June 30, 2008

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Is The Educational Right Capable Of Debating Obama’s Educational Program?

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 12:43 pm

A sure sign that the 2008 election is shaping up to be a realigning election, decisively ending three decades of conservative dominance of American politics, is the declining quality of argument put forward by the Right. This is particularly true in the field of education, where right-wing education pundits are reduced to complaining about the long-dead political pasts of two Chicago-based Obama education supporters.

First, there was the attempt, with the Manhattan Institute’s Sol Stern and The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation’s Mike Petrilli taking the lead, to smear Barack Obama with the 40-year-old political past of University of Illinois Professor Bill Ayers. And now comes the effort to vilify Obama by linking him with the political past of education blogger and director of Chicago’s Small School workshop Mike Klonsky.

All of this is a very sad excuse for substantive political discourse. (more…)

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CFE Funding and the New York Test Results

Filed under: Education Education Funding Testing by Jackie Bennett @ 11:38 am

Over the years, and especially this past week, concern has risen about whether the New York State tests are reliable indicators of absolute student achievement. The arguments are familiar to all of us. Standardized tests do not test the full curriculum. They are subject to gaming; they show gains at odds with NAEP; and their calibration from year to year seems far less a science than an art. But regardless of whether or not these tests are accurate in terms of actual gains, they probably aren’t meaningless. At the very least, they probably allow us to glean relative gains across large populations. After all, if the tests are easier, then all the scores go up. But if scores go up more for some large groups than for others, it ought to make us pause.

In light of that, let’s look at two interesting facts: (more…)

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Dueling Over Test Scores: How Do We Interpret/Analyze/Understand Test Scores? Is the Klein Way the “Right” Way? or, Is It Always the Classroom?

Filed under: Education by Peter Goodman @ 9:24 am

[Editor’s note: Peter Goodman blogs at Ed in the Apple, where this post originally appeared.]

The State Ed Department released embargoed State ELA and Math scores to individual schools many weeks ago… and after a seemingly endless wait released the scores publicly.

Commissioner Mills and Chancellor Klein lauded the scores and everyone else was bemused.

How is it possible for so many school to have double digit gains? (more…)

June 27, 2008

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Biased Questions? Faulty Methodology?

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 4:39 pm

This morning, the New York newspapers reported on the publication of the UFT’s survey on the leadership of Chancellor Joel Klein and the Department of Education. Read the New York Times, the Daily News and the Post. While the survey was offered in a constructive spirit of a full 360 degree system of accountability, the DoE spokespersons responded by calling the survey political and questioning its methodology.

But the overwhelming preponderance of questions on the UFT survey were taken verbatim from the DoE’s own Learning Environment Survey. The few exceptions were those questions which addressed subjects not covered on the DoE survey, such as the education of the whole child and the educational efficacy of the DoE’s regimen of testing. To show just how faithful this process was, consider the following side-by-side comparison of the wording from the DoE’s survey and the wording from the UFT’s survey. [For each statement, both the DoE survey and the UFT survey asked respondents to choose among the following answers: strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree.] (more…)

June 26, 2008

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Accountability For All: Evaluating The Chancellor And DOE

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 2:58 pm

Accountability has been a watchword of the Klein-Bloomberg administration of the NYC Department of Education. It introduced the Progress Reports which graded the performance of New York City public schools, it started the school quality reviews, and it initiated the learning environment surveys in which teachers, parents and students are asked to evaluate their school and school leadership. Accountability, Tweed argues, is at the heart of their efforts to transform NYC schools.

Educators embrace genuine accountability for their work and for their schools’ performance, but have found that the DoE’s system often fell short of that mark. The UFT launched its own project this spring to demonstrate how genuine accountability could work. In contrast to the single grade of the progress reports, we advocated for grades on each of the four pillars of a successful school – academic performance, school safety and climate, teamwork for student achievement and DoE supports for the school. Rather than basing the grades almost entirely on the results of standardized tests, we called for broad-based use of many different forms of evidence, from the qualitative data of school reviews and quality surveys to the quantitative data of standardized tests and other ‘hard’ statistics. Accountability, we insisted, should be designed to fix schools, not fix blame. (more…)

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Last days

Filed under: Education by miss brave @ 2:57 pm

When I graduated from kindergarten, I wore a sundress and a mortarboard made from blue paper. I had my first brush with fame when I delivered the line “We welcome you to kindergarten graduation.”

Like many rites of passage, kindergarten graduation has come a long way since the late ’80s. As I gazed around in amazement this morning at my 6-year-olds transformed into 16-year-olds through the magic of polished shoes, poufy dresses and copious amounts of hairspray, Miss B read my mind: “It’s like a prom,” she said, and then she corrected herself: “It’s like a wedding and a prom.” (more…)

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In the land of the 3’s

Filed under: Education by Maisie @ 12:03 pm

The test scores were unquestionably good news this week, but they had their light and dark sides.

The reduction in Level 1s to single digits in almost every grade in ELA and math was amazing. Not long ago, people called Level 1students “unteachable.” But teachers used every trick in the backpack–small-groups, one-on-one tutoring, differentiated instruction, grouping and pairing and dozens of others–and these students really moved.

The UFT, fortified with new data-analysis resources, looked at where all the new Level 3 kids came from this year.

(more…)

June 24, 2008

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Which Side Are You On?

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 2:11 pm

JD2718 has put together an interesting Internet collection of performances of the old union anthem, Which Side Are You On?

June 23, 2008

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Putting the function back in dysfunctional

Filed under: New Teacher Diaries by miss brave @ 6:19 pm

Recently, someone posted the following comment on my blog:

“What is wrong with your students’ families that they are not teaching these basic skills long before the kids show up in your classroom? Are they just so dysfunctional that they don’t know how to raise their children up right?”

My first reaction was to rush to their defense. After all, only I’m allowed to badmouth my students; no one else gets that privilege! My second reaction was to think about the rather wide cultural divide that separates me from my students. The majority of them — I think the figure hovers somewhere around 80% — are from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. And an even greater majority of them are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. When their families encourage them to fight back, to hit someone who hits them, I believe that their intent is not to raise their children to be dysfunctional; their intent is to raise their children to be survivors. (more…)

June 21, 2008

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Global News?

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 6:44 pm

Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, provides some insight into the challenge faced by American teachers of Global Studies. Hat tip: Ezra Klein.

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