Where Real Reform Must Start

Common Core Standards Spur the Marketplace

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

Education Reform Hits Speed Bump in Delaware

Delaware's Cristina School Board found one process for improving performance at two underperforming schools may have not proceeded as they expected. The process in question related to what is called "reconstitution" or releasing the staff from the schools, have them reapply to that school if they choose or seek placement at a different school. No one gets fired, just shuffled around.

The first implementation of the process revealed some unexpected outcomes, the Cristina School Board deliberated, decided to reject the results, and seek process improvements for the next time around. Board President John Young spoke forcefully on the process and those words went viral. A few days later Delaware's Govenor Markell announced his intention to freeze $11 million Race to the Top funding that was earmarked to pay for all reform efforts in the district. Delaware's Secretary of Education supported the Governor's views.

Delaware's Department of Education, however, is giving the School Board 15 days "to show cause in writing why the Department of Education should not suspend any further payment to the Christina District of Race to the Top funds."

Pointing to the audio recording of the School Board meeting, Young defended the decision saying the intention was to correct and improve the process:

"We got a very small part of this wrong, let's get it right."

Stung by the "hyperbolic response" and obviously punitive, Young notes:

The political reactions of paid elected and appointed stewards of the public trust should not be aligned with the goal of bullying local school boards.

When that happens, nobody wins.

Remarkably, Secretary Arne Duncan joined in with public statements supported the freeze:

"Districts, like Christina, which signed on to the Race to the Top plan, made a commitment to dramatically improve the lives of children. Because Christina has backtracked on that commitment, the state of Delaware has made the tough but courageous decision to withhold Race to The Top funding. I believe that is the right decision."

Personally, I find it unusual for the U.S. Secretary of Education to interject into a matter that State and local level staff should work out. Another look at the process would either validate the Board's decision or not. Reform efforts are disruptive and conducted without much history and practice. Under these circumstances why did Duncan fail to encourage a careful examination of the process for the sake of improvement; otherwise, those charged with implementation are required to do nothing more than follow orders, head down, mouth shut.

What kind of reform is this?

http://transparentchristina.wordpress.com/

The NUT Report: Florida Parents Raise the Roof

Parents, extended family members, and members of communities across the nation are on the same page: No Unnecessary Testing (NUT). The opposition to the classrooms as centers for test prep and testing rather than centers of learning continues to grow in numbers and in volume. Last night, U.S. Representative Ted Deutch and U.S. Department of Education representative Michael Yudin got an earful from "hundreds of angry parents and teachers from Palm Beach and Broward counties."

A report on the Parents Across America website describes a recent event at Princeton University where Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed U.S. education policies. A student asked about the risks and challenges of the national assessment effort. His response is included in the article:

“...there are risks in everything” and “we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” There is a healthy “competition” between the two consortia developing these assessments; and states can opt out of one group and join another. Though there may be “a couple of choppy years till we get it right, and “mistakes” will be made, there is a “level of thoughtfulness” behind this effort that is extraordinary, and we must get “to this point as soon as possible” if we want to compete with other advanced nations. (Why? Has any other nation in the world adopted these highly expensive and complex computer-based performance assessments – and so quickly and on such a massive scale?).

According to the same report, he got frustrated and said "You're not listening to me."

Who is not listening?


http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/parents-teachers-rail-against-weight-given-to-students-1424196.html

Education Reform: I am a NUT

If you question education reform efforts, the replies from legislators and educrats are often the same:
I don't know.
We'll fix it later.
It's going to be expensive.
We have a crisis.
We can't compete.

If you persist in questions, you get these responses:
You prefer the status quo.
You are a skeptic.
You believe in conspiracies.
You are an enemy of education reform.

I declare to the world that I am a NUT and a follower of the NUT principles of Stephen Krashen. The No Unnecessary Testing (NUT) principle, first proposed in 2008, avoids the $4.5 billion investment in new standards and testing. It cuts back testing rather than adding more.

"Every minute testing and doing "test preparation" (activities to boost scores on tests that do not involve genuine learning) is stolen from students' lives, in addition to costing money that we cannot afford these days."

There are already indications from those charged with publishing tests that they do not have sufficient funds, time, or resources to meet the expectations.

NUT should be a movement.

Arne Duncan is From the Government and He is Here to Help you

[Reprinted with permission from Missouri Education Watchdog.]
In its effort to clarify student data privacy rules for researchers and education officials alike, the U.S. Department of Education proposed several changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, on Thursday and named its first chief privacy officer.
"Data should only be shared with the right people for the right reasons," U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement on the proposals. "We need common-sense rules that strengthen privacy protections and allow for meaningful uses of data. The initiatives announced today will help us do just that."

There is a pesky problem standing in the way of sharing student data between states and Federal Agencies: present FERPA standards. If these standards are not altered, the data necessary to supply the workforce cannot be shared.

The DOE promises your student's data will be secure. Really? What's happened the last several weeks or years regarding cyber information?

•TJX, the parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and other retailers, has not acknowledged how data on more than 45 million credit and debit card users who had shopped at the company's retail locations was stolen and sold to fraudsters. (May 9, 2007)

•A data breach involving online marketer Epsilon, whose clients are a Who’s Who of major banks and retailers, was only the latest in a string of hacking attacks aimed at getting email records for more thefts. Companies that have said they were exposed since then include banks Citigroup Inc and Capital One Financial Corp, and retailers Walgreen Co and Best Buy Co. (April 5, 2011)

•According to U.S. investigators, China has stolen terabytes of sensitive data -- from usernames and passwords for State Department computers to designs for multi-billion dollar weapons systems. And Chinese hackers show no signs of letting up. "The attacks coming out of China are not only continuing, they are accelerating," says Alan Paller, director of research at information-security training group SANS Institute in Washington, DC.

Secret U.S. State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to Reuters by a third party, trace systems breaches -- colorfully code-named "Byzantine Hades" by U.S. investigators -- to the Chinese military. An April 2009 cable even pinpoints the attacks to a specific unit of China's People's Liberation Army. (April 14, 2010).

The data sets from the National Data Education Model are set and ready to be used on your student. Don't worry if there is a cyber security attack on the Longitudinal Data Systems; information to be gleaned from an attack would only include some of the following:

•Base salary or wage
•Blood type
•Height and Weight
•Dwelling Arrangement
•Health Care History
•Health Care Plan
•Identification Results
•Immunization Status
•Insurance Coverage
•Overall Health Status
•Residence Block Number
•Social Security Number
•Voting Status

The United States Government cannot stop cyber attacks from China; why should taxpayers believe student privacy is secure because of a change in FERPA legislation?

If you believe this information is secure, you will also believe the following:

According to the No Child Left Behind Act, by 2014 every child is supposed to test on grade level in reading and math.
Not every child can test on grade level in reading and math. It's an admirable goal, but impossible to achieve. That's not going to happen. The goal for data systems is to beef up privacy protections. Like the NCLB goal, it sounds great, but if the government cannot stop foreign countries from hacking into military computers, do you believe the DOE can safeguard student data from hackers?

Read this sentence in the second paragraph again: We need common-sense rules that strengthen privacy protections and allow for meaningful uses of data. The problem with that sentence? Strengthening privacy protections don't safeguard the privacy and the "meaningful uses of data" should raise questions for anyone concerned about the constitutional right to individual privacy that your government is determined to document and share.

Education Reform: The cookie jar is empty

In a Washington Post opinion piece, Mr. Marion Brady proposes a way to reduce the federal budget this way:

FACT: We’re told that governments at all levels—federal, state, and local—are worse than broke, and that the services they provide, including education, must be cut.

FACT: There’s one multi-billion dollar cost of educating that’s not scheduled to be cut—high-stakes, standardized testing. In fact, Arne Duncan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, says that the number of such tests is going to significantly increase.

PROPOSAL: Given present unwillingness to fully fund education, all 50 states should immediately cancel their contracts with testing companies. What teachers did for at least a century and a half before corporate interests and politicians took over education policy they can do again, at least for the duration of the present economic emergency.

Additionally, should state governments follow Mr. Brady's suggestion, the federal budget will be positively affected. Given the recent concerns expressed regarding the progress of the non-public entity producing national assessments, clearly the facts of time, money, and project scope to meet goals that exceed capability have not been adequately addressed. Under these conditions, why should that project continue?