Monday, April 30, 2012

UT study shows black high school students in Texas are three times more likely to drop out from a charter system - black males in KIPP


From Education Week - April 30, 2012 - Click Here
Study finds high dropout rates for black males in KIPP schools



Researcher Gary J. Miron of Western Michigan University says attrition rates for black males in the KIPP charter middle schools he studied were "shockingly high." But other researchers say it's unclear whether the high numbers of those students disappearing from KIPP's grade rolls are dropping out or repeating a grade.
—Charles Borst/Education Week 
"KIPP charter middle schools enroll a significantly higher proportion of African-American students than the local school districts they draw from, but 40 percent of the black males they enroll leave between grades 6 and 8, says a new nationwide study by researchers at Western Michigan University.

“The dropout rate for African-American males is really shocking,” said Gary J. Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement, and research at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, and the lead researcher for the study. “KIPP is doing a great job of educating students who persist, but not all who come.”


MORE HERE



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A new UT study shows black high school students in Texas are three times more likely to drop out from a charter system

By Richard Whittaker, Fri., April 27, 2012

"Think charter schools help minority students? Think again. A new University of Texas study shows that the state's African-American high school students are three times more likely to drop out from a charter system than from a regular public school. Unsurprisingly, charter groups are not happy about this research.

Julian Vasquez Heilig, assistant professor in the UT College of Education's Department of Educational Administration, sought to answer two very simple questions: Are these schools serving African-American kids, and are they effective at it? While many studies have looked at academic achievement, Heilig wanted to examine a different conundrum: Do these students stay? Do they feel welcome, relative to public schools? The resulting paper, titled "Is Choice a Panacea?: An Analysis of Black Secondary School Attrition from KIPP, Other Privately Operated Charters, and Urban Districts," was presented April 15 at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in Vancouver. Its findings about African-American high school students are alarming. Compared to large urban districts in Texas, said Heilig, "on average, charter schools have triple the dropout rates."

The study compares Texas charter districts with the state's large urban school districts – Austin, Houston, and Dallas – from 1998 to 2008. On average, a regular public school in Texas records a worrying 4% dropout rate for black high school students, but that soars to 13% for charter districts. There are similar patterns for leavers (students who transfer to another state, start homeschooling, or are expelled): 5% for large urban districts becomes 15% for charters. Those numbers are much worse for charter districts with fewer than 100 black students: 22% dropped out and 18% left. In some charter districts, 90% of all African-Amer­ican students have dropped out."

Call to boycott education tests in Australia

on April 27, 2012



"A GROUP of education consultants is urging Australian parents to withdraw their children from next month’s annual NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy) tests, saying they are damaging children’s creativity.

The group, made up of teachers, consultants and academics, says the testing – now in its fifth year – is providing poor-quality information about students’ abilities in the classroom, and is compromising students’ attitudes to learning.

Campaigning under the banner, ”Say No to NAPLAN”, the group will launch its broadside against the government’s standardized tests at the Australian Education Union’s Melbourne offices on Monday.

The union is not associated with the campaign, though it has provided the group with a rent-free venue for the meeting.

Group member Lorraine Wilson, who began her teaching career in 1959, said standardized testing was producing a generation of ”automaton” children, and devalued teachers.

”All control of education has been taken out of educators’ hands. These decisions have been made by politicians, not by teachers,” Ms Wilson said. ”It’s standardizing the children and expecting them to be the same.”

The group will call on parents to boycott the tests, and says most parents are not aware the tests are not compulsory.

To support the campaign, the group on Monday will release 10 papers written by academics and consultants that raise several concerns about the tests, including their approach to spelling and supposed misuse of statistics.

In one strongly worded paper, former Primary Education Queensland director Phil Cullen described the tests as showing ”contempt” for children.

”Over the past few years, schooling in the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand has become a test-driven, fear-based operation. Effective teaching-learning strategies are being contemptuously ignored. Preparing for the tests dominates school time and pushes creative aspects of the school curriculum out of the way.”

Study finds paying teachers for performance doesn't raise test scores


From The Hechinger Report - Click Here


By Christopher Connell - September 21, 2010

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Cheating our children: Suspect scores put award’s integrity in question


From the Atlanta Constitution - Click Here


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

"Second in a series: Last month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an unprecedented investigation into test scores that found signs of potential cheating nationwide. Today, we examine schools that won the prestigious Blue Ribbon Award. These schools, the AJC found, were more than three times as likely as all schools to exhibit extreme score gains the year they applied for the honor.

MORE HERE

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Cheating our children: Atlanta’s frayed Blue Ribbons 
Cheating our Children: Years of testing analyzed
Get Schooled: Schools must face revelations
List of Blue Ribbon schools with most improbable gains
Cheating our children: Suspicious school test scores across the nation
Cheating our Children series

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Austin ISD Board President opposes high stakes testing


From Community Impact Newspaper - Click Here

April 27, 2012

Austin ISD board: STAAR test will not count toward students’ f
Photo by Kevin Stich
Mark Williams, board president of the Austin Independent School District, said he believes high-stakes testing “is not a productive way to run school districts.”

 ....

 “My own personal philosophy is I’m with them (the resolution). I think high-stakes testing, the pressure of accountability, the pressure of punitive sanctions, is not a productive way to run school districts."

When put to a test, testing culture flunks


Over-reliance on test scores leads to scandal



Monday, April 2, 2012

"Across the U.S., the politically mandated misuse of standardized tests is damaging public schools and the children they serve. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigation of suspicious test scores around the nation is just the latest example. Experts may debate the methodology, but there is no question that cheating on standardized exams is widespread. In just the past three academic years, FairTest has documented confirmed cases of test score manipulation in 33 states plus the District of Columbia.

 These scandals are the predictable result of over-reliance on test scores. As the renowned social scientist Donald Campbell concluded more than 30 years ago, 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 continued, “[W]hen test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.”

Friday, April 27, 2012

Dallas ISD Board of Trustees approves Mike Miles as Superintendent of Schools


From DallasISD.org

"Official start date is July 1

The Dallas ISD Board of Trustees voted to name Mike Miles as the district’s new Superintendent of Schools. The board approved hiring Miles with an 8-1 vote during tonight’s called board meeting. 

Miles’ contract, approved by trustees, will provide him a salary of $300,000 a year for three years. This move puts Miles at the helm of the nation’s 14th largest school district. 

“This obviously is an exciting time for me,” said Miles. “I’m looking forward to working with the dedicated people here in Dallas ISD, the staff, parents and the community. I know great things are ahead for us as we move forward for the good of our students.”

Miles’ first official day on the job will be July 1, 2012. However, the board voted to enter into an additional Administrative Services Agreement with Miles that would allow him to get to work immediately. That agreement would be for a period of no more than15 days between now and his official start date. Under the agreement, Miles will receive a day rate of $1,000.   

Known as an innovator and reformer, Miles served as Superintendent for the Harrison School District Two in Colorado Springs for nearly six years. Under his leadership, the district experienced increased graduation rates and improved student achievement.

Miles started his career in education in 1995 as a high school teacher in his alma mater school district—Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8.  He continued to grow professionally and held other positions such as middle school principal, coordinator of administration services and from 2003 to 2006 served as assistant superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, in the same school district.

Miles is a former U.S. Army Ranger and West Point graduate who entered the ranks of the officer corps at Ft. Lewis, Washington, where he served in the Army's elite Ranger Battalion and commanded an Infantry Rifle Company.

After the Army, Miles studied Slavic languages and literature at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Leningrad in Russia.  Miles then pursued advanced study of Soviet affairs and public policy at Columbia University and earned a master’s degree in 1989.  The same year, he joined the U.S. Department of State as a policy analyst on the Soviet desk, and then from 1990 to 1995 as diplomat in Moscow and Warsaw at the end of the Cold War. 

Miles is married to Karen Miles, and they have three children."

Major education, civil rights, and religious groups launch nationwide solution to roll back high-stakes testing; seek sign-ons from organizations, individuals


April 26, 2012 

"Inspired by a statement adopted by more than 360 Texas school boards, major national education, civil rights and parents groups have launched a resolution calling on federal and state policymakers to reduce standardized test mandates and, instead, base school accountability on multiple forms of measurement.
The initial signers include the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Parents Across America, National Education Association, United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, Advancement Project, National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Forum for Education and Democracy. Other supporters include educators such as Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch as well as community-based education groups in New York, Chicago and Charlotte.

The groups are seeking endorsements from other local, state and national organizations as well as individuals concerned with the rapid increase in time, money and energy devoted to exams used to make major decisions about students, educators and schools. Supporters can sign on at http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution
 
Dr. Monty Neill, Executive Director of FairTest who helped coordinate drafting the resolution, explained,“The over reliance on high-stakes standardized testing is undermining
educational quality and equity across the U.S. The collateral damage includes narrowed curriculum, low-scoring students pushed out of school, and teaching to the test.”

“”By teaching to the test, we are depriving a generation of youth, particularly youth of color growing up in low-income communities, from developing the critical thinking skills they need, and our country needs, to be competitive in this global economy,” added Matt Cregor, Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Parents are fed up with constant testing,” concluded Pamela Grundy from Parents Across America, who helped lead a community revolt against expanding testing in Charlotte, North Carolina last year. “We want our elected leaders to support real learning, not endless evaluation.” 

The resolution urges state officials to “reexamine school accountability” and develop a system “which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools.” At the federal level, it calls on the U.S. Congress and Obama Administration to overhaul “No Child Left Behind” and “to reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators.” The full text is online at http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/nationalresolution"
 

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Linking Superintendent bonus to test results not good for children


A substantial annual bonus for the  Superintendent might be tied to test results.

This can create even more teaching to the test and pressure on teachers to produce good test-takers.

Children might become dollar signs.

Test driven pay for performance narrows the education of children.

Research shows it does not raise student performance.

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The Debate over Teacher Merit Pay: A Freakonomics Quorum - Click Here

There’s just one problem: educators almost universally hate merit pay, and have been adamantly opposed to it from day one. Simply, teachers say merit pay won’t work.


In the last year, there’s been some pretty damning evidence proving them right; research showing that merit pay, in a variety of shapes and sizes, fails to raise student performance. In the worst of cases, such as the scandal in Atlanta, it’s contributed to flat-out cheating on the part of teachers and administrators. So, are we surprised that educators don’t respond to monetary incentives? Is that even the right conclusion to draw?

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"There is now substantial evidence that pay for performance does not even work on its own terms – reading and math scores don’t increase when teachers or entire schools are offered bonuses for higher scores. But even if pay for performance did work on its own terms, it would harm public education.

Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute, and a senior fellow of the Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at UC (Berkeley) Law School. From 1999 to 2002 he was the national education columnist of The New York Times. He is the author of Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, and lectures widely about education policy issues.

Is incentive pay an incentive to cheat?


"I’ve worked for Atlanta Public Schools for roughly 5 of my 6 years as a classroom teacher and during that time I encountered a strange phenomenon; educators were being given bonuses for increasing test scores. This was strange and interesting to me for a few reasons; (1) I wondered why I was being paid extra to do what I was hired to do in the first place. (2) Everyone tied to the schools that increased tests scores or met system metrics received the bonuses including custodial staff, bus drivers, and cafeteria staff. (3) Wouldn’t tying incentive pay directly to test scores lead to an increased focus on teaching to the test? (4) Wouldn’t some people be tempted to cheat?"

MORE HERE 

"The ironic thing about the entire situation is that in Atlanta, it wasn’t district policy to tie a teacher’s annual evaluation directly to the performance of his or her students on any particular test.  Rather, annual evaluations were based on several factors that had to be directly observed by school administrators such as classroom management, planning and preparation, rigor of lessons, etc. Essentially, if these teachers did cheat, they did so out of greed, not out of fear or losing their jobs. Perhaps administrative pressure to constantly show improvements or maintain an unrealistic level of performance for year to year contributed to the climate as well. But imagine if the employment decisions of the teachers in question were actually attached to the relative performance of their students on tests. What type of fallout would we be facing now? Mrs. Rhee? Mr. Gates? I hope you’re both reading this."

Is incentive pay an incentive to cheat?

Dallas ISD Teen School Board


The Dallas ISD Teen School Board is a training ground for future citizen leaders of our democracy.  One day they will have to help fix all that adults have broken in our education system.


Dallas ISD Teen Board - Click Here



2011-2012 Dallas Teen Board Officers


The Dallas Teen School Board is a student advisory group consisting of the presidents of the junior and senior classes at each high school. The students meet monthly to discuss the issues and concerns of their schoolmates and present them to the superintendent of schools and the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees. The Teen Board also participates in community service projects.

The Dallas Teen School Board:
  • Provides high school students an opportunity to exercise leadership skills while working with district administrators and board members concerning issues from their respective school campuses.
  • Serves as mediators between a schools students and the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees to address student concerns and to share ideas for improving services and programs offered to students.

Florida school district adopts testing resolution


408 Texas school districts have adopted the Resolution as of 4-25-12

From EduSlate - Texas Association of School Aaministrators (TASA) - Click Here

Wednesday, April 24, 2012

 "The Palm Beach County School Board in Florida became the latest group outside of Texas to pass a resolution similar to the Resolution Concerning High Stakes, Standardized Testing of Texas Public School Students.

School board members for Palm Beach, the 11th largest school district in the nation (app. 174,000 students), say they're not advocating for the removal of standardized tests but, like many Texas school leaders, believe the over-reliance on standardized testing is counter productive.

"As a board and a district, we need to mitigate the damage of this obsession with high-stakes testing," board member Karen Brill said in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "We need to create well-rounded students; we need to nurture creativity; we need to find balance so that our teachers have the freedom to exercise their talents and bring out the best in our students."
As of Wednesday, 408 Texas school districts representing roughly 2.2 million students had confirmed they'd passed the resolution. That's 40 percent of all Texas districts. If your district has passed the resolution but isn't on TASA's list, please send me an email so we can include you in the count."
Text of the Resolution 

WHEREAS, our nation’s future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation’s social and economic well-being; and

WHEREAS, our nation’s school systems have been spending growing amounts of time, money and energy on high-stakes standardized testing, in which student performance on standardized tests is used to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators and schools; and
WHEREAS, the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing in state and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public schools by hampering educators’ efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and economy; and
WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate and often unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness; and
WHEREAS, the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate; and
WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for students from all backgrounds, and especially for low-income students, English language learners, children of color, and those with disabilities; and
WHEREAS, the culture and structure of the systems in which students learn must change in order to foster engaging school experiences that promote joy in learning, depth of thought and breadth of knowledge for students; therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the School Board of Palm Beach County, Florida, calls on Governor Scott, the Florida Department of Education and the state legislature to reexamine public school accountability systems in this state, and to develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools; and
RESOLVED, that the School Board of Palm Beach County, Florida, calls on the U.S. Congress and Administration to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the “No Child Left Behind Act, reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Dallas ISD Officially Voting On New Superintendent Thursday

 
From CBSDFW-Click Here

Reporting Steve Pickett

"DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – Dallas ISD Superintendent finalist Mike Miles will face a final board vote Thursday evening.  With board approval, Miles will become the new Superintendent of Schools for the second largest school system in Texas.  His salary, however, may top all other Texas school leaders’ compensation.

According to two sources connected to contract negotiations, Miles’ salary and benefits offer will hover around $350,000.  The highest paid Superintendent in Texas is Thomas “Butch” Carroll, of the Beaumont ISD.  His salary is $348,000.

Miles leads the Harrison School District of Colorado Springs, Colorado.  He was named finalist for the Dallas ISD job last month.

Late Wednesday, Miles boarded a flight for Dallas.  He declined comment on the contract negotiations.

According to sources, Miles’ DISD contract would include performance incentives that offer payments based on student outcomes,  graduation rates and state achievement ratings.  The Dallas Board of Education meets at 6pm Thursday."


From Yahoo News-Click Here

Austin school board decries high-stakes testing



Creadle
Joe Olivieri
Kealing Middle School student Callier Creadle spoke out against high stakes standardized testing before the April 23 Austin Independent School District meeting.

"Austin Independent School District became the most recent Texas school district to speak out against high-stakes testing for students.

At its April 23 meeting, AISD's board of trustees unanimously approved a resolution asking the state Legislature to re-examine public school accountability and develop a system that more accurately reflects what students know. That system would enhance teachers' roles as leaders and instructional guides, as well as instill a sense of inquiry and a love of learning in students.

AISD's resolution is similar to a model Texas Association of School Administrators resolution that takes a harder line on the issue.

Both commend Commissioner of Education Robert Scott for his concern on the overemphasis of high-stakes testing and continued support of high standards and local accountability. The TASA resolution goes on to say that over-reliance on standardized high-stakes testing is strangling public schools and undermining any chance of educators turning the education system into one that can prepare children to compete on the global stage."

San Antonio ISD joins testing backlash


From My San Antonio - Click Here

By Maria Luisa Cesar
Updated 10:16 p.m., Saturday, April 14, 2012
The San Antonio Independent School District joined more than 280 districts across Texas in mounting a revolt against what they call an “over reliance” on high-stakes, standardized tests.

The school board adopted a resolution Monday calling on the Legislature to re-examine the state's accountability system. As of Friday afternoon, 282 school districts had passed the resolution, according to reports from the Texas Association of School Administrators.
The point is to grab lawmakers' attention and show them that school districts are united in their opposition, Sylvester Perez, SAISD's interim superintendent, said Friday

In San Antonio, nine school districts — including Northside and North East ISD — have adopted the resolution, which argues that using high-stakes, standardized tests as the only form of state and federal assessment is “strangling” public schools. East Central ISD trustees are set to discuss the resolution and could adopt it Thursday, according to the board's agenda.

The Economics Behind International Education Rankings


"The head of the National Association of Secondary School Principals took a closer look at how the U.S. reading scores compared with the rest of the world’s, overlaying it with the statistics on how many of the tested students are in the government’s free and reduced lunched program for students below the poverty line. Here’s what he found:

* In schools where less than 10 percent of students get free or reduced lunch, the reading score is 551. That would place those U.S. students at No. 2 on the international ranking for reading, just behind Shanghai, China which topped the ranking with a score of 556.

* In schools where 75 percent or more of the students get free or reduced lunch, the reading score was 446. That’s off the bottom of the charts, below last-place Greece’s 483.

Money matters and countless studies have demonstrated a link between parents’ income and students’ test scores."

Does poverty matter?

Friday, March 30, 2012


"The debate in public education over whether - or how much - poverty matters in the achievement of all kids continues to rage. For example, Peter Meyer's recent piece in EducationNext is criticizing the persistence of what he calls "the poverty myth." At the same time, a discussion of America's poor standing on PISA and TIMMS international test rankings led me to this article by Mel Riddile of the National Education of Secondary School Principals. Riddile has parsed the date to expose a fascinating detail. When American schools with less than 25% poverty are removed from our international test data, America ranks number one in the world in math and science. Thus, he argues that the significance of poverty is no myth and it matters a huge deal. Additionally, Corey Bower's work at Ed Policy Thoughts exposes another side to the gaps and the realities of poverty in education."

More Here

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

National Resolution on High-Stakes Testing




"This resolution is modeled on the resolution passed by more than 360 Texas school boards as of April 23, 2012. It was written by Advancement Project; Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund; FairTest; Forum for Education and Democracy; MecklenburgACTS; Deborah Meier; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; National Education Association; New York Performance Standards Consortium; Tracy Novick; Parents Across America; Parents United for Responsible Education - Chicago; Diane Ravitch; Race to Nowhere; Time Out From Testing; and United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries."

We encourage organizations and individuals to publicly endorse it (see below). Organizations should modify it as needed for their local circumstances while also endorsing this national version. 

WHEREAS, our nation's future well-being relies on a high-quality public education system that prepares all students for college, careers, citizenship and lifelong learning, and strengthens the nation's social and economic well-being; and

WHEREAS, our nation's school systems have been spending growing amounts of time, money and energy on high-stakes standardized testing, in which student performance on standardized tests is used to make major decisions affecting individual students, educators and schools; and

WHEREAS, the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing in state and federal accountability systems is undermining educational quality and equity in U.S. public schools by hampering educators' efforts to focus on the broad range of learning experiences that promote the innovation, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, communication, critical thinking and deep subject-matter knowledge that will allow students to thrive in a democracy and an increasingly global society and economy; an

WHEREAS, it is widely recognized that standardized testing is an inadequate and often unreliable measure of both student learning and educator effectiveness; and

WHEREAS, the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate; and

WHEREAS, high-stakes standardized testing has negative effects for students from all backgrounds, and especially for low-income students, English language learners, children of color, and those with disabilities; and

WHEREAS, the culture and structure of the systems in which students learn must change in order to foster engaging school experiences that promote joy in learning, depth of thought and breadth of knowledge for students; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that [your organization name] calls on the governor, state legislature and state education boards and administrators to reexamine public school accountability systems in this state, and to develop a system based on multiple forms of assessment which does not require extensive standardized testing, more accurately reflects the broad range of student learning, and is used to support students and improve schools; and

RESOLVED, that [your organization name] calls on the U.S. Congress and Administration to overhaul the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as the "No Child Left Behind Act," reduce the testing mandates, promote multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality in accountability, and not mandate any fixed role for the use of student test scores in evaluating educators.

Some of the Signers
  • NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.New York, NY
  • National Education AssociationWashington, DC
  • United Church of Christ Justice & Witness MinistriesCleveland, OH
  • Parents Across America - North CarolinaDurham, NC
  • National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest)Boston, MA
  • Citizens for Public SchoolsBoston, MA
  • Research on Reforms, IncNew Orleans, LA
  • SchoolsMatterCambridge, MA
  • Children Are More Than Test ScoresNew Britain, CT
  • Keystone State Education CoalitionARDMORE, PA
  • Race to NowhereLafayette, CA
  • Parents Across America - Baton RougeBaton Rouge, LA
  • FL Parents Across AmericaBoca Raton, FL
  • Race to NowhereLafayette, CA

Parents Across America (PAA) Guide to the Broad Foundation


The question I ask is why should Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more of a say as to what goes on in my child’s classroom than I do? – Sue Peters in NYC

Parents Across America (PAA) Guide to the Broad Foundation

"Eli Broad is a wealthy individual, accountable to no one but himself, who wields vast
power over our public schools. Parents and community members should be aware of the
extent to which the he and his foundation influence educational policies in districts
throughout the country, through Broad-funded advocacy groups, Broad-sponsored
experiments and reports, and the placement of Broad-trained school leaders,
administrators and superintendents.
 

"Parents Across America considers Broad’s influence to be inherently undemocratic, as it
disenfranchises parents and other stakeholders in an effort to privatize our public schools
and imposes corporate-style policies
without our consent. We strongly oppose allowing
our nation's education policy to be driven by billionaires who have no education
expertise, who do not send their own children to public schools, and whose particular
biases and policy preferences are damaging our children’s ability to receive a quality
education."


MORE HERE

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 A Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation's training programs and education policies

"Broad and his foundation believe that public schools should be run like a business. One of the tenets of his philosophy is to produce system change by “investing in a disruptive force.” Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation to create chaos or “churn” is believed to be productive and beneficial, as it weakens the ability of communities to resist change."

A hallmark of the Broad-style leadership is closing existing schools rather than
attempting to improve them
, increasing class size, opening charter schools, imposing
high-stakes test-based accountability systems on teachers and students
, and implementing
of pay for performance schemes. The brusque and often punitive management style of
Broad-trained leaders has frequently alienated parents and teachers and sparked protests


I think that’s why people invest in Green Dot. I like that we get good numbers and our test scores and graduation rates are fantastic, but people really invest in us because we’re a disruptive force.

High-Stakes Testing and U.S.-Mexican Youth in Texas: The Case for Multiple Compensatory Criteria in Assessment



"With the recent re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) that calls for testing at virtually every grade level, a growing debate is taking
place regarding the utility of mass, but especially high-stakes, testing whereby schools,
principals, teachers, and students are held accountable for increased children’s
achievement (e.g., Scheurich et al. 2000; Scheurich and Skrla 2000; Valencia et al.
2001).1 Proponents of the current system of accountability in Texas, which does have
high-stakes testing as its linchpin, see the system as bringing attention to previously
under-served African American and Mexican American children, the majority of whom
are poor (Scheurich et al. 2000; Scheurich and Skrla 2000; Skrla et al. 2000a, 2000b).2
“High stakes” testing extends beyond the concept of standardized testing to denote the
attaching of high-stakes consequences (like retention, promotion, or graduation) to test
performance (Heuber and Hauser 1999).


Opponents take issue not with the concept of accountability, but rather with the
high stakes that are attached to the tests themselves,
as well as to their collateral effects,
including the marginalizing of curriculum, children, or both
(McNeil 2000; McNeil and
Valenzuela 2001). Sloan (forthcoming) reconciles these perspectives by suggesting that
while proponents have an “outside-in” view, critics possess an “inside-out” perspective.
In other words, proponents view the classroom from the outside (i.e., a “top-down”
perspective)
and note that previously under-served children have been accorded greater
teacher and administrative attention. Critics, on the other hand, look at high-stakes
testing policies from the perspective of the classroom where they witness the collateral
effects
brought about by such high pressures to generate positive performance. These
include narrowing the curriculum by teaching to the test; marginalizing children, their
languages and cultures
; and gaming” the system such as by retaining children in grade
or relegating them to test-exempt status categories to produce positive test results and
school ratings
."

More Here

Starting School at a Disadvantage: The School Readiness of Poor Children






Starting School at a Disadvantage: The School Readiness of Poor Children

"Poor children in the United States start school at a disadvantage in terms of their early skills, behaviors, and health. Fewer than half (48 percent) of poor children are ready for school at age five, compared to 75 percent of children from families with moderate and high income, a 27 percentage point gap. This paper examines the reasons why poor children are less ready for school and evaluates three interventions for improving their school readiness.

Poverty is one of several risk factors facing poor children. Mothers living in poverty are often unmarried and poorly educated, they have higher rates of depression and poor health than more affluent mothers, and they demonstrate lower parenting skills in certain dimensions. In fact, the gap in school readiness shrinks from 27 percentage points to 7 percentage points after adjusting for demographic, health, and behavioral differences between poor and moderate- and higher-income families. Even so, poverty remains an important influence on school readiness, partly through its influence on many of the observed differences between poor and more affluent families. Higher levels of depression and a more punitive parenting style, for example, may result from economic stress and so models controlling for these factors may understate the full effects of poverty on school readiness."

MORE HERE