Response to Governor's Celebratory Test-Monster Announcement

Re: Governor Cuomo and Legislative Leaders Detail Agreement Guaranteeing All Schools Implement Permanent Teacher Evaluation Systems

Governor Cuomo and any legislative leaders aligned in this aggressive and short-sighted agenda:

Please help me understand the intent of your legislative agenda by answering a few questions. From your recent announcement regarding permanent teacher evaluation systems:

“This agreement is a reasonable compromise that builds on the legislation we passed to enhance accountability in schools and give our students the first-class education they deserve. I look forward to working with the Governor and my colleagues in the Legislature to do more to improve education and help our kids compete and succeed.” (Senate Majority Coalition Co-Leader Dean G. Skelos...Christ, how do you fit THAT on a silk pocket hanky???)

Compete with who? Succeed at what? In what ways are kids falling short in what competition? In what ways are kids failing to succeed? Have you investigated successful models around the world where students and societies appear to enjoy relative success and quality of life? Is it pressure, scrutiny and teacher evaluation by standardized test results that makes those successes possible and make you so willing to impose such a system on schools here?

"By doing so, we will prevent future cuts to education funding and ensure that every teacher is held to a fair and meaningful standard of excellence."

"Fair", "meaningful" and "excellence" are up for debate. Transforming public schools into testing factories and children's personal data over to Rupert Murdoch owned data warehouses could have other vocabulary in its description.

"Last year, Governor Cuomo established a new statewide evaluation system that is one of the strongest in the country. The system is based on multiple measures of performance including student achievement and rigorous classroom observations. The Governor signed a law last year requiring all school districts to implement an evaluation system based on the statewide system approved by the State Education Department or risk losing their increase in education aid—resulting in 99 percent compliance (687 out of 691 school districts implemented a system)."

"Today’s law will ensure one hundred percent compliance and will help improve education all across New York."

One hundred percent? Including charters/academies/magnet schools? Will all students attend fully public schools with equitable resources? Because charter schools do not have to play by these rules and not all school districts receive the resources they need to provide students what they need. I don't agree with this game of semantics, hidden agendas, changing rules and pushing legislation that sacrifices the already disadvantaged to your political aspirations and lobbied for gains to private interests.

Does your system of multiple measures accurately include family, cohort, unfunded mandates or services cut in the NY ed-funding game (where crumbs are passed out, tax caps are pushed, and funds saved up by fiscally responsible schools are locked down until districts dance and beg)?

How intuitive is Rupert Murdoch, Pearson, a computer program, a bubble sheet...when it comes to the very poorest children from some of the strangest home situations? Can a #2 pencil do what I do or reveal some of the more important things I have to do every day because of gutted budgets and refusals to consider potential revenues? Shared sacrifice?

Gov. Cuomo, please first measure the sacrifices against each other, measure the real hand-to-mouth impacts-especially the pressure of scrutiny and the oppression of inequity, and THEN tell me tests should be celebrated.  

Thanks to @BetsyS48 for helping tighten this up a bit.

I need to get this off my plate because every minute I become more aware of how willing our leaders are to make us pick up the soap in the communal shower for profiteers and "ed reform" folks who would not themselves bear the scrutiny of logic, practice and accountability.

Common Core, College, Career? Too Many C's!

I have always said that common core standards are a good idea, for some consistency and continuity. I’m not sure that they are always developmentally appropriate at the younger years, and the “college and career” stuff is a starry-eyed, back-handed slap of an accusation that comes without the conversations:

1) Careers?!? What careers? We are not long off a Clinton-to-Bush run where our leaders more or less told us that good jobs were gone, retraining and acceptance of less might be the lot of a lot of us, and a town hall where Bush II just didn't get it when a clearly well spoken and educated, almost middle-aged mother lamented the need to work three jobs just to make ends meet. 

Bush: “Three jobs? That’s truly American!”
The movies really do get it right once in a while: “If you build it, they will come.” When “job creators and investors” really did, and supported the nation/workers/economy that gave them investor/creator powers…our schools churned out workers that participated, and kids who went to college were ready. The investors creators have turned to hoarders in a speculation based economy and now they are speculating on the value of people, their public institutions, and finding a way to restrain and milk them on their public-to-private farm. If good jobs existed, parents would be working, feeding, loving, preparing students to succeed.

2) College? What exists after that would pay back the Sallie-Mae master? Not only that, but are we really going to pretend that so many American students are ready for the rigors of college level study? Are we instead going to alter "college" into a costly vocational/trade-prep option for some, or are we going to honestly look at the fact that we push more students onto the college path than we really should, that the payback on that investment is harder to find these days, and that negative comparisons to other systems around the world (where students are more filtered along the path to higher education) is simply not fair?

So...Common Core? I say okay. Wrap it around a turd sandwich that places the "no excuses" blame on teachers for not healing an economy wrecked by the same crew forcing the standards and test-based reform on us all (except for their privileged children)? No way...at least not quietly.

An email I received regarding our state uniting with industry to violate our rights and our privacy.

An update on the violation of student privacy and how to opt out your child, from Class Size Matters

Dear Supporter,  Earlier in the school year, we posted a petition that you signed, asking the NY State Attorney General and Board of Regents to stop the New York State Education Department from handing over private, personally identifiable student and teacher data to the Gates Foundation, which intends to disclose this information to for-profit commercial vendors.  A story in Sunday’s Reuters explains how the Gates Foundation has now formed a new corporation called inBloom Inc., to store and distribute the confidential student data from nine states, including of New York public school students statewide.

Though our petition generated over 2,600 signatures to NYSED Commissioner King in two weeks, the state has refused to meet with us and has insisted that it will go ahead with its plan to share any and all information in student (and teacher) educational records. This information will include names, addresses, and phone numbers, linked to grades, test scores, detailed disciplinary records, attendance rates, health conditions, special education services, economic status and race, all without parental notification or consent. See our updated fact sheet for more info.  inBloom Inc. has already stated that it “cannot guarantee the security of the information stored…or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted.” For parents who are concerned about the state’s plan to share this personally-identifiable information from your child’s private educational records, you can send the following opt-out email to Commissioner King, copied to state education officials, and then follow up with a phone call to his office if there is no response at (518) 474-5844. If you are a teacher or principal, you can also email him, either in the interest of your students’ privacy or your own, as inBloom Inc. is collecting your data as well, which would allow them to formulate their own value-added evaluations of your effectiveness, and/or allow states to share these evaluations with other states. And please forward this email to other parents and teachers. Thanks! Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters Any questions please email us at info@classsizematters.org To:  jking@mail.nysed.gov CC: DMWalcott@schools.nyc.gov , stacey.childress@gatesfoundation.org, RegentsOffice@mail.nysed.gov, Eric.Schneiderman@ag.ny.gov,  mc@carnegie.org,speaker@assembly.state.ny.us;  skelos@senate.state.ny.us,jdklein@senate.state.ny.us, nolanc@assembly.state.ny.us, flanagan@nysenate.gov Subject: Opting out of sharing my child's data Dear Commissioner King:  As a parent, I was appalled to learn, as this Reuters article confirms, that the NY State Education Department is planning to share the most private, confidential data of my child and all NYS public school students with a corporation called inBloom Inc., that will store this highly sensitive information on a vulnerable data cloud and disclose it to for-profit vendors to help them develop and market their products. This data will include children’s personally identifiable information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, grades, test scores, detailed disciplinary records, health conditions, special education and economic status. The company inBloom Inc. has already stated that it “cannot guarantee the security of the information stored…or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted.”  All this is happening without parental notification or consent. I hereby OPT my child’s data out of this plan, and demand that you do NOT disclose any of my child’s personally identifiable educational records with ANY third party including the Gates Foundation, inBloom, Inc. or ANY other private entity or corporation. I DO NOT give my consent. Instead, I urge you to hold public hearings in NYC and throughout the state to explain the purpose of this project, offer all New York parents the right to consent, and inform the public who will be legally and financially responsible if this highly sensitive data leaks out or is used in an unauthorized fashion. I expect to hear back from you immediately as to whether you will honor my request to withhold my child’s private and confidential educational records. If not, I will call your office until you do so. As a parent, I am outraged at your plan which violates every ethical standard and your responsibility as the state’s highest educational official to protect my child from harm. Yours, [Your Name and complete address] Parent [or legal guardian] of [your child’s name, grade and school]  If you do not hear back, follow up with a phone call to King’s office: (518) 474-5844. Also call Regents head Merryl Tisch at (518) 474-5889 and Assembly Speaker Silver, who is in charge of appointing the Board of Regents who appoint the NYS Education Commissioner: (212) 312-1423 or (518) 455-3791.   Please also forward this message to your legislators; with a note saying you hope they will intercede on your behalf.  Your Assembly member can be found here:  your State Senator here. And please keep us in the loop at info@classsizematters.org as to what responses  you receive.  Thanks!

Teacher standoff stokes debate...My letter to Reuters

     I get excited when I see attention being brought to the issue of the testing tsunami that has passed for school reform without much debate-until recently. When I read this Reuters article by Eric M. Johnson I was reminded how willing most media outlets are to push the "failing schools in need of reform up against stubborn ineffective teachers and their unions" line. Check out the article and respond. I think My comment was the first, so if you don't see it, here it is:


That this article leads off with a slam on American schools by comparing our system negatively to Finland and South Korea, then ends with Michelle Rhee talking about accountability in a profession she clearly is unqualified to speak substantively about, reveals Reuters place in this debate. 

Reuters, are readers to believe our schools should be more like those of Finland and South Korea? Maybe we should look at how our schools are different, and address the differences we can. We already test more and respect teachers less. Does increasing tests and allowing industry and non-teachers to assail educators with criticism and well-funded test-heavy reform address the stark contrast between U.S. schools and those successful models? 

Follow up this article by asking who REALLY will gain by allowing "reform" to be driven by: 1)data ware-housing by Rupert Murdoch owned companies and fed by 2)data creating industries whose tests will be forced upon public schools and students by 3)state officials and politicians who flow in and out of these industries and their lobbying/legislative organizations (ALEC, TFA,...). Say what you will about teacher unions. At least they are open about their agenda, and are comprised largely of people who know what the job REALLY is, and what success when you are in the classroom looks like.