https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/11/24/how-twisted-early-childhood-education-has-become-from-a-child-development-expert/

How ‘twisted’ early childhood education has become — from a child development expert

(Reuters)

Nancy Carlsson-Paige is an early childhood development expert who has been at the forefront of the debate on how best to educate — and not educate — the youngest students. She is a professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Ma., where she taught teachers for more than 30 years and was a founder of the university’s Center for Peaceable Schools. She is also a founding member of a nonprofit called Defending the Early Years, which commissions research about early childhood education and advocates for sane policies for young children.

Carlsson-Paige is author of “Taking Back Childhood.” The mother of two artist sons, Matt and Kyle Damon, she is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the Legacy Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps for work over several decades on behalf of children and families. She was just given the Deborah Meier award by the nonprofit National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

In her speech accepting the award (named after the renowned educator Deborah Meier), Carlsson-Paige describes what has happened in the world of early childhood education in the current era of high-stakes testing, saying, “Never in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen the situation we find ourselves in today.” Here’s the speech, which I am publishing with permission:

 Thank you FairTest for this Deborah Meier Hero in Education Award. FairTest does such great advocacy and education around fair and just testing practices. This award carries the name of one of my heroes in education, Deborah Meier—she’s a force for justice and democracy in education. I hope that every time this award is given, it will allow us to once again pay tribute to Deb. Also, I feel privileged to be accepting this honor alongside Lani Guinier.

When I was invited to be here tonight, I thought about the many people who work for justice and equity in education who could also be standing here. So I am thinking of all of them now and I accept this award on their behalf — all the educators dedicated to children and what’s fair and best for them.

It’s wonderful to see all of you here — so many family and friends, comrades in this struggle to reclaim excellent public education for all – not just some – of our children.

I have loved my life’s work – teaching teachers about how young children think, how they learn, how they develop socially, emotionally, morally. I’ve been fascinated with the theories and science of my field and seeing it expressed in the actions and the play of children.

So never in my wildest dreams could I have foreseen the situation we find ourselves in today.

Where education policies that do not reflect what we know about how young children learn could be mandated and followed. We have decades of research in child development and neuroscience that tell us that young children learn actively — they have to move, use their senses, get their hands on things, interact with other kids and teachers, create, invent. But in this twisted time, young children starting public pre-K at the age of 4 are expected to learn through “rigorous instruction.”

And never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that we would have to defend children’s right to play.

Play is the primary engine of human growth; it’s universal – as much as walking and talking. Play is the way children build ideas and how they make sense of their experience and feel safe. Just look at all the math concepts at work in the intricate buildings of kindergartners. Or watch a 4-year-old put on a cape and pretend to be a superhero after witnessing some scary event.

But play is disappearing from classrooms. Even though we know play is learning for young kids, we are seeing it shoved aside to make room for academic instruction and “rigor.”

I could not have foreseen in my wildest dreams that we would have to fight for classrooms for young kids that are developmentally appropriate. Instead of active, hands-on learning, children now sit in chairs for far too much time getting drilled on letters and numbers. Stress levels are up among young kids. Parents and teachers tell me: children worry that they don’t know the right answers; they have nightmares, they pull out their eyelashes, they cry because they don’t want to go to school. Some people call this child abuse and I can’t disagree.

I could not have foreseen in my wildest dreams that we would be up against pressure to test and assess young kids throughout the year often in great excess — often administering multiple tests to children in kindergarten and even pre-K. Now, when young children start school, they often spend their first days not getting to know their classroom and making friends. They spend their first days getting tested. Here are words from one mother as this school year began:

“My daughter’s first day of kindergarten — her very first introduction to elementary school — consisted almost entirely of assessment. She was due at school at 9:30, and I picked her up at 11:45. In between, she was assessed by five different teachers, each a stranger, asking her to perform some task.

“By the time I picked her up, she did not want to talk about what she had done in school, but she did say that she did not want to go back. She did not know the teachers’ names. She did not make any friends. Later that afternoon, as she played with her animals in her room, I overheard her drilling them on their numbers and letters.”

The most important competencies in young children can’t be tested—we all know this. Naming letters and numbers is superficial and almost irrelevant in relation to the capacities we want to help children develop: self-regulation, problem solving ability, social and emotional competence, imagination, initiative, curiosity, original thinking — these capacities make or break success in school and life and they can’t be reduced to numbers.

Yet these days, all the money and resources, the time dedicated to professional development, they go to tooling teachers up to use the required assessments. Somehow the data gleaned from these tests is supposed to be more valid than a teacher’s own ability to observe children and understand their skills in the context of their whole development in the classroom.

The first time I saw for myself what was becoming of many of the nation’s early childhood classrooms was when I visited a program in a low-income community in north Miami. Most of the children were on free- and reduced-price lunch.

There were 10 classrooms – kindergarten and pre-K. The program’s funding depended on test scores, so — no surprise — teachers taught to the test. Kids who got low scores, I was told, got extra drills in reading and math and didn’t get to go to art. They used a computer program to teach 4- and 5-year-olds how to “bubble.” One teacher complained to me that some children go outside the lines.

In one of the kindergartens I visited, the walls were barren and so was the whole room. The teacher was testing one little boy at a computer at the side of the room. There was no classroom aide. The other children were sitting at tables copying words from the chalk board. The words were: “No talking. Sit in your seat. Hands to Yourself.”

The teacher kept shouting at them from her testing corner: Be quiet! No talking!

Most of the children looked scared or disengaged, and one little boy was sitting alone. He was quietly crying. I will never forget how these children looked or how it felt to watch them, I would say, suffering in this context that was such a profound mismatch with their needs.

It’s in low-income, under-resourced communities like this one where children are most subjected to heavy doses of teacher-led drills and tests. Not like in wealthier suburbs where kids have the opportunity to go to early childhood programs that have play, the arts, and project-based learning. It’s poverty — the elephant in the room — that is the root cause of this disparity.

A few months ago, I was alarmed to read a report from the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights showing that more than 8,000 children from public preschools across the country were suspended at least once in a school year, many more than once. First of all, who suspends a preschooler? Why and for what? The very concept is bizarre and awful. But 8,000? And then to keep reading the report to see that a disproportionate number of those suspended preschoolers were low income, black boys.

There is a connection, I know, between these suspensions and ed reform policies: Children in low-income communities are enduring play deficient classrooms where they get heavy doses of direct teaching and testing. They have to sit still, be quiet in their seats and comply. Many young children can’t do this and none should have to.

I came home from that visit to the classrooms in North Miami in despair. But fortunately, the despair turned quickly to organizing. With other educators we started our nonprofit Defending the Early Years. We have terrific early childhood leaders with us (some are here tonight: Deb Meier, Geralyn McLaughlin, Diane Levin and Ayla Gavins). We speak in a unified voice for young children.

We publish reports, write op eds, make videos and send them out on YouTube, we speak and do interviews every chance we get.

We’ve done it all on a shoestring. It’s almost comical: The Gates Foundation has spent more than $200 million just to promote the Common Core. Our budget at Defending the Early Years is .006 percent of that.

We collaborate with other organizations. FairTest has been so helpful to us. And we also collaborate with –Network for Public Education, United Opt Out, many parent groups, Citizens for Public Schools, Badass Teachers, Busted Pencils Radio, Save Our Schools, Alliance for Childhood and ECE PolicyWorks —There’s a powerful network out there – of educators, parents and students — and we see the difference we are making.

We all share a common vision: Education is a human right and every child deserves one. An excellent, free education where learning is meaningful – with arts, play, engaging projects, and the chance to learn citizenship skills so that children can one day participate — actively and consciously – in this increasingly fragile democracy.

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http://illinoisfamily.org/education/americas-education-disaster/#.VlRmYeweg90.facebook

America’s Education Disaster

Written by Walter Williams

The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also known as The Nation’s Report Card, shows that U.S. educational achievement, to put it nicely, leaves much to be desired.

When it comes to reading and math skills, just 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively, of U.S. eighth-grade students tested proficient or above — that is, performed at grade level or above. Recent test scores show poor achievement levels in other academic areas. Only 18 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in U.S. history. It’s 27 percent in geography and 23 percent in civics.

The story is not much better when it comes to high schoolers. According to 2010 and 2013 NAEP test scores, only 38 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in reading. It was 26 percent in math, 12 percent in history, 20 percent in geography and 24 percent in civics (http://www.nationsreportcard.gov).

Many of these poorly performing youngsters gain college admission. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education reports, “Every year in the United States, nearly 60 percent of first-year college students discover that, despite being fully eligible to attend college, they are not ready for postsecondary studies.” That means colleges spend billions of dollars on remedial education. Many of the students who enroll in those classes never graduate from college. The fact that many students are not college-ready takes on even greater significance when we consider that many college courses have been dumbed down.

Richard Vedder, emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University, argues that there has been a shocking decline in college academic standards. Grade inflation is rampant. A seminal study, “Academically Adrift,” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, argues that very little improvement in critical reasoning skills occurs in college. Adult literacy is falling among college graduates. Large proportions of college graduates do not know simple facts, such as the half-century in which the Civil War occurred. Vedder says that at the college level, ideological conformity is increasingly valued over free expression and empirical inquiry.

While educational achievement among whites is nothing to write home about, that for blacks is no less than a disaster. Only 13 percent of black eighth-graders score proficient or above in math, and only 16 percent do in reading. In 2013, only 7 percent of black 12th-graders scored proficient in math, and only 16 percent did in reading. The full magnitude of the black education tragedy is seen by the statistics on the other end of the achievement continuum. “Below basic” is the score given when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. In 2013, 62 percent of black 12th-graders scored below basic in math, and 44 percent scored below basic in reading.

Dr. Thomas Sowell has written volumes on black education. The magnitude of today’s black education tragedy is entirely new. He demonstrates this in “Education: Assumptions Versus History,” a 1985 collection of papers. Paul Laurence Dunbar High School is a black public school in Washington, D.C. As early as 1899, its students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. From its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of its graduates went off to college. Dunbar’s distinguished alumni included U.S. Sen. Ed Brooke, physician Charles Drew and, during World War II, nearly a score of majors, nine colonels and lieutenant colonels, and a brigadier general.

Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School also produced distinguished alumni, such as Thurgood Marshall and Cab Calloway, as well as several judges, congressmen and civil rights leaders. Douglass High was second in the nation in black Ph.D.s among its alumni.

The stories of the excellent predominantly black schools of yesteryear found in Sowell’s study refute the notion of “experts” that more money is needed to improve black education. Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass high schools have resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors. Those resources have meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.

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This article was originally posted at Capitalism Magazine.

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The decline of play in preschoolers — and the rise in sensory issues

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/09/01/the-decline-of-play-in-preschoolers-and-the-rise-in-sensory-issues/

The decline of play in preschoolers — and the rise in sensory issues

(iStock)

Here is a new post from pediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, author of a number of popular posts on this blog, including “Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today,” as well as “The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class” and “How schools ruined recess.” Hanscom is the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England.

By Angela Hanscom

I still recall the days of preschool for my oldest daughter. I remember wanting to desperately enrich her life in any way possible – to give her an edge before she even got to formal schooling. I put her in a preschool that was academic in nature – the focus on pre-reading, writing, and math skills. At home, I bought her special puzzles, set up organized play dates with children her age, read to her every night, signed her up for music lessons, put her in dance, and drove her to local museums. My friends and I even did “enrichment classes” with our kids to practice sorting, coloring, counting, numbers, letters, and yes….even to practice sitting! We thought this would help prepare them for kindergarten.

[Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today]

Like many other American parents, I had an obsession: academic success for my child. Only, I was going about it completely wrong. Yes, my daughter would later go on to test above average with her academic skills, but she was missing important life skills. Skills that should have been in place and nurtured during the preschool years. My wake-up call was when the preschool teacher came up to me and said, “Your daughter is doing well academically. In fact, I’d say she exceeds expectations in these areas. But she is having trouble with basic social skills like sharing and taking turns.” Not only that, but my daughter was also having trouble controlling her emotions, developed anxiety and sensory issues, and had trouble simply playing by herself!

Little did I know at the time, but my daughter was far from being the only one struggling with social and sensory issues at such a young age. This was becoming a growing epidemic. A few years ago, I interviewed a highly respected director of a progressive preschool. She had been teaching preschoolers for about 40 years and had seen major changes in the social and physical development of children in the past few generations.

“Kids are just different,” she started to say. When I asked her to clarify, she said, “They are more easily frustrated – often crying at the drop of a hat.” She had also observed that children were frequently falling out of their seats “at least three times a day,” less attentive, and running into each other and even the walls. “It is so strange. You never saw these issues in the past.”

She went on to complain that even though her school was considered highly progressive, they were still feeling the pressure to limit free play more than she would like in order to meet the growing demands for academic readiness that was expected before children entered kindergarten.

Research continues to point out that young children learn best through meaningful play experiences, yet many preschools are transitioning from play-based learning to becoming more academic in nature. A preschool teacher recently wrote to me: “I have preschoolers and even I feel pressure to push them at this young age. On top of that, teachers have so much pressure to document and justify what they do and why they do it, the relaxed playful environment is compromised. We continue to do the best we can for the kid’s sake, while trying to fit into the ever-growing restraints we must work within.”

As parents and teachers strive to provide increasingly organized learning experiences for children (as I had once done), the opportunities for free play – especially outdoors is becoming less of a priority. Ironically, it is through active free play outdoors where children start to build many of the foundational life skills they need in order to be successful for years to come.

In fact, it is before the age of 7 years — ages traditionally known as “pre-academic” — when children desperately need to have a multitude of whole-body sensory experiences on a daily basis in order to develop strong bodies and minds. This is best done outside where the senses are fully ignited and young bodies are challenged by the uneven and unpredictable, ever-changing terrain.

Preschool years are not only optimal for children to learn through play, but also a critical developmental period. If children are not given enough natural movement and play experiences, they start their academic careers with a disadvantage. They are more likely to be clumsy, have difficulty paying attention, trouble controlling their emotions, utilize poor problem-solving methods, and demonstrate difficulties with social interactions. We are consistently seeing sensory, motor, and cognitive issues pop up more and more  in later childhood, partly because of inadequate opportunities to move and play at an early age.

What is our natural instinct as adults when issues arise? To try and fix the problem that could have been prevented in the first place. When children reach elementary school, we practice special breathing techniques, coping skills, run social skill groups, and utilize special exercises in an attempt to “teach” children how to be still and to improve focus.

However, these skills shouldn’t have to be taught, but something that was developed at a young age in the most natural sense — through meaningful play experiences.

[How schools ruined recess]

If children were given ample opportunities to play outdoors every day with peers, there would be no need for specialized exercises or meditation techniques for the youngest of our society. They would simply develop these skills through play. That’s it. Something that doesn’t need to cost a lot of money or require much thought. Children just need the time, the space, and the permission to be kids.

Let the adult-directed learning experiences come later. Preschool children need to play!

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Dear Speaker Ryan: It’s Time to End ‘No Child Left Behind’

http://thepulse2016.com/emmett-mcgroarty/2015/11/16/dear-speaker-ryan-its-time-to-end-no-child-left-behind/

Dear Speaker Ryan: It’s Time to End ‘No Child Left Behind’

President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002

This post was co-authored by Jane Robbins, an attorney and senior fellow at the American Principles Project.

To no one’s surprise, political elites have apparently crafted a bill (behind closed doors in the dead of night) to reauthorize the despised No Child Left Behind (NCLB) statute. Business as usual – working, everyday Americans are quietly ignored while the powerful education establishment and its elitist allies get their way.

But new House Speaker Paul Ryan could alter this trajectory. He has expressed unwillingness to send President Obama legislation that he can use for mischief. Education legislation should fall squarely into that category.

In response to a reporter’s question on ABC’s “This Week” about immigration legislation, Ryan confirmed that he would not send an immigration bill to the House floor while President Obama is in office:

Yes, I think he’s proven untrustworthy on this issue. He tried to go around Congress with an executive order to rewrite laws unilaterally. Presidents don’t write laws. Congress writes laws. So, yes, I do not believe we should — and we won’t — bring immigration legislation with a president we cannot trust on this issue.

We could call this the “Ryan Doctrine”: In areas where the President has a history of lawlessness, don’t rush him “reform” legislation that won’t fix the problem and will make it harder for the next Administration to make the case that another round of reform is needed.

Under the Ryan Doctrine, the proposed NCLB reauthorization should be toast. Although details of the secret compromise bill are still secret, the Senate and House bills on which it’s based are objectionable on myriad levels. Most relevant to the Ryan Doctrine is that the bills would cement either the Common Core national standards or something very much like them in all the states, and would continue the federal testing mandates with “brave new world,” psychologically profiling assessments.

Although Republican proponents of the bills cite language prohibiting the Secretary of Education from imposing standards or assessments, the rest of the legislation contains so many mandates that the states will fall in line – regardless of what the Secretary “imposes.” Moreover, the prohibitions contain no enforcement mechanism for the states to challenge illegal federal action.  Where Congress is serious about prohibitions and protecting a class of parties, it lays down a full enforcement program: for example, it provides mechanisms for administrative review and consequent penalties, it specifies who can bring legal suit and what the remedies are, and it might even provide for expedited reviews of one sort or the other.  The House and Senate NCLB bills have none of that.  The proposed restrictions largely replicate the existing, toothless restrictions in existing laws.  The fox will once again be guarding the henhouse.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, the Republican sponsor of the Senate’s reauthorization bill, has made clear his intention to send the President a bill he will find acceptable.  Sen. Alexander is probably correct that the President will like this legislation – because it will place no real restrictions on federal action and ensure continuation of the Progressive policies so beloved by the education establishment.  As evidenced by plummeting test scores, disintegrating testing consortia, and open parental and teacher revolt against excessive testing and intrusive data-collection, the Common Core scheme is falling apart. Why would Congress even consider passing a bill that locks this in place?

But even if the prohibitory language were meaningful, the idea that we can trust the Obama administration to abide by it is, simply, laughable.

In education, as in immigration, the Obama administration has been absolutely lawless.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan presided over a Common Core scheme that violated three existing federal statutes: the General Education Provision Act, the Department of Education Organization Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the latest iteration of which is NCLB).  All of those statutes prohibit (but, again, without any enforcement mechanism) the federal government from supervising, directing, or controlling curricula, but that is exactly what the feds have done by imposing national standards that drive curricula.

The U.S. Department of Education also distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to consortia to develop national assessments aligned to Common Core — despite statutory prohibitions against the feds’ involvement in national testing, and even though the tests essentially, and illegally, dictate curricula.

So even if the reauthorization bill seriously attempts to rein in the Administration, we can count on the President and his henchmen to evade or ignore it.  The idea that we can trust this covey of radical true believers to suddenly start obeying the law is foolish indeed.  Why consider yourself bound by reactionary statutes when there’s a nation to transform?  And what better way to transform it than by perverting the education of its children?

Sen. Alexander and his colleagues seem determined to show that they can “govern” – that they can work with the President and strike a deal that leaves everyone happy.  But sending this leftist President an education bill that shuts down reform for perhaps another dozen years or so (President Bush signed NCLB into law in January 2002) is nothing short of madness.

This brings up part 2 of the Ryan Doctrine:

As speaker, I’ve promised a new way of doing business. Don’t pass thousand-page bills in the middle of the night. Do it all out in the open. Take it step by step. And get serious about enforcing our laws.

But that’s exactly what has happened, and what’s still happening, with NCLB reauthorization.  At each step of the way, leadership has crammed it through without opportunity for discussion.  It has scheduled votes without even giving its members a chance to read the bill and talk it through with constituents.  The House and Senate bills weighed in around 800 pages, but how many members of Congress had the chance to review it?  How many have actually read it?  On this wide-ranging matter that affects children, parents, and grandparents, how many members held town hall meetings?  Now, under Speaker Ryan, the leadership apparently leaked that they are ready to ram the bill through.  As reported by Education Week:

So what’s the timing? Expect the conference to kick off next Tuesday night and conclude by Thursday. And expect the bill to be on the floor of both chambers after Thanksgiving recess. That will give enough time for rank-and-file lawmakers to read it and make sure they understand what’s in it before they have to vote on it.

Is that really enough time for “rank-and-file” members to read it and make sure they understand it before voting on it?  Oh, and what about time to discuss it with their constituents?

It seems that nothing has changed in Washington.  Education is a throw away issue for Republican elitists, something for them to throw out to show that they can “get along”– something especially useful after having doubled down on another issue like immigration.  As Kirsten Lombard, a Wisconsin Republican activist and editor of the book Common Ground on Common Core, remarked:

Everyday-citizens now have had a huge role in exposing the damage NCLB has long inflicted on parental rights, local control of education, and student learning. Speaker Ryan would do well to heed this quickly shifting paradigm. He should understand that it’s no longer enough simply to say the right things. An actual record of helpful action is required. In fact, saying one thing and doing another on education appears to have had much to do with submarining the presidential aspirations of Scott Walker.

Emmett McGroarty is the executive director of APP Education.

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Does Common Core hurt minority students the most?

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/11/16/does-common-core-hurt-minority-students-most.html

Does Common Core hurt minority students the most?

Proponents of the Common Core national standards have claimed from the beginning that a major goal of the initiative is to reduce the “achievement gap” between white and minority students. Common Core test scores in California and New York suggest that the opposite is occurring. And now we have confirmation from what could be called the premier Common Core state in the country – Kentucky.

Prompted by an education establishment enamored of the progressive theories underlying Common Core (as well as by federal Race to the Top bribe money), Kentucky was the first state to adopt the national standards. In fact, formal adoption occurred before even the draft standards were issued, much less the final standards. The state fully implemented the standards and began administering the aligned state assessments during the 2011-2012 school year.

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Kentucky thus has the nation’s longest experience with Common Core, and its results may be a bellwether for the rest of the country. Especially for minority students, the early signs are troubling.

Kentucky just released its 2014-2015 eighth grade scores on the EXPLORE and PLAN college-readiness tests. Those tests are aligned with the ACT college-entrance examination and have a long, reliable history of assessing college-readiness. These Kentucky scores are perhaps the best indicator anywhere in the nation of the effect of Common Core teaching.

What is it about Common Core that disproportionately harms minority students?

And the news is bad. As explained by Richard Innes of the Bluegrass Institute, “In every single case [in all tested subjects (English, math, reading, and science)] the white minus black achievement gaps for both EXPLORE and PLAN have increased since Kentucky adopted Common Core aligned state tests in the 2011-2012 school year.” Since 2011-12, the smallest EXPLORE achievement-gap increase was 1.1 percent for English, and the largest increase was 3.7 percent in math. PLAN’s smallest gap increase was a change of 0.4 percent in math, with the largest at 2.7 percent in English.

Even more dismal are the percentages of black students meeting EXPLORE and PLAN benchmarks. In five of the eight categories (each test includes four subjects), black student performance declined from the 2012 test results. In two of the other three categories, performance increased only slightly over previously deplorable scores, and in the third, it remained the same.

The results from Kentucky – the state that is further down the Common Core road than any other – strongly suggest that Common Core is hurting the very students it was supposed to elevate. 

Innes sums it up: “EXPLORE and PLAN show Kentucky is grossly leaving its major minority population behind and the situation is generally worse now than when Common Core started. After 25 years of expensive education reform efforts in Kentucky, only around one in ten black students is getting the math education needed, and only about one in five is getting the even more critical reading skills that are essential for almost any career today. These numbers are a disgrace.”

Why is this happening? What is it about Common Core that disproportionately harms minority students?

Perhaps one answer lies in pedagogy. Common Core embraces student-centered “discovery” learning, where the teacher acts as (to use the popular cliché) a “guide on the side” rather than a “sage on the stage.” In other words, the teacher is supposed to teach less and “facilitate” more.  Especially for disadvantaged students, that pedagogy does not work.  Project Follow Through, the largest and most expensive government education study in history, proved this by following 79,000 Head Start participant children for years to determine the best means of educating them.

Moreover, Common Core math locks children into a slowed-down progression that ultimately leaves children unprepared for higher education.  As Marina Ratner, professor emerita of mathematics at Cal-Berkeley, argued last year in the Wall Street Journal, “students taught in the way that these standards require would have little chance of being admitted to even an average college and would certainly struggle if they did get in.”  And the leading expert on K-12 English standards, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, testified in Utah that “… Common Core’s ELA standards fall far below what other English-speaking nations or regions require of college-intending high school graduates.”

Such defects disproportionately hurt students from disadvantaged backgrounds.  That’s not rocket science.  Wealthier families have the wherewithal to work around Common Core by hiring tutors, giving their children private supplemental courses, or moving them to private schools. Disadvantaged students simply will not receive what they need from the schools. They will fall further and further behind.

Continuation of these bankrupt educational strategies is not rational; it’s a matter of almost religious devotion that this must work because it sounds so good. And it’s almost certain that the zealots in the education establishment will resort to cover-ups before they betray their faith. ACT has already announced it will phase out EXPLORE and PLAN, and the College Board has dumbed down the SAT to align with Common Core. The chances of further embarrassing testing data are thus diminished.

And inevitably, colleges and universities will bow to the pressure and just convert their remedial courses into basic freshman courses, masking these Common Core-trained students’ lack of preparedness for authentic college coursework. Kentucky State University has already announced it’s dropping remedial courses, substituting redesigned credit-bearing courses for students who formerly would have needed remediation. Whether these students can succeed in these new “accelerated” courses, or if the courses will be watered down from the former credit-bearing courses, remains an open question.

This mostly looks like more depressing evidence that the Common Core scheme will require increasing levels of fraud to hide its failure. The students who suffer the most will be the students who face the most obstacles as it is. This is nothing short of a national scandal. 

Emmett McGroarty is the Director of Education at American Principles Project. Emmett and his colleague, Jane Robbins, authored "Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for America," which was co-published by American Principles Project, Pioneer Institute, Pacific Research Institute, and Washington Policy Center.  He is a co-founder of TruthInAmericanEducation.com, a nationwide network of individuals and organizations that sheds light on the Common Core system.Jane Robbins is a Senior Fellow at American Principles Project. Jane has helped craft  federal and state legislation designed to restore the constitutional autonomy of states and parents in education policy and to protect the rights of religious freedom and conscience. She has testified about these issues before the legislatures of nine different states.

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The astonishing amount of data being collected about your children

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/11/12/the-astonishing-amount-of-data-being-collected-about-your-children/

The astonishing amount of data being collected about your children

Big data is no longer a tool reserved solely for big businesses. (Alan Brandt/AP)

Parental concerns about student privacy have been rising in recent years amid the growing use by schools, school districts and states use technology to collect mountains of detailed information on students. Last year, a controversial $100 million student data collection project funded by the Gates Foundation and operated by a specially created nonprofit organization called inBloom was forced to shut down because of these concerns, an episode that served as a warning to parents about just how much information about their children is being shared without their knowledge.

Here’s an important piece on the issue by Leonie Haimson and Cheri Kiesecker. Haimson was a leading advocate against the inBloom project who then, along with Rachael Stickland, created the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a national alliance of parents and advocates defending the rights of parents and students to protect their data. Kiesecker is a member of the coalition.

By Leonie Haimson and Cheri Kiesecker

 Remember that ominous threat from your childhood, “This will go down on your permanent record?” Well, your children’s permanent record is a whole lot bigger today and it may be permanent. Information about your children’s behavior and nearly everything else that a school or state agency knows about them is being tracked, profiled and potentially shared.

During a February 2015 congressional hearing on “How Emerging Technology Affects Student Privacy,” Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin asked the panel to “provide a summary of all the information collected by the time a student reaches graduate school.” Joel Reidenberg, director of the Center on Law & Information Policy at Fordham Law School, responded:

“Just think George Orwell, and take it to the nth degree. We’re in an environment of surveillance, essentially. It will be an extraordinarily rich data set of your life.”

Most student data is gathered at school via multiple routes; either through children’s online usage or information provided by parents, teachers or other school staff. A student’s education record generally includes demographic information, including race, ethnicity, and income level; discipline records, grades and test scores, disabilities and Individual Education Plans (IEPs), mental health and medical history, counseling records and much more.

Under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), medical and counseling records that are included in your child’s education records are unprotected by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act passed by Congress in 1996). Thus, very sensitive mental and physical health information can be shared outside of the school without parent consent.

Many parents first became aware of how widely their children’s personal data is being shared with third parties of all sorts when the controversy erupted over inBloom in 2012, the $100 million corporation funded by the Gates Foundation. Because of intense parent opposition, inBloom closed its doors in 2014, but in the process, parents discovered that inBloom was only the tip of the iceberg, and that the federal government and the Gates Foundation have been assisting the goal of amassing and disclosing personal student data in many other ways.

Ten organizations joined together, funded by the Gates Foundation, to create the Data Quality Campaign in 2005, with the following objectives:

• Fully develop high-quality longitudinal data systems in every state by 2009;
• Increase understanding and promote the valuable uses of longitudinal and financial data to improve student achievement; and
• Promote, develop, and use common data standards and efficient data transfer and exchange. 

Since that time, the federal government has mandated that every state collect personal student information in the form of longitudinal databases, called Student Longitudinal Data Systems or SLDS, in which the personal information for each child is compiled and tracked from birth or preschool onwards, including medical information, survey data, and data from many state agencies such as the criminal justice system, child services, and health departments.

A state’s SLDS, or sometimes called a P20 database (pre-K to 20 years of age), P12, or B-20 (data tracking from birth), have been paid for partly through federal grants awarded in five rounds of funding from 2005-2012. Forty-seven of 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, have received at least one SLDS grant.

Although Alabama, Wyoming and New Mexico are not included on the site linked to above, Alabama’s governor recently declared by executive order that “Alabama P-20W Longitudinal Data System is hereby created to match information about students from early learning through postsecondary education and into employment.” Wyoming uses a data dictionary, Fusion, that includes information from birth. New Mexico’s technology plan shows that they moved their P-20 SLDS to production status in 2014 and will expand in 2015. This site run by the Data Quality Campaign tracks each state’s SLDS.

Every SLDS has a data dictionary filled with hundreds of common data elements, so that students can be tracked from birth or pre-school through college and beyond, and their data more easily shared with vendors, other governmental agencies, across states, and with organizations or individuals engaged in education-related “research” or evaluation — all without parental knowledge or consent,.

Every SLDS uses the same code to define the data, aligned with the federal CEDS, or Common Education Data Standards, a collaborative effort run by the US Department of Education, “to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of education data elements to streamline the exchange, comparison, and understanding of data within and across P-20W institutions and sectors.”

Every few months, more data elements are “defined” and added to the CEDS, so that more information about a child’s life can be easily collected, stored, shared across agencies, and disclosed to third parties. You can check out the CEDS database yourself, including data points recently added, or enter the various terms like “disability,” “homeless” or “income” in the search bar.

In relation to discipline, for example, CEDS includes information concerning student detentions, letters of apology, demerits, warnings, counseling, suspension and expulsion records, whether the student was involved in an incident that involved weapons, whether he or she was arrested, whether there was a court hearing and what the judicial outcome and punishment was, including incarceration.

This type of information is obviously very sensitive and prejudicial, and often in juvenile court, records are kept sealed or destroyed after a certain period of time, especially if the child is found innocent or there is no additional offense; yet all this information can now be entered into his or her longitudinal record with no particular restriction on access and no time certain when the data would be destroyed.

Expanding and Linking Data across States 

Nearly every state recently applied for a new federal grant to expand its existing student longitudinal data system, including collection, linking and sharing abilities. You can see the federal request for proposals. Pay special attention to Section V, the Data Use section of the grant proposal, requiring states to collect and share early childhood data, match students and teachers for the purpose of teacher evaluation, and promote inter-operability across institutions, agencies, and states.

The 15 states and one territory, American Samoa, that won the grants were announced Sept. 17, 2015, and are posted here. President Obama’s 2016 budget request has a number of additional data related provisions, including a near tripling in funding for State Longitudinal Data Systems ($70 million) and Department of Labor Workforce Data Quality Initiative ($37 million) aimed at attaching adult workforce personal data with his or her student records.

Though the federal government is barred by law from creating a national student database, the U.S. Department of Education has evaded this restriction by means of several strategies, including funding multi-state databases, which would have been illegal before FERPA’s regulations and guidance were rewritten by the Department in 2012.

The federal grants encourage participation in these multi-state data exchanges. One existing multi-state database is WICHE, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, which includes the 15 Western states that recently received an additional $3 million from the federal government. This WICHE document explains that the project was originally funded by the Gates Foundation, and that the foundation’s goal of sharing personal student data across state lines and across state agencies without parental consent was impermissible under FERPA until it was weakened in 2012:

 Upon approval of WICHE’s proposal by the Gates Foundation, the pilot MLDE (Multistate Longitudinal Data Exchange) project began in earnest in June, 2010, and the initial meeting to begin constructing the MLDE was held in Portland, Oregon, in October, 2010. It is worth placing the launch of the MLDE pilot within an historical timeline of events bearing on the development and use of longitudinal data. As the project got underway, the federal government’s guidance on the application of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was still fairly restrictive. Indeed, based on a subsequent conversation with a member of the Washington State Attorney General’s office, our plans to actually exchange personally identifiable data among the states would be impermissible under the FERPA guidance in effect at that time. Though we were told we would have been able to assemble and use a de-identified dataset, which would have shown much of the value of combining data across states, not being able to give enhanced data back to participating states would have been a serious setback. Changes in the federal government’s guidance on FERPA that went into effect in January, 2012 resolved this problem.

The new guidance permitted the participating states to designate WICHE as an authorized representative for the purposes of assembling the combined data, while also allowing the disclosure of data across state lines and between state agencies.

Since 2010, the Gates Foundation has funded WICHE with more than $13 million. Just to underscore how powerful this organization has become, Colorado Lieutenant Governor Joe Garcia just stepped down from his post to head WICHE. Here is a helpful chart showing how student personal data is to be shared, among state agencies and across state lines.

Existing multi-state databases include not just WICHE, but also SEED, formerly Southeastern Education Data Exchange, now called the State Exchange of Education Data, including Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.

This North Carolina PowerPoint from 2013 describes what detailed information is to be shared among the states participating in SEED: data aligned with CEDS, including demographic information, academic and test score data, and disciplinary records. Here is a Georgia document, explaining how SEED will be “CEDs compliant” and describes in even more detail the sort of information that will be exchanged.

In addition, the two Common Core testing multi-state consortia funded by the federal government, PARCC and Smarter Balanced, are accumulating a huge amount of personal student data across state lines, and potentially sharing that information with other third parties. Under pressure, PARCC released a very porous privacy policy last year; Smarter Balanced has so far refused to provide any privacy policy, even after requests from parents in many of the participating states.

What Parents Can Do

Ask your State Education Department if they applied for this new grant to expand their SLDS, and if so, ask to see the grant proposal. You can also make a Freedom of Information request to the U.S. Department of Education to see the grant application. Ask what methods your state is using to protect the data that the SLDS already holds, and if the data is kept encrypted, at rest and in transit. Ask what categories of children’s data they are collecting, which agencies are contributing to it, and what third parties, including vendors and other states, may have gained access to it. Ask to see any inter-agency agreements or MOUs allowing the sharing education data with other state agencies. Ask if any governance or advisory body made up of citizen stakeholders exists to oversee its policies.

You should also demand to see the specific data the SLDS holds for your own child, and to challenge it if it’s incorrect – and the state cannot legally deny you this right nor charge you for this information under FERPA.

This was conclusively decided when a father named John Eppolito requested that the Nevada Department of Education provide him with a copy of his children’s SLDS records, and the state demanded $10,000 in exchange. He then filed a complaint with the US Department of Education, which responded with a letter on July 28, 2014, stating that the state must provide him with the data it holds for his child, as well as a record of every third party who has received it; and that they cannot charge a fee for this service.

Parents also have the right to correct their child’s data if it is in error. Apparently Mr. Eppolito found many errors in his children’s data. Even if it is accurate, the data that follows your child through life and across states could diminish his or her future prospects. As this Department of Education study points out,

“…imagine a student transferring from another district into a middle school that offers three levels of mathematics classes. If school staff associate irrelevant personal features with mathematics difficulties, the representativeness bias could influence the student’s placement… educators have been found to have a tendency to pay more attention to data and evidence that conform to what they expect to find.”

Schools could use this data to reject students, push them out, or relegate them to remedial classes or vocational tracks.

There is also abundant research that shows that a teacher’s expectations play a significant role in how a student performs – especially for marginalized groups. This is called the Pygmalion effect in the case of a teacher’s positive expectations, and the Golem effect in the case of negative expectations. These studies reveal that if teachers are provided with positive or negative information about their students before having a chance to form their own opinions based upon actual experience, this prior information often tends to bias their judgments and perceptions of that student, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.   Parents should be legitimately fearful that positive or negative data may be used to profile their children, and potentially damage their chance of success.

What Else Can You Do? 

If you send your children to a public school, under current federal law you have no way of opting out of the P20 profile that has been created by your state and potentially shared with others. You also have no right to refuse to have your child’s data disclosed to testing companies and other corporations in the name of evaluation and research. Researchers have legitimate interests in being able to analyze and evaluate educational programs, but any sensitive personal data should be properly de-identified and there must be strict security provisions to safeguard its access and restrict further disclosures, as well as a time certain when it will be destroyed. You do have the right to see that data, and challenge it if it is inaccurate.

You should also advocate for stronger state and federal laws to protect your child’s data and laws that give parents and students the right of ownership, including the ability to decide with whom it will be shared. You should urge your state Education Department to create advisory or governance boards that include stakeholder members, to provide input on restrictions on access and security requirements.

Any federal and state student privacy legislation should embrace five basic principles of student privacy, transparency and security, developed by the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. Ask your elected officials to support TRUE data privacy and transparency legislation, to protect children. Parents deserve to know the data collected and shared about their children, and they should be guaranteed that their children’s data is safe from breaches and misuse.

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SRxDDJAB8yg

Bill targets former Deal education adviser’s lobbying, consulting work

http://m.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/bill-targets-former-deal-education-advisers-lobbyi/npGRz/

Bill targets former Deal education adviser’s lobbying, consulting work

The draft legislation Fort unveiled Wednesday would bar employees of the governor’s office from lobbying and from being rehired as consultants to the governor’s office for a year after they leave their jobs.

The bill targets Erin Hames, who served as education adviser to Deal and was the chief architect of his Opportunity School District plan, which would allow the state to take over low-performing schools.

Hames was hired this summer by the Atlanta school district under a a no-bid $96,000 consulting contract. Atlanta’s school system is one of the largest potential targets if voters approve the Opportunity School District constitutional amendment next year.

Hames will also make $30,000 over the next year consulting for Deal on education policy.

“That’s cronyism at its worst,” Fort said. “Erin Hames is profiting from the very legislation that she pushed.”

Hames told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this fall that and she and Atlanta schools superintendent Meria Carstarphen share an “unflinching commitment to children.”

And the Atlanta schools need Hames’ help, Carstarphen said in response to earlier questions. “At the end of the day, we will be crushed at the state level if we don’t have people who have relationships and quality information that can help Atlanta Public Schools,” she said.

Other state employees have moved from their public positions to lobbying, but Ford said Hames’ move was different.

“It’s just so brazen,” he said.

Given the overwhelming majority Republicans hold in the Legislature, the bill from Fort, an Atlanta Democrat, is a long shot.

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