Leaving DCPS? please take this survey

http://www.surveymo nkey.com/ s/NXRRWZVThis is a survey of teachers and counselors who will be leaving their current school or DCPS following the 2011-2012 school year. It was prepared by the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators (S.H.A.P.P.E) , S.H.A.P.P.E. is an advocacy organization for the DCPS high schools that has been meeting monthly for 14 years. You can get more information at: www.shappe.org 
It is meant to help the public understand the reasons teachers are leaving either their current school or DCPS and to help our community determine how best to advocate for policy reforms that encourage DCPS to support and retain effective, dedicated teachers. Thank you for your time and your honesty. Please circulate it widely to individual schools and teachers that you know.

HOW TO PRIVATIZE PUBLIC EDUCATION IN 12 EASY STEPS

By Morna McDermott McNulty, an administrator of United Opt Out National

1) Manufacture a crisis and instill public fear. Waiting for Superman.

2) Create a rallying cry for the need for ACTION to save citizens from some danger – which involves eliminating those posing a threat. In this case, public educators. Bring in your own “private” troops (Blackwater? No. Teach for America and people trained at new “innovative leadership centers”)

3) Create a system which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. High stakes testing policies which will doom schools and children to failure. A convenient way to “prove” the grounds for #’s 1 and 2.

4) Use of “savior” language – sound bite messages which co opt terms which average people identify as favorable such as “innovation,” “reform,” and “choice.”

5) Deflect the FACTS with spectacular dog and pony show media blasts and hide the truth under glossy presentations of the agenda. Disguise this ideology of greed under the umbrella of “freedom” and “saving children.”

6) Create legislation that politically and financially benefits the stakeholders of those same policies by forging under the table alliances between big business and state legislators. See ALEC.

7) Launder these policies through seemingly beneficial non-profit agencies and corporate
philanthropy where the origins cannot be traced easily.

8) These same corporations now open for profit charter schools and online schools and other “options” in lieu of “failing public education.” When children attend these “schools” the per pupil funding that would have gone to support the local public schools is now funneled into the new for profit alternative.

9) Make inside deals with the textbook and testing companies that these schools will use. Billions of dollars of profits to these companies while public schools languish from lack of resources. Mandated testing forces schools to redirect monies to testing that could have otherwise been spent hiring teachers to reduce class size or provide needed learning materials.

10) Hide and twist the data that shows that charter alternatives perform NO BETTER than their public counterparts (see step 5).

11) Manipulate legislation in ways that benefit “choice” alternatives so that certain populations of students who would make their schools “look bad” can be denied access to those schools and can be provided with ample resources that could have also improved public schools if only THEY had they funds.

12) Public schools, as result of steps 1-10, would now in fact be failing and as a result, the free market ideology prevails and can feel justified in their actions. The cycle back to step #1 is now complete. Public education now becomes education Incorporated.

Colonizing for land and profit. A brief history. Repeating Itself.

This is a common strategy used for domination. Remember how the White Europeans
used “manifest destiny” to justify taking over lands occupied by the Native Americans?

First, they launched a campaign that identified the Indians as a “dangerous threat”
calling them “savages” who needed to either be civilized or eliminated (#1). This threat
justified the use of “state force” to curtail this supposed threat (#2). Then, when
attacked the Native Americans fought back. These skirmishes were twisted around to
“prove” how savage in fact Native Americans were (#3). Then they used the term
“manifest destiny” (that they were chosen by God to take these lands in the name of
“progress”) Further, they would civilize the savages in the name of Christianity and
European superiority (#4). The Indians, they said, would be better off for it-they were
“helping” them.

Facts about the savagery of the Europeans themselves (small pox on blankets for
example) were hushed up and kept from public knowledge (#5). Even today in many
history books this continues to be the case. Items #6-10 can be found in an accurate
history book such as People’s History of the United States.

The current policy “reforms” in American public education are a 21st century LAND GRAB.

The Hardest Job Everyone Thinks They Can Do

This was posted in a site called: The Musings of Life and Love and I just had to share it

By Dennis Hong, September 13, 2010 6:30 am

Acquaintances would sigh sympathetically. And they’d say, “I know you’ll figure it out. I have faith in you.”I used to be a molecular biologist. I spent my days culturing viruses. Sometimes, my experiments would fail miserably, and I’d swear to myself in frustration. Acquaintances would ask how my work was going. I’d explain how I was having a difficult time cloning this one gene. I couldn’t seem to figure out the exact recipe to use for my cloning cocktail.This piece was inspired by a heated discussion I had with a man who believes that teachers have an easy job. Please feel free to share it with others if you agree with the message.

And then, they’d tilt their heads in a show of respect for my skills….

Today, I’m a high school teacher. I spend my days culturing teenagers. Sometimes, my students get disruptive, and I swear to myself in frustration. Acquaintances ask me how my work is going. I explain how I’m having a difficult time with a certain kid. I can’t seem to get him to pay attention in class.

Acquaintances smirk knowingly. And they say, “well, have you tried making it fun for the kids? That’s how you get through to them, you know?”

And then, they explain to me how I should do my job….

I realize now how little respect teachers get. Teaching is the toughest job everyone who’s never done it thinks they can do. I admit, I was guilty of these delusions myself. When I decided to make the switch from “doing” science to “teaching” science, I found out that I had to go back to school to get a teaching credential.

“What the f—?!?,” I screamed to any friends willing to put up with my griping. “I have a Ph.D.! Why do I need to go back to get a lousy teaching credential?!?”

I was baffled. How could I, with my advanced degree in biology, not be qualified to teach biology?!

Well, those school administrators were a stubborn bunch. I simply couldn’t get a job without a credential. And so, I begrudgingly enrolled in a secondary teaching credential program.

And boy, were my eyes opened. I understand now.

Teaching isn’t just “making it fun” for the kids. Teaching isn’t just academic content.

Teaching is understanding how the human brain processes information and preparing lessons with this understanding in mind.

Teaching is simultaneously instilling in a child the belief that she can accomplish anything she wants while admonishing her for producing shoddy work.

Teaching is understanding both the psychology and the physiology behind the changes the adolescent mind goes through.

Teaching is convincing a defiant teenager that the work he sees no value in does serve a greater purpose in preparing him for the rest of his life.

Teaching is offering a sympathetic ear while maintaining a stern voice.

Teaching is being both a role model and a mentor to someone who may have neither at home, and may not be looking for either.

Teaching is not easy. Teaching is not intuitive. Teaching is not something that anyone can figure out on their own. Education researchers spend lifetimes developing effective new teaching methods. Teaching takes hard work and constant training. I understand now.

Have you ever watched professional athletes and gawked at how easy they make it look? Kobe Bryant weaves through five opposing players, sinking the ball into the basket without even glancing in its direction. Brett Favre spirals a football 100 feet through the air, landing it in the arms of a teammate running at full speed. Does anyone have any delusions that they can do what Kobe and Brett do?

Yet, people have delusions that anyone can do what the typical teacher does on a typical day.

Maybe the problem is tangibility. Shooting a basketball isn’t easy, but it’s easy to measure how good someone is at shooting a basketball. Throwing a football isn’t easy, but it’s easy to measure how good someone is at throwing a football. Similarly, diagnosing illnesses isn’t easy to do, but it’s easy to measure. Winning court cases isn’t easy to do, but it’s easy to measure. Creating and designing technology isn’t easy to do, but it’s easy to measure.

Inspiring kids? Inspiring kids can be downright damned near close to impossible sometimes. And… it’s downright damned near close to impossible to measure. You can’t measure inspiration by a child’s test scores. You can’t measure inspiration by a child’s grades. You measure inspiration 25 years later when that hot-shot doctor, or lawyer, or entrepreneur thanks her fourth-grade teacher for having faith in her and encouraging her to pursue her dreams.

Maybe that’s why teachers get so little respect. It’s hard to respect a skill that is so hard to quantify.

So, maybe you just have to take our word for it. The next time you walk into a classroom, and you see the teacher calmly presiding over a room full of kids, all actively engaged in the lesson, realize that it’s not because the job is easy. It’s because we make it look easy. And because we work our asses off to make it look easy.

And, yes, we make it fun, too.

Posted In The Washington Post at 04:00 AM ET, 04/25/2012

NY principals: A ‘wrecking ball’ of reform aimed at schools

By Valerie Strauss

This is an open letter that a group of New York principals sent this week to the New York State Board of Regents about school reform and the standardized testing regime. More than 1,400 New York State principals have signed a petition asking state education officials to rethink their reform agenda. You can read about that effort atwww.newyorkprincipals.org and @nyprincipals on Twitter.

An Open Letter of Concern Regarding High-Stakes Testing and the School Reform Agenda of New York State

The past week has been a nightmare for New York students in Grades 3 through 8, their teachers and their principals. Not only were the New York State ELA [English Language Arts] exams too long and exhausting for young students, (three exams of 90 minutes each), they contained ambiguous questions that cannot be answered with assurance, problems with test booklet instructions, inadequate space for students to write essays, and reading comprehension passages that defy commonsense. In addition, the press reported a passage that relied on knowledge of sounds and music which hearing-impaired students could not answer and Newsday reported that students were mechanically ‘filling in bubbles’ due to exhaustion. Certainly the most egregious example of problems with the tests is the now infamous passage about the Hare and the Pineapple.

On Friday, Commissioner King offered no apologies in what appeared to be a hastily written press release regarding the Hare and the Pineapple passage. In that release, Commissioner King faults the media for not printing the complete passage (many did), and passes the buck by noting that a committee of teachers reviewed the passage. In short, he distances the State Education Department from its responsibility to get the tests right. Considering the rigor and length of the exams, as well as their use in the evaluation of educators and schools, one might have hoped that the State Education Department and Pearson would have reviewed the tests with more care.

For many of us, however, this is but the latest bungle in the so-called school reform movement in New York State. More than 1,400 New York State principals have repeatedly begged the department to slow down, pilot thoughtful change and avoid using student test scores as high-stakes measures. The recent ELA test debacle was foreseeable to those of us who lead schools and know from experience that you cannot make so many drastic changes to curriculum, assessment and educator evaluation in a short period of time, especially without listening to those who lead schools. The literature on leadership is clear. Effective leadership is about the development of followership. If truth be told, however, there are fewer and fewer followers of this State Education Department every day. The Pineapple, like the ‘plane being built in the air’, is now a symbol of the careless implementation of a reform agenda that will cost billions of dollars, without yielding the promised school improvement.

There are many who disparage our public schools in New York State. Although we acknowledge that improvements are needed, there is also much of which we are proud. We are proud of our tradition of New York State Regents examinations. We are proud that New York State students are second in the nation in taking Advanced Placement exams. We are proud of our Intel winners and the number of New York high schools on national lists of excellence. We are proud that our schools are second in the nation according to a comprehensive analysis of policy and performance conducted by the research group, Quality Counts.

We also know that too many of our schools are racially and socio-economically isolated with overwhelming numbers of students who receive little opportunity and support in their communities as well as in their schools. We cannot ignore deep-seated social problems while blindly believing that new tests, data warehousing systems and unproven evaluation systems are the answer. That view, in our opinion, is irresponsible and unethical.

This ill-conceived Race to the Top, recently critiqued by the National School Boards Association, is no more sensible than the race of the Hare and the Pineapple. Yet the New York State Education Department continues to enthusiastically push its agenda. Our schools are faced with contradictory and incomplete directives regarding high-stakes testing and evaluation, our teachers are humiliated by the thought of publicized evaluation numbers and our students are stressed by the unnecessary testing that has consumed precious learning time.

We understand that change is important for school revitalization. We have years of collective experience successfully leading educational improvement in our schools, often as partners with the State Education Department. Unfortunately, our voices have been ignored and marginalized during the past year. Nevertheless, we believe that we have an ethical obligation to speak out. It is often said about educational change that it is a pendulum that swings. We are now watching the pendulum of school reform swing dangerously, and we fear that this time it is a wrecking ball aimed at the public schools we so cherish.

The following principals respectfully submit this open letter to the New York State Board of Regents:

Anna Allanbrook

Brooklyn New School, New York City Public Schools

Carol Burris

South Side High School, Rockville Centre School District

Gail Casciano

Nassakeag Elementary School, Three Village Central School District

Carol Conklin-Spillane

Sleepy Hollow High School, Tarrytowns School District

Sean Feeney

The Wheatley School, East Williston School District

Sharon Fougner

Elizabeth Mellick Baker School

Great Neck School District

Andrew Greene

Candlewood Middle School, Half Hollow Hills Central School District

Bernard Kaplan

Great Neck North High School, Great Neck School District

Harry Leonardatos

Clarkstown High School, Clarkstown Central School District

Michael McDermott

Scarsdale Middle School, Scarsdale School District

Shelagh McGinn

South Side Middle School, Rockville Centre School District

Sandra Pensak

Hewlett Elementary School, Hewlett-Woodmere School District

Elizabeth Phillips

PS 321 William Penn, New York City Public Schools

Donald Sternberg

Wantagh Elementary School, Wantagh Public Schools

Katie Zahedi

Linden Avenue Middle School, Red Hook Central Schools

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What the U.S. can’t learn from Finland

Posted in the Washington Post April 17, 2012

As the United States is looking to reform its public school system, education experts have increasingly looked at other countries for examples on what works and what won’t. The current administration has turned its attention strong performing foreign school systems. As a consequence, recent education summits hosted in the United States have given room to international education showcases. This commitment to think outside of the box was illustrated two years ago, when Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked for a report titled “Strong Performers and Successful Reforms: Lessons from PISA for the United States,” prepared by a team of analysts — I was one of them — with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). One of the strong performers that is gaining increasing interest in the United States is my home country, Finland.

During the last decade, Finland has become the go-to place for education reformers all around the world. The main reason is its success in the international survey comparing 15-year-olds in reading, math and science learning called PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Since that OECD report, I have been privileged to meet legislators, administrators, teachers, and parents here in the United States. Anywhere I go, people are eager to hear about Finnish education and its accomplishments. Especially, they want to know what they can learn from it.

What I have to say, however, is not always what they want to hear. While it is true that we can certainly learn from foreign systems and use them as backdrops for better understanding of our own, we cannot simply replicate them. What, then, can’t the United States learn from Finland?

First of all, although Finland can show the United States what equal opportunity looks like, Americans cannot achieve equity without first implementing fundamental changes in their school system. The following three issues require particular attention.

• Funding of schools: Finnish schools are funded based on a formula guaranteeing equal allocation of resources to each school regardless of location or wealth of its community.
• Well-being of children: All children in Finland have, by law, access to childcare, comprehensive health care, and pre-school in their own communities. Every school must have a welfare team to advance child happiness in school.
• Education as a human right: All education from preschool to university is free of charge for anybody living in Finland. This makes higher education affordable and accessible for all.

As long as these conditions don’t exist, the Finnish equality-based model bears little relevance in the United States.

Second, school autonomy and teacher professionalism are often mentioned as the dominant factors explaining strong educational performance in Finland. The school is the main author of curricula. And the teacher is the sole authority monitoring the progress of students.

In Finland, there is a strong sense of trust in schools and teachers to carry out these responsibilities. There is no external inspection of schools or standardized testing of all pupils in Finland. For our national analysis of educational performance, we rely on testing only a small sample of students. The United States really cannot leave curriculum design and student assessment in the hands of schools and teachers unless there is similar public confidence in schools and teachers. To get there, a more coherent national system of teacher education is one major step.

Finland is home to such a coherent national system of teacher education. And unlike in the United States, teaching is one of the top career choices among young Finns. Teachers in Finland are highly regarded professionals — akin to medical doctors and lawyers. There are eight universities educating teachers in Finland, and all their programs have the same high academic standards. Furthermore, a research-based master’s degree is the minimum requirement to teach in Finland.

Teaching in Finland is, in fact, such a desired profession that the University of Helsinki, where I teach part-time, received 2,300 applicants this spring for 120 spots in its primary school teacher education program. In this teacher education program and the seven others, teachers are prepared to design their own curricula, assess their own pupils’ progress, and continuously improve their own teaching and their school. Until the United States has improved its teacher education, its teachers cannot enjoy similar prestige, public confidence and autonomy.

Third, many education visitors to Finland expect to find schools filled with Finnish pedagogical innovation and state-of-the-art technology. Instead, they see teachers teaching and pupils learning as they would in any typical good school in the United States. Some observers call this “pedagogical conservatism” or “informal and relaxed” because there does not appear to be much going on in classrooms.

The irony of Finnish educational success is that it derives heavily from classroom innovation and school improvement research in the United States. Cooperative learning and portfolio assessment are examples of American classroom-based innovations that have been implemented in large scale in the Finnish school system.

Those who are looking at Finland’s education system as a possible model for reform in the United States point out, quite correctly, that our two countries are very different. In these comparisons, one critical difference is often overlooked that is also essential to understanding what our two countries can or cannot learn from one another.

In the United States, education is mostly viewed as a private effort leading to individual good. The performances of individual students and teachers are therefore in the center of the ongoing school reform debate. By contrast, in Finland, education is viewed primarily as a public effort serving a public purpose. As a consequence, education reforms in Finland are judged more in terms of how equitable the system is for different learners. This helps to explain the difference between the American obsession with standardized testing and the Finnish fixation on each school’s ability to cope with individual differences and social inequality. The former is driven by excellence, the latter by equity.

Quality and equity in education must be conceived as concomitant. Based on its global data, the OECD recently drew precisely this conclusion: “The highest-performing education systems across the OECD countries are those that combine quality with equity.”

What Finland can show to others is how equity and equal opportunity in education look like. However, school reformers in the United States need to be careful when considering equity-based reform ideas to be imported from Finland. Many elements of Finnish successful school system are interwoven in the surrounding welfare state. Simply a transfer of these solutions would add another chapter to already exhausting volume of failed education reforms.

Talking Pineapple Question On 8th-Grade 

New York State Exam Confuses Everyone 

(UPDATE)

The Huffington Post  |  By Laura Hibbard 

see original article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/ridiculous-talking-pineapple-question-on-state-exam_n_1440942.html#s890786&title=Superintendent_In_KKK

Posted: 04/20/2012 1:47 pm Updated: 04/20/2012 6:09 pm

New York students, teachers, and parents were utterly bewildered by a question on an eighth-grade state reading exam, the New York Daily News reports.

(Scroll for the question.)

While most found the question comical and simply nonsensical -- with one student even making a "pineapples don't have sleeves" t-shirt -- City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott issued a statement saying improvements will be made in the future.

(Scroll for udpate)

"We expect to see much more rigor and complex reading passages on next year’s tests," he said, according to New York 1.

The New York Daily News staff sent the question to Jeopardy! wizard Ken Jennings... who responded with similar confusion.

"Is this a joke? The story makes no sense whatsoever," Jennings told the paper. "The narrative has no internal logic, the “moral” is unclear, and the plot details seems so oddly chosen that the story seems to have been written during a peyote trip ... A ninja and toothpaste? What does that even mean?"

(The passage appears below)

The Pineapple and the Hare, h/t to the New York Daily News:

In the olden times, animals could speak English, just like you and me. There was a lovely enchanted forest that flourished with a bunch of these magical animals. One day, a hare was relaxing by a tree. All of a sudden, he noticed a pineapple sitting near him. The hare, being magical and all, told the pineapple, “Um, hi.” The pineapple could speak English too. “I challenge you to a race! Whoever makes it across the forest and back first wins a ninja! And a lifetime’s supply of toothpaste!” The hare looked at the pineapple strangely, but agreed to the race. The next day, the competition was coming into play. All the animals in the forest (but not the pineapples, for pineapples are immobile) arranged a finish/start line in between two trees. The coyote placed the pineapple in front of the starting line, and the hare was on his way. Everyone on the sidelines was bustling about and chatting about the obvious prediction that the hare was going to claim the victory (and the ninja and the toothpaste). Suddenly, the crow had a revolutionary realization. “AAAAIEEH! Friends! I have an idea to share! The pineapple has not challenged our good companion, the hare, to just a simple race! Surely the pineapple must know that he CANNOT MOVE! He obviously has a trick up his sleeve!” exclaimed the crow. The moose spoke up. “Pineapples don’t have sleeves.” “You fool! You know what I mean! I think that the pineapple knows we’re cheering for the hare, so he is planning to pull a trick on us, so we look foolish when he wins! Let’s sink the pineapple’s intentions, and let’s cheer for the stupid fruit!” the crow passionately proclaimed. The other animals cheered, and started chanting, “FOIL THE PLAN! FOIL THE PLAN! FOIL THE PLAN!” A few minutes later, the hare arrived. He got into place next to the pineapple, who sat there contently. The monkey blew the tree-bark whistle, and the race began! The hare took off, sprinting through the forest, and the pineapple ... It sat there. The animals glanced at each other blankly, and then started to realize how dumb they were. The pineapple did not have a trick up its sleeve. It wanted an honest race — but it knew it couldn’t walk (let alone run)! About a few hours later, the hare came into sight again. It flew right across the finish line, still as fast as it was when it first took off. The hare had won, but the pineapple still sat at his starting point, and had not even budged. The animals ate the pineapple.

Here are two of the questions:
1. Why did the animals eat the pineapple?
a. they were annoyed
b. they were amused
c. they were hungry
d. they wanted to
2. Who was the wisest?
a. the hare
b. moose
c. crow
d. owl

According to a New York Public Schools Parents blog, this isn't the first time this head-scratch-worthy question has surfaced in a state exam.

Apparently, the same reading passage and associated questions have been recycled by Pearson for standardized exams in Florida, Illinois, Delaware, New Mexico, Arkansas, Alabama, and perhaps other states, causing huge confusion among students for at least the last seven years.

The blog notes there is even a Facebook page for the question, with more than 11 hundred likes.

This crazy test question harks back to equally unexplainable schoolwork questions which arose at the Center City Public Charter School's Trinidad campus in Washington D.C. back in March. The questions, which had school officials up-in-arms, featured morbid, mature, and violent content. 
For example, question number 2 in the worksheet stated:

"My 3 friends and I were caught and tied up by 1023 screaming cannibals in a jungle last night. Soon we were feeling terribly itchy because of the mosquitoes. We begged the cannibals to scratch us. 219 cannibals refused because they were busy cutting vegetables. The rest of them, however, surrounded us in equal numbers and began to scratch us with their teeth, just like dogs. It felt good! How many cannibals scratched me?"

The unnamed teacher was terminated after the questions where brought to the attention of school officials.

UPDATE, 5:57 P.M.:

The Huffington post received a statement from New York Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr.:

First of all, the "passage" printed in the media is not complete. Although the questions make more sense in the context of the full passage, due to the ambiguous nature of the test questions the Department has decided it will not be counted against students in their scores. It is important to note that this test section does not incorporate the Common Core and other improvements to test quality currently underway. This year’s tests incorporate a small number of Common Core field test questions. Next year’s test will be fully aligned with the Common Core. This particular passage, like all test questions, was reviewed by a committee comprised of teachers from across the state, but it was not crafted for New York State. It’s a passage that has been used in other states and was included by Pearson Inc., the test vendor, to provide a comparison between New York students and students from other states.1The passage and related questions are not reflective of the precision of the entire exam. The accuracy and efficacy our state assessments are crucial to our reform efforts and measuring student academic growth. We will, as always, review and analyze all questions on every assessment we administer.

Other controversial school-related documents from around the country: