"As the profession of teaching steadily loses applicants, here is just another reason why government should get out of the business of education and why education tax dollars should be granted locally without the attachment of mandates that tie the hands of creative and dedicated teachers and administrators. Do away with Federal government intrusion in our schools and put the salaries of the Department of Education in the pockets of the local schools. Washington DC gets a failing grade on learning how to educate our students. Evaluate the bureaucrats, not the shackled teachers!

---Joan G. Rhoden, 2/7/16

http://getschooled.blog.myajc.com/2016/02/06/georgias-teacher-evaluation-plan-ignores-responsibility-role-of-learner/

Georgia’s teacher evaluation plan ignores responsibility, role of learner

A Sunday AJC story documented the mounting frustration of Georgia teachers over an evaluation process that will not only consider student test scores, but count them for 50 percent of a teacher’s rating.

The story explained:

Georgia adopted test scores in teacher evaluations three years ago as the federal government was pressuring states to create rating systems that held educators accountable for student performance. In December, though, reacting to widespread complaints from teachers and parents that testing had hijacked education, Congress and President Barack Obama undid the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. The new law doesn’t mandate that teachers be measured by test results. It also doesn’t forbid it, leaving the decision to state leaders.

Teachers in Georgia have seized on the political moment, hoping to strip down a 2013 state law requiring test results to be at least 50 percent of each evaluation, with consequences as severe as termination for teachers rated “ineffective.”

Teachers have begun getting their test-based evaluations. However, personnel decisions based on them have been delayed until the state Professional Standards Commission and Department of Education refine and field-test the system, which could take until 2017. “We are going to have to be satisfied the instruments are valid and reliable and ready to be used before we apply them, ” said Kelly Henson, executive secretary of the commission.

With that background, here is a response from Georgia educator Rouzier Dorce. A veteran educator with more than 30 years in the field, Dr. Rouzier serves as an assistant principal with the DeKalb County School District where he has worked since 1990.

By Rouzier Dorce

Imagine doctors being paid based on the progress of their patients. How many would remain in the profession if their patients, who ignore their recommendations and do not follow their advice were to determine how much they are paid or if they even have a job?

What is the student’s role in learning? Does the state’s teacher evaluation process discount the role of students? (AJC File)

The proponents of teacher accountability through student achievement should consider that argument. Even the best doctors have to rely on their patients following their treatments and recommendations.

When it comes to teaching and learning, we have a myriad of false correlations and most of them stem from misunderstandings of what learning is and the role of educators. For years, we have repeated and even accepted the myth that learning does not happen without teaching. We have heard respected educators pronounce that when teachers teach, students learn making learning almost the sole responsibility of the teacher. I recently came face to face with the result of this fallacy.

Last week, a student shared with me that she was taking French 4 (fourth year of learning the French language) and I said “vraiment?” meaning really? She answered, “I don’t know what you said.”

I added, “That’s sad,” to which she responded “My teacher doesn’t teach.” Many of her classmates concurred and supported her assumption that had her teacher taught her, she would have learned.

There is a “YouTube” video, it would seem, for any subject, no matter how advanced or trivial. Our interest, determination, practice time and effort yield our learning results. Yes, the quality of the video and the teaching tips play a crucial role, but remove the intrinsic factors from the learner, even the best videos cannot produce learning.

To have teachers be solely responsible for students’ learning to the point of making it 50 percent or more of their performance evaluation like Georgia legislators have proposed, baffles me. We already have the many incidents of cheating partly attributable to this theory that teachers control learning.  Do we dare imagine the backlash of an evaluation system with 50 percent of the measured outcome out of the hands of the persons being evaluated?

No one would argue against the need to evaluate teachers’ performance. No one would argue against the fact that teachers can and do impact student learning, academic growth and development. A system that measures that impact using test scores is tenuous at best and impractical at worse. Standardized tests are important in education, but they are not without their flaws. Even if we could find the perfect assessment instrument, it would still be measuring the examinee’s ability to recall information or demonstrate knowledge of learned content. It could not measure half of what would be considered teacher ability.

One of the teachers featured in Sunday’s AJC article “Teachers frustrated over reviews” shared that one of the students who potentially caused her to receive a poor evaluation was planning to drop out of school. This is a challenge many teachers face. They are working hard teaching students whose drive and motivation for learning have systematically been damaged or destroyed by social promotion. Few teachers can compete with the apathy and complacency some students have developed after years of being passed from grade to grade even when they have not learned much of anything. This is the reality for many public school teachers. Most take their students’ failures personally and it is no wonder many simply give up.

Evaluating teachers’ performance will have to be done through a comprehensive process that considers their students’ achievement. It will require many data points. It cannot be that heavily dependent on the success of students who have no skin in the game – students who have grown up on the belief that their promotion and learning are someone else’s responsibility. Students who, perhaps with their parents, own their learning usually succeed academically. Perhaps, some emphasis needs to be placed on learner improvement to ensure that teachers have a fair chance at reaching them.

Doctors must be knowledgeable and possess the ability to help us manage our health, but our overall responsibility cannot be overstated. Teachers have a similar responsibility, but the learner’s role cannot be minimized. Our best teachers are those who endure the general criticism and persevere because of their love for teaching and for their students. They deserve a fair and practical evaluation system.

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https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/03/fact-sheet-congress-acts-fix-no-child-left-behind

FACT SHEET: Congress Acts to Fix No Child Left Behind

“We are a place that believes every child, no matter where they come from, can grow up to be anything they want… And I’m confident that if we fix No Child Left Behind, if we continue to reform American education, continue to invest in our children’s future, that’s the America we will always be.”

- Remarks by the President on the No Child Left Behind Act, March 14, 2011

Kenmore Middle School, Arlington, Virginia

Today, the Obama Administration is praising action by the House of Representatives to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act, a bipartisan bill to fix No Child Left Behind, and is calling on the Senate to take swift action on the legislation so that it can be signed into law before the end of the year. The bill rejects the overuse of standardized tests and one-size-fits-all mandates on our schools, ensures that our education system will prepare every child to graduate from high school ready for college and careers, and provides more children access to high-quality state preschool programs.

The bipartisan bill passed by the House includes many of the key reforms the Administration has called on Congress to enact and encouraged states and districts to adopt in exchange for waivers offering relief from the more onerous provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The bill helps ensure educational opportunity for all students by:

• Holding all students to high academic standards that prepare them for success in college and careers.
• Ensuring accountability by guaranteeing that when students fall behind, states redirect resources into what works to help them and their schools improve, with a particular focus on the very lowest-performing schools, high schools with high dropout rates, and schools with achievement gaps.
• Empowering state and local decision-makers to develop their own strong systems for school improvement based upon evidence, rather than imposing cookie-cutter federal solutions like the No Child Left Behind Act did.
• Reducing the often onerous burden of testing on students and teachers, making sure that tests don’t crowd out teaching and learning, without sacrificing clear, annual information parents and educators need to make sure our children are learning.
• Providing more children access to high-quality preschool.
• Establishing new resources for proven strategies that will spur reform and drive opportunity and better outcomes for America’s students.

In recognition of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)’s legacy as a civil rights law, the bipartisan bill upholds critical protections for America’s disadvantaged students. It ensures that states and school districts will hold schools to account for the progress of all students and prescribes meaningful reforms to remedy underperformance in those schools failing to serve all students. It excludes harmful “portability” provisions that would siphon funds away from the students and schools most in need, and maintains dedicated resources and supports for America’s vulnerable children – including students with disabilities, English Learners, Native American students, homeless children, neglected and delinquent children, and migrant and seasonal farmworker children. It also ensures that states and districts continue the work they’ve begun this year to ensure that all students – including students from low-income families and students of color – have equitable access to excellent educators.  

EMBRACING THE ADMINISTRATION’S PRINCIPLES FOR REFORM

College and Career-Ready Standards for America’s Learners: The bill affirms the path taken by 48 states and the District of Columbia to hold all students to challenging academic content standards that will prepare them to graduate from high school prepared for success in college and the workforce. In 2008, America’s governors and state education officials came together to develop a new set of college- and career-ready standards for their schools. The Obama Administration supported those efforts through its Race to the Top grant program and the federal-state partnership established in its ESEA flexibility agreements.

Rigorous Accountability for All Students: Consistent with the Administration’s legislative proposals and the policies in place under the Administration’s ESEA flexibility agreements, the bill builds on the federal-state partnerships in place in over 40 states to require meaningful goals for the progress of all students, and to ensure that every student subgroup makes gains toward college and career-readiness. States must set ambitious targets to close student achievement and graduation rate gaps among subgroups of students in order to meet their goals. In schools where too many students consistently fail to reach the goals and other indicators set by the state, school districts will ensure they receive tailored interventions and supports proportionate to the needs of those schools and the students they serve.

Reform and Resources for America’s Struggling Schools and Students: The bill will target resources, attention, and effort to make gains for our students attending schools most in need of help. Consistent with the policies in place under the Administration’s ESEA flexibility agreements, the bill moves away from NCLB’s one-size-fits-all accountability and ensures that states undertake reforms in their lowest performing schools, in high schools with high dropout rates, and in schools where subgroups are falling behind. It includes provisions that would require districts to use evidence-based models to support whole-school interventions in the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools and schools where more than a third of high school students do not graduate on time, and includes dedicated funding to support interventions in these schools. In schools where subgroups of students persistently underperform, school districts must mount targeted interventions and supports to narrow gaps and improve student achievement. If such schools are not showing improvement, the state will ensure more rigorous strategies are put in place. Moreover, the Department of Education has the authority it needs to ensure that states carry out their responsibilities. 

New Incentives to Improve Opportunities and Outcomes for Students: The bill includes initiatives modeled after the Administration’s programs to:

• Establish or expand access to high-quality, state-funded preschool for children from low- and moderate-income families, building from the Administration’s Preschool Development Grants program.
• Develop, refine, and replicate innovative and ambitious reforms to close the achievement gap in America’s schools, similar to the Administration’s existing Investing in Innovation (i3) program.
• Expand incentives to prepare, develop, and advance effective teachers and principals in America’s schools.
• Leverage resources to address the significant challenges faced by students and families living in high-poverty communities through the Promise Neighborhoods effort, supporting a full continuum of services from early learning through college.
• Expand support for high-performing public charter schools for high-need students.

A Smart and Balanced Approach to Testing: The bill maintains important statewide assessments to ensure that teachers and parents can mark the progress and performance of their children every year, from third to eighth grade and once in high school. The bill encourages a smarter approach to testing by moving away from a sole focus on standardized tests to drive decisions around the quality of schools, and by allowing for the use of multiple measures of student learning and progress, along with other indicators of student success to make school accountability decisions. It also includes provisions consistent with the Administration’s principles around reducing the amount of classroom time spent on standardized testing, including support for state efforts to audit and streamline their current assessment systems.

Promoting Equity in State and Local Funding: The Administration has called repeatedly for states and school districts to more equitably distribute state and local dollars to schools with the greatest need. The bill includes a pilot program – similar to a proposal put forward by the Administration this year in the FY16 budget – that provides for weighted student funding. Under the pilot, districts must demonstrate a commitment to equitable distribution of state and local dollars—based on actual per-pupil expenditures—to their highest poverty schools. In exchange, districts would be allowed to allocate and use Title I and other federal formula funds in a more flexible manner to support comprehensive plans that improve achievement and outcomes for their neediest students. The bill also includes provisions that require reporting on actual school-level expenditures, allowing the public for the first time to see the amount of federal, state, and local funding distributed to each and every school.  The bill rejects so-called “portability” provisions in the House-passed bill that would have allowed states to shift federal funds away from the schools that need them most.

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http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2016-01-08/georgia-teacher-year-says-school-environment-drives-professionals-away#.VpCfjJNH9NU.facebook&gsc.tab=0

Georgia Teacher of the Year says school environment drives professionals away

Georgia's Teacher of the Year for 2016, Ernie Lee, teaches history in the Savannah-Chatham School System. He says teachers are being driven out of the profession by student behavior, standardized tests, cellphones in class and other factors. Parents just don't understand how things have changed since their day, he said.

ATLANTA — Things in schools have changed vastly since most taxpayers were students, according to Georgia’s Teacher of the Year, Ernie Lee, who said Friday the public doesn’t realize what teachers put up with.

“When people look at it, they are comparing what they experienced in school as being the same thing,” Lee said. “Folks, it is not the same thing. It is radically different.”

Lee, a one-time lawyer who turned to education when the recession crippled his real estate law practice, said the current school environment is a major reason teachers leave the profession.

The Savannah-Chatham County history teacher shared his observations during a conference for reporters from across the state held by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education.

“Phones in the classroom is a real issue,” Lee said, adding that students use them to photograph tests for friends or to text answers during exams.

Student discipline is one of the aggravations he listed, along with paperwork, mandatory student tests and teacher pay.

He pointed to the $37,000 beginning pay in the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System as being too little to support his stepdaughter on her own.

“Why are people leaving? It’s dollars and cents,” he said. “You’ve got to pay the bills.”

State school Superintendent Richard Woods told the same conference that he supports increased funding for public schools and is trying administratively to reduce the number of standardized tests that teachers must give.

“If we’re going to make any difference in education, it’s not going to be about some test,” Woods said. “It’s going to be about making a difference for children.”

A survey the Department of Education released Thursday of 53,000 current and former teachers listed standardized tests as the top reason educators leave the profession. Methods for evaluating teachers and compensation were the next two reasons.

“It really is a good reflection of what teachers are feeling,” Lee said.

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LOUISVILLE LEOPARD PWRCUSSIONISTS

Bring music back to our classrooms!

http://youtu.be/JPBrA3sV90A

When they realized women were using their sacks to make clothes for their children, flour mills of the 30s started using flowered fabric for their sacks, 1939

http://www.alternet.org/education/google-spying-40-million-k-12-students-privacy-advocates-call-federal-sanctions

Google Spying on 40 Million K-12 Students, Privacy Advocates Call for Federal Sanctions

Photo Credit: www.google.com

Unlike its website declaration, Google’s “Apps for Education” isn’t a tool that “schools can trust,” because it is spying on 40 million K-12 students and compiling all their online activities even though it pledged not to do that, according to online privacy advocates.

“Google is violating the Student Privacy Pledge in three ways,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission. “First… student personal information in the form of data about their use of non-educational Google services is collected, maintained, and used by Google for its own benefit, unrelated to authorized educational or school purposes.”

“Second, the “Chrome Sync” feature of Google’s Chrome browser is turned on by default on all Google Chromebook laptops – including those sold to schools as part of Google for Education – thereby enabling Google to collect and use students’ entire browsing history and other data for its own benefit,” EFF continues. “And third, Google for Education’s Administrative settings, which enable a school administrator to control settings for all program Chromebooks, allow administrators to choose settings that share student personal information with Google and third-party websites.”

EFF’s complaint to the Federal Trade Commission urges it to open an investigation into the company’s violation of privacy pledge drafted by the Future of Privacy Forum and Software & Information Industry Association, which Google signed last January. EFF notes that the FTC takes industry-created privacy pledges seriously, and “has brought enforcement actions against companies that made privacy-related promises to their costumers and then violated those promises.”

In 2011, Google paid “a $22.5 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented to users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Internet browser that it would not place tracking “cookies” or serve targeted ads to those users, violating an earlier privacy settlement between the company and the FTC,” the complaint said.

In public, Google claims to be a big privacy advocate. However, according to EFF, the 40 million K-12 students who use its laptops and software tools are unaware that it “collects, maintains, and uses records of essentially everything that student users of Google for Education do on Google services, while they are logged in to their Google accounts, regardless of which device or browser they use.” 

This may not be surprising to adults, who are used to Internet companies tracking their every search and move—mostly to analyze consumer preferences and target them for ads. But the privacy pledge that Google signed is supposed to protect the youths’ “personally identifiable information as well as other information when it is both collected and maintained on an individual level and is linked to personally identifiable information.” That includes all web searches, browsing, YouTube videos watched, all websites visited, other applications installed and passwords.

“Such data reveals highly personal information about students and is not necessary to deliver educational services,” EFF’s complaint said. “Google not only collects and stores the vast array of student data described above, but uses it for its own purposes such as improving Google products and serving targeted advertising (within non-Education Google services), as Google has represented to EFF.”

Google contends that it “anonymizes” this data—stripping off student identities—but that still violates the student privacy pledge, EFF said, “because Google still uses the data for its own benefit, unrelated to authorized educational or school purposes… and without authorization from the student or parent.”

Moreover, school administrators can also access and provide student information to third-parties, including businesses that are seeking to sell services or others trying to locate the student’s whereabouts. “In the same settings page where administrators can choose whether Google can collect a user’s passwords or browsing history, school administrators can also choose whether “websites are allowed to track the user’s [here, students’] physical location,” EFF said. “Sharing a student’s physical location with third parties is unquestionably sharing personal information beyond what is needed for educational purposes.”

EFF is asking the FTC to investigate Google’s privacy pledge-violating activities and tell parents exactly what records they have compiled on their children, and also destroy these accumulated data files. They are also asking the FTC to “order” Google to withdraw from the industry privacy pledge it signed, and “provide such other relief as the Commission finds necessary and appropriate,” which could include large fines.

The Industry Responds

Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Google Apps for Education, responded to the EFF complaint on the GoogleForEducation blog, saying that Google was following the industry’s privacy pledge.

“While we appreciate the EFF’s focus on student data privacy, we are confident that our tools comply with both the law and our promises, including the Student Privacy Pledge, which we signed earlier this year,” he wrote. “The co-authors of the Student Privacy Pledge, The Future of Privacy Forum and The Software and Information Industry Association have both criticized EFF's interpretation of the Pledge and their complaint.”

“We have reviewed the EFF complaint but do not believe it has merit,” wrote the Future of Privacy Forum’s Paul Keith. “Chrome Sync is a setting within the control of the school IT administrator, and can also be changed by parents or students.  This feature allows students to log in at home or at a library and have access to their school bookmarks, favorites and other settings.  Since Chromebooks may be shared among students in school (with password-protected accounts for each student using that particular hardware device), many schools rely on Sync so that multiple students have ready access to their accounts and settings on the same device.  We understand that any data collected is not used for behavioral advertising and all other data uses are aggregated and anonymous.” 

The Software & Information Industry Association spokesman Mark McCarthy wrote that EFF’s “complaint contains some important misunderstandings about the student privacy pledge.” Continuing, he said, “First, the complaint alleges that Google violated the student privacy pledge because it collected information about students who are using general purpose services. The pledge, however, only applies to applications, services, or web sites “designed and marketed for use in United States elementary and secondary educational institutions.”

“The complaint also alleges that Google violated the pledge by collecting personal information such as browser histories and bookmarks.  However, this information is collected at the direction of the school as part of a student’s educational experience. The pledge was never intended to prevent the collection of personal information as part of students’ educational experience.”

Meaningless Words?

Taken together, these statements appear to confirm that Google is tracking and compiling information on student online activities. That data may be rendered anonymous, may not be used for commercial purposes, and may be controlled in part by parents and educators. However, it’s clear that the basic allegations by EFF appear true. Whether that prompts federal regulators to investigate further, conclude it violated an industry privacy pledge, or sanction Google is an entirely different matter.

But it’s clear that Google, the Future of Privacy Forum, The Software & Information Industry Association, EFF—and likely the general public—have very different ideas about what privacy means for 40 million K-12 students using Google’s tools.   

Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

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http://www.educationviews.org/american-kids-read-years-common-core/

What Do American Kids Read after Five Years of Common Core?*

Sandra Stotsky December 5, 2015

Not much at their grade level, it seems. Nor do they seem to be reading enough of the kind of material that will develop college-level reading and vocabulary skills. Two independent sources of information help us to understand why American students continue to decline in their command of the basic subject in the curriculum. This is despite the brave words uttered by governors and commissioners of education when Common Core’s standards in mathematics and English language arts were adopted in 2010 by state boards of education, mostly without a question, and in many cases before the standards were written or completed. They also help us to understand what might be done to reverse the decline.

How do we know there is a decline in reading? It is suggested by the scores on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 8 reading tests. http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#?grade=4
Can the decline be related to the implementation of Common Core’s ELA standards? Yes, according to Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution, who undertook an analysis of both the decline in grade 8 NAEP reading as well as the plateau in grade 4 NAEP reading by looking at teacher-reported changes in the content of the English language arts (ELA) curriculum since Common Core. See the report here: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2015/11/24-common-core-instruction-loveless and Education Week’s account here: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/11/fiction_no_longer_dominating_reading_instruction_naep_analysis.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW

As Loveless points out, teachers report shifting away from literary texts to what are called “informational” texts in response to the demands of the Common Core ELA standards writers for an increase in “informational” reading, as well as to their division of reading standards at all grade levels into about 50% for informational reading and 50% for “literature.” In Loveless’s words, the curriculum has moved “from the dominance of fiction over nonfiction to near parity in emphasis.”

While this shift may not be the cause (or even a cause) of the plateau in grade 4 reading and decline in grade 8 reading, it is linked to Common Core. It raises questions that might have been explored six years ago when Common Core’s ELA standards writers told English teachers to teach more “informational” reading despite the lack of historical or empirical evidence that such a shift would better prepare students for “college and career” than the customary balance of about 80% drama, fiction, and poetry and 20% nonfiction (biographies, essays, and speeches) in the secondary English curriculum. Apparently, the Common Core ELA writers did not know that secondary English teachers have rarely if ever taught “informational” reading, since “information” has always been taught in other subjects in the curriculum and is not what English teachers have studied or continue to study in undergraduate coursework as English or English education majors. It is not clear what Common Core’s ELA writers really did and do know about the secondary English curriculum since neither David Coleman nor Susan Pimentel has ever taught in K-12 or above.

We learn that American students are reading at low levels of reading difficulty from recent editions of an annual report issued by the Wisconsin-based company that sells Accelerated Reader 360 (AR or AR 360). This program, in thousands of schools (school libraries or individual classrooms), provides data on what K-12 students in their program read, as well as a short comprehension quiz for the books and “nonfiction articles” they read. It may not be an inclusive list (students may well read books and newspaper/journal articles they do not take a quiz on or report reading), but it is so far the best and largest data base we have.

The 2016 edition is based on data for 9.8 million students in grades 1–12 from 31,327 U.S. schools “who read over 334 million books and nonfiction articles during the 2014–2015 school year.” http://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R004101202GH426A.pdf The 2015 report is based on book-reading only (“more than 9.8 million students in grades 1–12 who read more than 330 million books during the 2013–2014 school year, and are from 31,633 schools, spanning all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia”).

The 2015 report noted that “the number of students reading books within the grade bands established by Common Core falls precipitously as grade level increases.” What seems to account for the decline? One reason may be, as the 2015 report suggested, that students simply read less challenging works than they once read. As noted in Figure 6 on p. 43 of the 2016 report, in grades 2–5, between 81% and 98% of students independently read at least one book in or above their Common Core-recommended “text complexity” grade band. In grades 6–8, these rates fall to between 24% and 32%. In high school, they drop further to between 7% and 14%. “Beyond grade 5, few students read books within their text complexity grade bands.”

In the 2015 report, the average difficulty level of books read peaks at 5.2 in grade 12 (Table A1, p. 51).” To judge by an essay in the 2013 AR report, this number indicates a significant decline over the 20th century in the difficulty level of the top titles in high school. Using the readability formula developed by this Wisconsin-based company (ATOS for Books), the essay reports that the average reading level of assigned high school texts in a 1907 study by George Tanner was 9.0, followed by 9.1 in a 1923 study by Sara Hudelson. The average reading level was successively lower in all subsequent surveys: 8.2 in Scarvia Anderson’s 1964 survey, 7.2 in Arthur Applebee’s 1989 survey, 6.7 in Sandra Stotsky et al.’s 2010 survey, and 6.2 in the 2012 AR survey of top titles read or assigned.

In the 2016 report, the average complexity level (i.e., reading difficulty level) of the top 25 texts read by the 95,000 grade 11 students in the AR data base is 5.6, and 6.5 by the over 70,000 grade 12 students. This might at first blush seem like the beginning of a reversal of the decline. But the 2016 report introduced a new wrinkle. Books are one kind of reading and “nonfiction articles” are another. And the distance between the level of the books read by high school students and the level of their college textbooks is still enormous, even though the reading level of the “nonfiction articles” students read is higher than the level of the books they read. The average ATOS level of the top 25 “nonfiction articles” read by grade 11 students (the ATOS for Books formula was adapted for short selections) was an impressive 9.7, and by grade 12 students 9.5.

But, as the 2016 report cautions, students exiting high school are typically reading books in the grades 5–6 range, “which is on par with the level of typical fiction best sellers of around 5.7.” Thus, as the report notes, their book choices are still about two grade levels below the demands of books commonly assigned to incoming college freshman as summer/fall reading (7.3) and nonfiction best sellers (7.6). Worse yet, the reading levels of college textbooks (13.8) are quite a bit more advanced than what many high school students choose or are assigned to read (AR’s data base cannot yet distinguish between the two categories).

In the context of two independent sources (the Brookings and AR reports) suggesting that American students are reading fewer and less challenging literary texts than before, several important questions need to be explored:

1. What is the quality of the “informational” or nonfiction articles now added to the AR data base (our only systematic source of information on the nonfiction article reading now taking place)?

2. Why do these “nonfiction articles” get on average higher grade-level ratings than the books students read (which are mostly fiction)?

3. What are the characteristics of high school-level literary texts (e.g., books with ratings above 9.0), which seem to have almost disappeared from the English curriculum?

We begin by exploring differences between literary texts and “informational” texts. The key element is their vocabulary because we know from 100 years of reading research that knowledge of the meanings of words is the key element in reading comprehension. However, we do not know how strong readers develop their large vocabulary. Researchers have concluded that good readers learn most new words in context (but not by using context—a very different statement) and that there is no one method teachers should use to teach vocabulary. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/teaching-vocabulary

It is possible that a crucial condition for learning new words is continuous prose reading, as with an Austen or Dickens novel or a work of historical nonfiction (poems typically use a smaller and often monosyllabic vocabulary). Continuous prose reading involves reading about the same people or events across a long series of pages written at about the same level of vocabulary and sentence structure. It requires concentration (especially when characters have different names depending on their relationships to other characters), but a good plot or exciting true story keeps readers moving along. This kind of reading is very different from the stop-and-start reading of a series of “nonfiction” articles. The reading level of the vocabulary and sentence structure in each article may be similar to those in a well-written work of fiction or nonfiction (or even higher), but students presented each week with a completely new topic, set of key words, and writing style in a short piece of writing may be overwhelmed. (There is no research on this issue.)

It is difficult to retain the meaning of constantly changing key words over a long period of time (changing because the topics are completely unrelated), especially in an English class which by definition does not teach any body of “information” as in a traditional science class. (Nor are English teachers licensed to teach any body of information.) Use of these kinds of articles in a curriculum does not lead to the cumulative learning that would take place from a sequence of learning activities for intellectual objectives (not skills), each related in different ways to preceding activities. Specific technical terms probably get learned from reading them over and over in a well-written textbook on one subject (and using them in some way). But a literate vocabulary is likely acquired from reading exciting tales (e.g., Sherlock Holmes stories) or a coherent series of literary works as in chronological survey courses in American or British literature, not from using a word list, word wall, dictionary, or context. Such words are in, for example, A Tale of Two Cities (9.7). http://web.suffieldacademy.org/english/english4h/c.d.voc.html While most are unnecessary for understanding a technical article, they appear in other works written by educated writers.

Dickens novels were once read by most high school students and are now hardly read at all in high schools in the AR 360 program. In fact, the only literary texts now in the top 50 titles for grades 9 to 12 with a rating of 9.0 or higher are rarely assigned or read, according to their frequency ratings, and were written before WWII (e.g., Austin, Conrad, Dickens, Hawthorne, and Shakespeare). The only European writers with high school-level ratings left are Kafka and Verne.

In contrast, the “nonfiction articles” are short, contemporary, and with key words that differ from article to article to address a variety of topics. Unless these articles are related in substantive ways to a literary work the English teacher has assigned all students for study, they constitute fragmented reading and likely lead to little learning. For example, the five most popular nonfiction articles from the Accelerated Reader 360 Collection read by over 122,000 tenth graders are as follows:

Title (ATOS™ level) Source Topic Skill area
1 Bad Behavior on Social Media Can Cost Recruits (9.0) AP Science Author’s Purpose
2 Facebook’s Privacy Update: Five Things to Know (9.4) AP Culture Main Idea and Details
3 NSA Spying on Virtual Worlds, Online Games (11.5) AP Culture Author’s Purpose
4 Monkeys Take Selfies, Sparking Copyright Dispute (9.9) AP Education Argumentation
5 Are Ants Smarter Than Google? (5.5) Youngzine Culture Compare and Contrast

To judge by the information given for each one, teachers have likely chosen them for “informational” reading instruction in order to address the “skill area” they are told it addresses. The reading levels may be about as high as a Dickens novel because these short articles must present quickly a heavy load of key words related to their topic—unlike nonfiction books where key vocabulary is spread out over many pages and readers have many opportunities to absorb their meanings in context. But one cannot discern the literary works for which these article might have served as “context texts” if in fact they were selected as the context for any literary work. See the report by Mark Bauerlein and Sandra Stotsky, issued in 2012, for a description of “context texts” as promoted by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). http://pioneerinstitute.org/education/new-study-suggests-remedies-for-common-core-literature-deficit/).

Keep in mind that the audience for these articles (and radio broadcasts by NPR) is not high school students but literate adults, who may read closely or skim for the point of an article—depending on idiosyncratic interest. They are mostly examples of journalism, targeted to busy readers. And the structure of these pieces fits a journalistic mode of writing, not the kind of paragraph that English teachers are desperately trying to encourage in high school students (a paragraph with a controlling idea, as well as complete sentences related to that idea, not quotations from interviewees). Moreover, if students are also given the pictures embedded in the original articles, or the tape recordings for the scripts of the NPR radio broadcasts, then measures of reading comprehension (short quizzes) applied to these articles are confounded.

Common Core’s ELA writers did not seem to know that complex literary texts better prepare students for college than even complex non-literary texts. They clearly did not know that NAEP in no way makes recommendations for the content of the English/reading curriculum at any grade level. (It simply recommends the percentage of types of passages to be used for assessment purposes only—and says so.) In fact, it remains a mystery why their misinformed curriculum and pedagogical recommendations have not been examined by the country’s most prominent education researchers (who could have looked for supporting research and told the public it wasn’t there) or why completely clueless boards of education adopted Common Core’s ELA standards without a question about the changes in the K-12 curriculum they would lead to—and the possible consequences of these changes.

Recommendations for Educators and the Accelerated Reader 360 Collection

The company producing the AR 360 Collection is to be commended for trying to encourage high school-level readings for high school English classes. It does so by showing fiction and nonfiction book titles that would be suitable for grades 9/10 and 11/12 (pp. 50-51, 2016 edition). But the lists showing top titles for books through the grades indicate that, overall, students are assigned or choose to read very few nonfiction books. It’s unlikely that enough nonfiction book titles will be selected to address the “informational” quota that schools mistakenly think English and other classes must meet to get students “college and career ready.”

As English professor Mark Bauerlein suggests, instead of “contextualizing” historically important literary works with modern “informational” texts (e.g., “nonfiction articles” and other forms of journalism), why not “scaffold” them with authentic informational readings? For example, teachers might pair The Odyssey with short passages about ancient Greek history and social life, and “A Tale of Two Cities” with readings by several French Encyclopedists or Edmund Burke’s post-Revolutionary comments. Better yet, the lists of suitable literary titles for high school in the AR 360 Collection might point to several possible “context” texts for each title and provide teachers with online access to these informational readings. Such groupings would help teachers to construct a more coherent secondary literature curriculum than they now do, and strengthen students’ grasp of both the literary and non-literary works they are asked to read.

* I appreciate the review of an earlier draft of this essay by Eric Stickney, Director of Educational Research at Renaissance Learning.

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https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/2015/12/02/this-is-the-moment-congress-we-are-watching-you-vote-and-we-know-whats-in-this-bill/

This Is The Moment, Congress: We Are Watching You Vote (What This Bill is Really About)

The Every Student Succeeds Act

(ESEA or No Child Left Behind Reauthorization)

To read and expose the inevitable underbelly of the latest 1061-page fed-ed bill in the time between yesterday, when the bill slimed its way out of the dark, until tomorrow, when the bill is set up for its Congressional vote (without debate, without reading) is, of course, an impossible task.  We have done impossible tasks before, but I have never read 1,061 pages and analyzed it, overnight.

I’m going to post as much as I have energy for tonight.  In the morning, I’ll add what my smarty pants reader friends have found, as well.  So come back and scroll down.  :)  If you are reading the bill, please make comments and point out page numbers below.  (FYI I am comparing this bill to its predecessors and you can do the same if you like.)

For those just catching up, know this:  the secret committee released the over 1,000 pages long bill to the rest of Congress  Monday, Nov. 30th,  for Congress to make its reasoned vote TWO DAYS LATER but then they changed the bill–again– and re-released it today, Dec. 1st.  So technically, your reps had one day to read, digest, and debate.

Only Senator Lee has stood up to this procedural injustice.  Only he is a clear “NO” vote, that I know of.  Other Utahns: Senator Hatch, Representative Chaffetz and Representative Love, for example, are reading the bill today before they commit to a yes or a no vote this week, say their staffers.

This lack of commitment is something that I cannot understand.

Why wouldn’t Congressmen’s default vote be a “no,” based on the fact that the process has veered far from honest and proper procedural protocol?  Why not fight for the right to take a reasonable approach to actually study and debate the bill openly?

Congress is on the verge of passing this bill dishonorably while the only ones very excited about the bill (besides the Secretary of Education) are the bling-bling bipartisan lobbyists working for gold-rushing tech companies wishing to drain tax dollars into their pockets. These tech companies and ed sales corporations advise or partner up with the feds, saying smooth sounding stuff that poses as education — but education, the word itself, has been hijacked.

Corporate-partnered fed ed, served by this bill, is a top-down, one-sized, freedom-constricting, teacher-controlling, student data-stalking Frankenstein.  I don’t care if it’s left or right wing spawned.  It is wrong.

It is not education.

Any Representative or Senator who votes to pass this nation-binding law in such blind circumstances better prepare. There will be political careers lost– that will trace their demise back to this moment.  This is the moment, Congress.

Hold Congress accountable.  Call and tweet.  Call 202-224-3121 to tell Congress: vote no.    We, the people, are watching this vote.

Now, to business of this bill.

I’ll post the page number or section, the direct quote from the bill, and why it’s a concern. (There is no way this will be thoroughly done in so little time.  Not a chance. But it will give you the gist of the bill.  And you will understand why pushers have gotten into the habit of putting out lying talking points –“reduce the federal footprint”; “restore power to states”– to get the darn bills passed.)

  ————————–

“EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT OF 2015”  aka ESEA  link here)

My friend Karen Bracken, a patriot warrior mom, wrote, “Even the title concerns me.  How do you ensure that Every Student Will Succeed?  The only way you can do that is by dumbing-down education to the point in which even a cat could graduate.”  Does that make you laugh or cry?

If you read the title and the table of contents, you will see the micromanagement right away.  But let’s start with section 1003.  It deals with money and how states will be micromanaged if they want to see any of it.  The bill calls it “School Improvement.”  I’ve renamed it “How States Can Beg for A Piece of Their Own Tax Dollars Back“.

Here, the feds dictate (page 24) what percentage of funds the state will use and for what purpose.  (7 percent for this, not less than 95 percent for that, 3 percent for this… on and on through page 32).

The feds dictate that the states then must turn around and inflict fed-like micromanagement on localities; they must be “monitoring and evaluating the use of funds by local education agencies” (page 26) and must give out monies to localities only if they “demonstrate the strongest commitment to using funds…[as feds see fit] and states must “align other Federal, State and local resources“.

(There’s that word “align” that we have read ten billion times in the past four years as we read official documents implementing Common Core and Common Data Standards.  The word pops up again on page 33:  “coursework that is aligned with the challenging State academic standards“.  They’ve now dropped  references to Common Core State Standards as well as any reference to College and Career Ready Standards.  But the word “aligned” they have not dropped.  It’s in the document 72 times, and,  notably, the word “standards” is in the document 269 times and “challenging state academic standards” is repeated 24 times; just not “Common Core” labeled anymore.  To me, “align” in ed reform now means to superglue to a global sameness; it means forget about scholastic creativity or imagination; it means forget about originality or home-grown ideas and powers.  It means that you are not represented; you are assimilated.   But I am off on a tangent.)

Pages 34 and 35 repeat the mantra that funds must be prioritized to low-achievers.  (First of all, how dare you tell a state how to prioritize its funds?  Secondly, how are the feds so sure that mid and high achievers won’t mind losing funding for their misdeed of having achieved?  Are mid or high achievers’ needs not all that important, anyway?)  Harrison Bergeron comes to mind; this is the Handicapper General at work.

Page 36 promises “a sufficient number of options to provide a meaningful choice for parents” which is a lie, of course; think about it.  Federal laws and conditional monies mean using federally approved standards and tests and CURRICULUM in every school receiving federal funds.  This is far from meaningful and it represents an extremely narrowed and controlled set of choices.  Meaningful does not happen in an atmosphere of standardized everything, just as wonderous meals do not bloom in the kitchens of McDonald’s.

Page 37 dictates that American tax dollars may only “provide instruction and content that is secular“.  This is old news.  But it is not old news that federal funds are increasingly being offered to private schools.  Does this mean that the feds are softening and will share taxpayers’ dollars with those who choose to attend private religious schools?  No.  It means that private schools are being coerced to secularize their core curricula and services so that they may receive federal money.

Page 38 is Section 1111:  STATE PLANS.

We’ll rename this one “Mother May I?”  (Thanks, Wendy Hart.)

States say:  “Mother, May I adopt these standards?”  Secretary of Education or his appointees say “no”.  Rinse and repeat until states eventually ask to adopt what the Secretary has already settled upon.  Here’s how it works:

Page 38:  “…State educational agency shall file will the Secretary a plan” which must meet, among other things, “Secretarial Approval” (page 39 line 23) and must be approved by a review team appointed by the federal Secretary of Education. (page 39-40)  That team (page 42) will have the authority to disapprove a state plan.  The state may revise its plan, appeal for a hearing (page 43) but ultimately, the process will “promote effective implementation of the challenging State academic standards [aka Common Core]” (page 43).

If ANYONE tries to tell you that this bill gives power to the States, point to these pages.  With such huge veto-wielding power, and review team appointing power, the Secretary becomes king over anything any state wants to do.  This is not good.  You can stop here.  That’s enough ammo.  VOTE NO.

I have to point out some sickening hypocrisy on page 44.  The review team must provide “objective feedback to the States” with “respect for State and local judgments with the goal of supporting State and local-led innovation“.  If your goal is to support State innovation, why not return to the Constitution which gives exactly ZERO authority to the feds in anything relating to education, tests, standards, or teachers!?

More hypocrisy on the same page: “Neither the Secretary nor the political appointees of the Department may attempt to participate in or influence the peer review process”.

On page 45:  “If a state makes significant changes to its plan at any time, such as the adoption of new challenging State academic standards or new academic assessments or changes to its accountability system… such information shall be submitted to the Secretary…”

Same page:  “If a State fails to meet any of the requirements of this section, the Secretary may withhold funds…” MICROMANAGEMENT HEAVEN.

A bit of a toothless joke on page 47:  “The State, in the plan it files… shall provide an assurance that public comments were taken into account”.

Page 47 also gives us this sobering mouthful:  “Each state, in the plan it files… shall provide an assurance that the State has adopted challenging academic content standards and aligned academic achievement standards (referred to in this Act as ‘challenging State academic standards’), which achievement standards shall include not  less than 3 levels of achievement…”  If you have studied how children are assessed, tracked and predestined to relegated top, middle, or bottom schools and careers in nations shackled by communism and socialism, this will make you very unhappy.

Page 48 says the state MUST align its standards to colleges and to tech-ed schools.

Page 49 says that only a small percentage of special education students– those with “the most significant cognitive disabilities” may be excused, and may use alternate standards, and only then if those alternate standards are “aligned with the challenging State academic content standards”.  On page 50 it adds that that severely disabled person must be “on track to pursue postsecondary education or employment” whether they want to or not.  The feds are not kind to special education students.  And they won’t let states determine these matters anymore.  Sadly, we already knew all of this was coming.

Page 51 offers us another blistering contradiction:  “The Secretary shall not have the authority to mandate, direct, control, coerce, or exercise any direction or supervision over any of the challenging State academic standards…”  Tell me how that works with page 45.   He can withhold funds and disapprove plans if the state files a plan that he doesn’t like for a slew of reasons that could include using curriculum, tests or standards that aren’t aligned to his vision of fed ed and he can mandate that the state has to use the exact same standards in every one of its schools (page 52 line 21) — but he in no way supervises the State’s standards?

Page 52 deals with “Academic Assessments”.  Feds dictate to states that the tests shall be the same in every school in the state (line 23) and that they will be “administered to all public elementary and secondary school students in the State” (page 53).  Does this end –or aim to end– the parental right to opt out of testing?  (See page 76 below)

Page  53 is an admission.  The bill says that the tests may not be used to “publically disclose personally identifiable information”.   They can’t disclose it publicly, but they can sure store it indefinitely.

Subtly, page 53 forces Common Educational Data Standards because the feds dictate that state tests must be:  “consistent with relevant, nationally recognized professional and technical testing standards”.

Next, the dictators tell states when and how much to test children:

page 54:  in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 (every year) for math and language arts

in grades 9, 10, 11, 12 (at least once)

in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 for science (at least three times in those years)

On page 55, the dictators bring down the hammer:  “the participation in such assessments of all students”.  ALL.

On page 58 we see the racism and other -isms of the Department of Education: States are told that they must disaggregate test data by ethnicity, race, economics, disability, English proficiency, gender, and migrant status. 

On page 59 we see the toxic term “universal design for learning“.  Tests are to be developed using IMS Global education standards.  This means not just state or national, but global sameness and tracking.  Is that a good idea or a bad one?  Is that something that we ought to have Congress think about for more than one day prior to a vote?

On page 61 the feds are dictating to states that no more than one percent of students may be considered so disabled that they may take alternate-standards-based tests.  “The total number of students assessed… using alternate assessments does  not exceed 1 percent of the total number of all students in the State”.  Later, on page 65, the bill says that there is no cap; but that schools must submit information “justifying the need to exceed such a cap”.  It also notes that the State shall provide “oversight” of any school required to submit justifying information.  In other words, States must show that they are monitoring schools’ decision making.

How would the federal government ever know whether a state happened to have fewer, or a greater number of students who needed and deserved something other than what the highest achieving students can and should do?  On what basis does it dictate one percent?  What if my child is severely disabled and is forced to take the common tests and to be taught to common standards inappropriate for him or her, because of the high number of students with disabilties?  How does that bless my child?

On page 62 they’re dictating “universal design for learning” again; this time, for severely disabled special education testing.

Page 66 is literally jaw-dropping to me.  It says that if the state “provides evidence which is satisfactory to the Secretary that neither the State Educational Agency nor any other State government official… has sufficient authority under State law to adopt challenging State academic standards and academic assessments aligned with such standards [aka Common Core standards and tests] which will be applicable to all students enrolled in the State’s public elementary schools and secondary schools, then the State educational agency may meet the requirements…”  by aligning unofficially anyway, by meeting “all of the criteria…and any regulations… that the Secretary may publish”.  (page 67)   If your state law doesn’t allow for one size fits all, then adopt and implement policies that ensure that you are aligned anyway, or lose funding.  Talk about kicking Constitutional rights in the teeth.  This is dictatorship.

On page 69, states are told to dictate to schools again.  They must filter tests through the filter of “already been approved” (line 18) or they must “conduct a review of the assessment to determine if such assessment meets or exceeds the technical criteria” that has to be “established” (line 9) by the state.  This sounds to me like more herding of everybody into IMS Global’s universal design for learning.

On page 73, it almost sounds good until you finish the sentence.  It begins, “a State retains the right to develop and administer computer adaptive assessments, provided that….” and then we lose all the rights again, because they have to be aligned, aligned, aligned.

On page 76, it says that States can still decide whether or not to allow parents to opt out of testing but limits that concept to one paragraph:  “nothing in this paragraph shall be construed as preempting State” law.  So, in the rest of the over-1000-page bill, something might.  This is not making me feel better.

How many dictatorial mandates, contradictions, hypocrises, manipulations and usurpations of local control have I related in this first tiny section of this bill?

Now, it is 1:30 a.m.   I have to go to sleep.

There are 985 pages that I (and probably my congressional reps) are leaving unread.  

–In a few short hours, Congress votes anyway.  Watch it here.

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