Cuomo's Education Conundrum

NY faces a big issue in education.  What to do about the Common Core and testing.  NY received federal money to convert publicly owned schools into private charter schools and implement insane testing and teacher evaluation requirements from the Race tot the Top grants.

The shoe is dropping on all those ideas. Parents and taxpayers are getting (actually already are) sick of all the testing.  Over 200,000 students opted out of the state mandated ELA, MAth, and Science tests last year (2015).  The kicker?  The highest opt out rates were in teh wealthier districts that tend to have higher test scores and higher performance ratings.

To boot - NYSUT had an active campaign that informed parents of their right to opt their children out of the exams.  In the district where I worked students came to the Library and asked where to get the letters and printed them off using district printers and copiers.  Nice use of taxpayer dollars.
And if that weren't enough - the students had their own plans to jinx the exams.  I heard of numerous stories in my district of students that answered all the multiple choice questions in a straight line (all choice A, B, C, etc) and wrote "I don't know" or "I don't care" in the short answer and essay sections.  Some drew pictures.

My question is - What sort of data is State Ed going to parse from this?

The opposition to NCLB and RttT testing is growing at all levels.  Students hate the tests and are organizing.  Parents and taxpayers are sick of all the money being wasted and are putting pressure on elected officials, including Governor "Status" Cuomo.  Everyone knows that he has higher ambitions.
Teachers are organized and refused to endorse Cuomo in the last state election.  Normally unions (rather mindlessly) back the Democrats.  This time,  they took a principled stand.  They are continuing to put pressure on the Board of Regents.  Robert Bennett (pro-test) resigned in 2015.  Two more pro-test Regents have announced that they are resigning this year.

And Commissioner Elia is now looking at reforming the Common Core Standards because of problems in the way they were developed and written.  Also on the table are potential reforms to how teachers are evaluated.

Change is coming and we need to keep pushing and cranking up the heat on the pawns of the corporate driven, so called "education reform" movement.  (In reality it is an education deform movement.)  Top down changes are meeting the immovable force of voters that are sick of it.

Socialists demand:
-and end to the receivership laws
-an end to standardized tests
-an end to punative teacher evaluations

When the people arise, we achieve results.

And we are getting together across the state and across ages.

Marx & Engels said "Workers of the world unite."  I think this is what he had in mind.

The Buffalo News Flawed Analysis

The Buffalo News bias is showing. Very badly at that.

First: Article on Wednesday December 30, 2015 “Elia grants Cash more latitude to force change.” (Italics mine.)

Note that word. Force. Like a parent forcing a child to clean their room. Is it teaching the child to be neat and responsible or, if the child does not comply, a punishment will be applied that, according to psychologists, will do very little to nothing to bring the desired change about.

I have never heard of a teacher that wants their students to fail. And whatever Superintendent Cash applies, I am highly skeptical that it will bring about the desired results.

From my reading of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People top down change is a recipe for disaster. People, in this case the teachers, rarely buy into it. Superficially and structurally, yes. Heart and mind, no. They never do and it always blows up in the leader's face.

Look at Dr. Williams. We are headed down that path again. With worse results.

The teachers need to be at the table and respected. I hear time and time again the old adage of the “Golden Rule,” karma, or whatever you want to call it – Whatever you send out, comes back to you. The disrespect that Commissioner Elia and Superintend Cash are sending out to the teachers is going to blow up in their faces with failure – students not achieving and teachers leaving. Experienced teachers retiring or going to other districts and newer teachers burning out and dropping out. Cash will be driven out, Elia will talk, and Buffalo's schools will still be burning.

The average career of a teacher, according to Kim Marshall, is around 5 years before they leave the profession. What are we doing to our teachers? And by default, to our children.

When we make teachers out to be the problem, they give the involution of leaving. In droves. Run a hospital, fire department, police force, or newspaper with a staff that has on the average 5 years experience.

What would you have?

Second: Editorial Comment on January 2, 2015 titled “Get on with it.”

Yes, the News commits an epic fail here. It's like the doctor that removes the cancerous tumor but never tells the patient to “stop smoking.”

Our students are graduating and are not ready for college. Correct.

Why?

The analysis must begin in 2000-2001 when President (sic) George W Bush pushed through the No Child Left Behind Act. We have had all this standardized testing since 2001 and now we see the results of test driven instruction: students that can not perform. Add to that President Obama's Race to the Top, and, well, you have students that can not perform at the high school or college level.

Yes. We had top driven change and look at the results.

Face the facts – the problem comes from the following:

1. A faulty law. NCLB has been found to be a lie. Yes – a lie. There was never any proof that all the testing that Texas did worked. What researchers discovered was that all the testing drove low achieving students into GED work and out of the system, leaving the higher achieving students behind and the state educational system looking better, This is a failure at the highest level. Only some students were achieving – not all.

2. NCLB is premised on a faulty report – A Nation at Risk. Just ask Diane Ravitch. (Check name spelling). The report was written by members of the Reagan (sick) administration with a foregone conclusion – American students were not as good as their European and Asian counterparts. Then the researchers cherry picked data to support that claim. Logical fallacy on multiple levels. Hello? Take the time to read the independent writing of Dr Ravitch and you will find a different opinion because she realized the damage that she helped inflict upon the American education system.

3. The Common Core: The standards are under evaluation for rewriting. We are trying to teach students skills that they are not developmentally ready for. I have heard that time and time again from fellow teachers. But the standards were not written by experienced classroom teachers – they were written by ivory tower ideologues that are far removed from educational practice. By that I mean they do not teach in the K-12 environment as a professional duty and responsibility on a day to day basis.

Plain and simple: The standards need fixing and the state wants to punish teachers for teaching bad standards?

4. Flawed tests: How many tests have had questions removed because there were too many problems with the question and the possible answers? Go count pineapples. I'm still waiting for a test without problems to be issued.

I can't count the number of times that I have had a fellow teacher state that the students are going to be tested on material that they have not even been taught in our school. And the teachers are going to be held accountable for that.

The tests are done at the wrong time of the year – spring. They should be held at the end of the year – during Regents examinations – in order to accurate assess what the students know. That is, if testing were the only way to assess knowledge.

It isn't and it only can test certain knowledge and specific learning styles and personality types excel at tests. I was one of them. I had and have friends that are brilliant. Their bosses will tell you that. They just are bad test takers. No amount of “drill and kill” is going to change that.

So the Buffalo News has jumped on the wrong band wagon and at the end of the day, nothing will have changed because they started with the wrong premise – our students aren't achieving.

They needed to examine the system – No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and critique the laws. Neither one of the top-down methodologies has a track record of doing anything.

Well, yes they do.

Destroying children's' lives.

Is that what they are advocating?

Sure sounds like it to me.