In her latest book, Reign of Errors, Diane Ravitch
blows open the myth of educational disasters manufactured by people wishing to
privatize education. Reality is that we are graduating more students than ever,
that the low-poverty schools are at the top of the international tests in ranking,
and the “reforms” put into place to raise scores don’t work in the long run.
Behind all this are the testing corporations, who have been there at every
"reform," ready to make a new computer program or test, and even to have a large
hand to write the Common Core Standards. Fueling the reforms and insuring their
implementation are the graduates of the Broad Academy and TFA, who believe in
the factory model of education and that any monkey can teach. Even our
education unions seem to have rolled over, belly up, to accept the carrot of
reform dangled in front of us. Even the unions have acquiesced to the Common
Core Standards, Merit Pay, and standardized testing in order to participate in
the Race to the Top. Behind it all, the politicians in charge sponsor bills to
slash corporate taxes and education funding, and to write faulty laws like No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RttT).
The people in the trenches, the teachers and support staff, along
with the students, are the only ones who are actually being adversely affected
by all these so-called reforms. They sit in over-crowded classes without
sufficient supplies, books and desks. They endure 36 days of standardized
testing (1.5 months of school), and school days lacking music, art, and theatre
classes.
Both teachers and students struggle to implement and
understand brand new standards which were implemented in a way that would make
your head spin. What should have happened is this: 1) the standards should have
been written by teachers from each grade level, instead there were only a few
educators and many test makers writing them; 2) The standards should have been
piloted one grade at a time and rewritten as necessary to avoid the current situation
with the primary grades’ standards being highly developmentally inappropriate;
3) The head of any Department of Education should be an educator with at least
15 years experience, not a person from another profession. You can’t understand
the ins and outs of teaching, and using standards to develop a curriculum
unless you have actually walked in a teacher’s shoes for years; 4) the funding
for education should have a fair and consistent formula to make sure every
student gets and equitable education. Fair does not necessarily mean equal as
high-poverty districts need much more help in order to address their students’
needs and begin to reach those standards; 5) the assessments for the standards
should be as diverse as the learners in each class. Differentiation in teaching
should be matched with differentiation in evaluating the learner; and 6)
evaluation of teachers should not be based on standardized testing, as the
tests do not address the differentiated needs of the students.
The advent of the manufactured crisis of education spawned
too many laws aimed at the decimation of unions - teachers unions and others.
People like to point out that tenure means a bad teacher can’t be fired, but
that is far from the truth. All tenure does in that case is to insure that the
teacher goes through due process. Believe it or not, there are many bad
principals and administrators who are quick to fire anyone who disagrees with
them. Due process makes sure that the teacher is truly ineffective and not just
disagreeing with the principal. There are already items in the teachers’
contract to remove bad teachers, if a bad teacher doesn’t get fired, it is the
principal’s fault for not providing evidence and going through all the
paperwork involved. It is much easier to “persuade” the teacher to transfer to
another school.
The establishment of charter schools plays a big part in the
real public school crisis today. Originally, charter schools were supposed to
take the kids that the public school was not teaching well, and find innovative
ways to turn them around. Instead, what they have become are schools that are
indeed, selective of their students, but schools that siphon off the best and
the brightest students from the public schools, leaving the regular schools
with the special ed students, the English language learners, and those with
behavior problems. This is not the scenario that the original proponents of
charter schools had envisioned, but it is a nightmare for public
education.
We are facing an election year and I hope we will take
advantage of that and elect legislators and governors who truly support
education, rather than delight in its decimation. Let’s put the conspiracy
theory to rest by electing those who are true supporters. Start by voting out
Governor Tom Corbett in PA.
Read about our governor here:
http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2014/01/26/corporate-tax-cuts-revealed-as-root-cause-of-pa-budget-deficit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=corporate-tax-cuts-revealed-as-root-cause-of-pa-budget-deficit
http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2014/01/26/corporate-tax-cuts-revealed-as-root-cause-of-pa-budget-deficit/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=corporate-tax-cuts-revealed-as-root-cause-of-pa-budget-deficit
Still learning!
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