Photos from the Rhode Island Tea Party at the State House in Providence:
An Illinois teacher has decided to eat school lunch everyday and blog about her experiences. She must be a brave soul. My only thought? The school lunches in her Illinois community look a heck of a lot better than what my kids are served. (h/t Core Knowledge)
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has ranked Rhode Island 37th in charter school “friendliness”. The Alliance compares RI laws to a model law it has developed. Only 39 states and the District of Columbia were ranked. The remaining 11 states have no charter laws.
Massachusetts ranked 6, and Connecticut 22.
This is why education bureaucrats drive me crazy. Today Commissioner Deborah Gist announced that five schools in Providence have been performing so poorly for so long that the Department of Education is stepping in. Radical change is being mandated that could result in the closing of these schools. And how does Superintendent Tom Brady respond?
The groundwork is laid for accelerated reform. The Providence Public School District has set the course for dramatic change and has already made important strides. The push by federal and state authorities to aggressively implement reform at our lowest-performing schools will allow us to marshal the collective will and the resources to bring about change that will dramatically improve the quality of education that our students receive.
What? My best translation: We have utterly failed, but offer no apology, and are pleased that someone else will now be making the decisions.
Superintendent Frances Gallo of Central Falls, whose high school is the six poorly performing school targeted by the commissioner, spoke in similar purple prose.
The Central Falls School system looks forward with great anticipation to the reforming opportunities ahead. The climate is one of enthusiastic anticipation among our dedicated teachers whose desire to embrace this work exceeds expectation. Our collective work will remove any remaining barriers and accelerate personalized instruction and family engagement in order to galvanize our students toward high academic achievement and strong personal success.
Blah, blah, blah. If the climate is one of enthusiasm and dedication, then why, Dr. Gallo, has the school been failing for so long?
Forgive me for the cynicism. But Perhaps the school reform models should include replacing the top dogs, those who have been responsible for these failing schools.
Ted Sizer, who developed the Essential Schools movement and founded the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown, has passed away, according to the ProJo blog. He was 77.
Read more at the Essential Schools website.
The media have had great fun with the news that Marge Simpson, the mother of the animated family The Simpsons, would grace the cover of Playboy magazine. Playboy readership has dropped significantly, and its editors were looking for a way to make the magazine more hip and attractive to a younger audience. The question is: How young an audience?
The Simpsons appears at all hours, and is undoubtedly marketed towards children. Bart Simpson is easily identifiable by kids of all ages. One must wonder what readership that magazine hopes to entice. Incidentally, only the newsstand edition will feature Marge on the cover. Regular subscribers will receive a more traditional version. Hmmm.
Marge Simpson may just be the pornography industry’s version of Joe Camel, the animated mascot meant to appeal to a “younger” smoker.
From coolreformchick at the Edspesso blog:
Telling teachers they should consider engaging students in a dialogue about how President Obama inspires them is ludicrous, not because some may not agree with him, but because it suggests this speech is after all about HIM. To then go ahead and attack people for attacking the speech is like smoking and then getting outraged when someone says they smell smoke on you.
The entire commentary is on the money, and worth a read.
Today a teacher I work with expressed her frustration. Although a specialist for a dozen years, this is her first year in a regular classroom. And it has taken her just eight months to become dispirited.
For most of my career, good teachers like my friend would be fed up with the union and its demands. But today, the damage done to public schools by unions pales in comparison to that perpetrated by bureaucrats.
In an effort to control from above, administrators are placing more and more demands on classroom teachers that take time away from teaching and learning. Paperwork, reports, and team meetings are required in the name of accountability, but take away time that should be reserved for teaching kids.
We are forced to give a variety of assessments to monitor student growth. Anecdotal evidence and professional judgment are not enough. In reading, we assess student progress with a tool called a “running record”. But to get more detailed data, the district requires the DRP (Direct Reading Assessment) be administered to all students. Those who perform less than expectations are then required to complete a more in depth assessment called a DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment), which requires about an hour for the student to complete. The results of a DRA often require a PLP (Personal Literacy Plan), an ongoing tool that must be updated every two weeks for each child.
Students who still do not show significant progress must be referred to the PST (Problem Solving Team). There, a variety of specialists advice us on how we can better meet the needs of these students. More data will be collected and reviewed. Of course, these teams only meet during school hours, so we are pulled from our classes and replaced with substitute teachers.
The administrators collect all the data. They keep it some place safe, and share it with important people to show they are doing good work.
This week a couple of administrators will be visiting. A substitute will replace each of us in our classroom so we can share and discuss the PLPs we’ve been keeping throughout the year. Even more data over which the administrators can salivate.
Please forgive my cynicism. But the joy of teaching and learning is being stripped from our classrooms by overreaching bureaucrats. My friend is an excellent teacher, and her students are lucky to have her in the classroom. I fear it won’t last long.
And that’s a shame.
Further Assignment:
Miss Bennett is frustrated and leaving public education.
Read more about the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, and the group trying to save it from extinction.
Then visit the Core Education blog to learn what students thought of the website, and the cause.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about Julie Steiny’s column this week. In it she calls for an end to the “education wars”. I found myself nodding my head in agreement as she identifies the unions and the administrators as the two sides of the battle, neither advocating for what is best for kids.
Teachers’ unions are inherently divisive. They get paid to work for teachers, no one else. In this they have done nothing wrong. Focusing exclusively on teachers, apart from everyone else in the school context, is the union’s business.
But when union leaders use the word “fair,” they don’t mean fair to kids, families, administrators, school communities, or taxpayers. They mean fair to their own.
Unions have worked brilliantly on behalf of their constituents, the teachers. Weak school committees have succumbed to this union strength during contract negotiations (although some like those in East Providence and Tiverton have said enough is enough).
But I was surprised that Steiny specifically called out DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee as part of the problem.
Such administrators are the reason so many good teachers believe they still need unions, and need them badly. Hyper-authoritarian administrators storm the beaches, guns blazing, not much caring what dies in the crossfire. Schools may improve, but at the cost of human misery. And miserable teachers cannot foster a love of learning.
Michelle Rhee has been an administrator in DC for less than two years. She took helm of a disastrous school system that was failing children in the most dramatic ways. DC school administrators had, for too long, “negotiated” with the unions, and the results were obvious. DC Mayor Andrian Fenty, a Democrat, realized a strong administrator was the district’s only hope. He placed his faith in Rhee.
Mrs. Steiny should understand that human misery had already overcome the kids of DC schools. They weren’t learning. And for too long teachers unions and administrators had accepted this.
It hasn’t been easy for anyone working in DC schools. Rhee has closed dozens of schools, fired incompetent administrators, and dramatically shrunk administrative staff. The very worst of the teachers are gone.
Mrs. Steiny is right when she says, “miserable teachers cannot foster a love of learning.” Could DC teachers have been happy working in such a failing system? Teachers will become more positive when they see the fruits of their labor, when schools start to improve and children start to succeed. And, Rhee has proposed paying teachers substantially more money, particularly if they are willing to forego tenure. Teacher misery should subside pretty quickly, after their first new paychecks.
The short term is difficult; change always is. DC schools were profoundly ineffective, and no one expects improvement overnight. But Rhee has taken on all that is failing in DC schools. If she succeeds – better paid, more competent teachers and successful students – the so-called misery will have been worth it for all involved.
Steiny writes:
My wish for the new year is that the combatants lay down arms and rally around the kids.
Many of us share this wish. But until the teachers unions are willing to lay down their arms, the children deserve a general like Michelle Rhee leading their charge.
