Quick! Cut the Bloomberg Privatization Branches!
Loretta Prisco- Staten Island Education Activist
Insanity: doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting different results… or anyone who doesn't
take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
(Albert
Einstein)
Several weeks ago we woke to the sound of loud banging at our vacation
home. Heating system? New refrigerator? A fox or coyote trying to get in? No, a robin who seated himself on a branch
near the bay window and continually, methodically, fiercely and unsuccessfully flew
into the same window pane and then
flew back to the same branch. For several weekends, we woke to the same sound. Concerned for the bird, we’d
walk over to the window, he’d fly away but return. We knocked on the window, determined, he’d
return. We put my granddaughter’s doll
in the window, fearlessly he seemed to stare her down, and come back. Could we teach this robin with a bird brain,
that this was dangerous? No. So we cut
the branch down as we left this morning. Will he come back? Made me think about
education policy.
The DOE beats its head against the research that says low class size has
a positive impact on learning and continues
to raise class size.
The NYS legislature ignores the fact that there is not a city that has improved
learning under Mayoral Control and yet approved
its continuance.
Flying into the face of the window – oops, research - that clearly shows
that holding over a child does nothing to help a child, and as a matter of
fact, it is detrimental, the DOE instituted
a mandatory holdover policy.
Charlotte Danielson, the reigning icon of teacher development and author
of the Danielson rubric, stated the rubric is not to be used to evaluate and
punish teachers, but rather used to develop teachers. Yet,
NYC schools use it to evaluate, punish,
humiliate and reward teachers.
And the loudest bang of all…although we thought that the bird would
never crack the window…the one that is successful at breaking the window…“High
Stakes Testing: the Poster Child of Failure” (Peter Henry) and its
facilitators: Arnie Duncan, Secretary of Education; John King, NYS
Commissioner; and Walcott/Bloomberg, Chancellor/Mayor.
Diane Ravitch writes to Deborah Meirer,
“Harvard's Eleanor Duckworth and
I were invited to China to discuss promising educational reforms by officials
who think that the Chinese exam-based tradition is stifling the kind of
creativity and ingenuity that they believe has made America technologically and
scientifically so outstanding. They are looking for ways to produce
well-educated youth whose ambitions are focused on more than getting the right
answers on exams.”
Donald Campbell, from Dartmouth, warns
"The
more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the
more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to
distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. Campbell’s Law has proven true for centuries,
starting with ancient Chinese civil service exams based on Confucianism.”
David Berliner, Regents' Professor Emeritus in the College of Education
at ASU is clear on high stakes testing. …
“far from producing “certainty” of educational
excellence—(tests) are a set-up for schools to forego real learning in favor of
the only thing the system truly values: producing an acceptable numerical
appearance of learning. The higher the stakes are in testing, the less
reliable they are. Yet, we have moved
them to a level never before realized.”
The National Academy of
Sciences asserts that
“There are no large-scale, peer-reviewed academic studies
that prove, or even suggest, that a high-stakes, standardized testing educational
program improves learning, skill-development or achievement for students."
Peter Henry in the Minnesota Journal of English asks
us to look at what we all know, “let’s return to the central premise: student
effort will increase when there is
“more” riding on a test’s outcome.
Astoundingly, there is no research data showing that such “high-stakes”
environments actually work to improve effort, achievement or scholarship. None.
Nor have long-standing college-entrance
exams, like the SAT and ACT, shown any significant change in student
achievement over the last decade.”
The authors of standardized tests state that their
tests are only one measure of a child’s learning and should not be the sole
criteria for judging a child’s achievement, yet
they are used in this way.
The magnificent three (Duncan, King, and
Walcott/Bloomberg) ignore the research, wisdom and warnings. They gave $32 million to Pearson for faulty
tests, doubled the number of tests that children take, use scores to rate and reward teachers; rate
and holdover children; and use them as a criteria for admission to programs and
placement in middle school.
Bird brains?
I think not. A move to destroy public schools and push the real
agenda…the privatization of schools? How
long before the public cuts the branch of all that is really wrong with public
education?
