at aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003: "I'm the master of low expectations."

Susan Ohanian, June 16, 2007