Category Archives: Gimme Some Truth

by | August 8, 2007 · 9:38 pm

Early-childhood program pays for itself, study finds

A new longitudinal study shows the effectiveness of intense early education intervention in our schools.

excerpts:

“More than 20 years later, educational attainment is higher and felony arrests are lower for the alumni of a Chicago early-intervention program for low-income children.

The enrollees, who are now in their late 20s, are also less likely to describe themselves as depressed and more likely to have health insurance, according to a follow-up study released this week.

According to co-author Arthur J. Reynolds, a child-development professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, the gains in terms of reduced social-welfare costs already have far exceeded the program’s $5,000 per student-year cost to the Chicago public school system.

“By the time they’re 65, a conservative estimate would be a 10-to-1 gain,” Reynolds said, considering reduced societal costs for remedial education, health care, incarceration and underemployment.”
……..
“These results have profound and encouraging implications for our ability to close the achievement gap” among disadvantaged children, said Gordon Berlin, the president of MDRC, a New York nonprofit agency that identifies social policy strategies that work.
………..
“This study begins to answer the question of whether a high-quality intervention could fortify Head Start and other early-childhood interventions, and power bigger results.”

Robert Godfrey

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by | August 8, 2007 · 7:26 pm

Sign the petition to end the madness

The Educator Roundtable have started a petition calling for the dismantling of the No Child Left Behind Act and is now online.

To reach the 2014 goal set by this legislation, the standards must rise annually. Even school administrators who aren’t having trouble with meeting the goals of the program at the present time agree a train wreck is coming.

In a recent Time magazine article about NCLB, a retired Ohio superintendent said, “NCLB is like a Russian novel. That’s because it’s long, it’s complicated, and in the end, everybody gets killed.”

Unless NCLB’s schedule is disrupted, there will be no public school systems left by 2014. Unfortunately groups like the NEA have tried to counteract the Educator Roundtable petition with their own, which again pushes for a band-aid approach that will not address the core deficiences of such a poorly conceived public policy.

We need our voices to be heard. It takes twenty seconds max to do this. Please pass it on to all your friends.

Robert Godfrey

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by | August 2, 2007 · 4:33 pm

(anti) NCLB Video

From Susan Ohanian via the Educator Roundtable and the Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency (EDDRA)

Click here to watch.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Best Practices, Gimme Some Truth, National News, No Child Left Behind

by | July 25, 2007 · 12:08 am

About those studies . . .

Paul D. Houston, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators has penned an interesting editorial (free sub. req’d) questioning the recent spate of studies suggesting large public support for NCLB Act as we head into a new round of negotiations for the reathorization of the act.

“Isn’t It Amazing? A Few Words on Those No Child Left Behind ‘Studies’

In recent weeks, we have seen a flurry of “studies” on the No Child Left Behind Act that seem to conclude that it is a wonderful thing. I suggest it is time we look behind the headlines.

The latest study, commissioned by the Educational Testing Service, concludes that when the public learns more about this federal law, they tend to like it better. (“To Know NCLB Is to Like It, ETS Poll Finds,” June 20, 2007.) Now, far be it from me to suggest bias here, but one must ask: Who has benefited the most from No Child Left Behind? Would it be the teachers, who have faced pressures complying with regulations that bear little relationship to sound educational practice? Perhaps it is the children, who have seen their classroom studies narrowed to allow for more time for testing and test preparation? No, so far the greatest beneficiary of this law is the testing industry, which has had more business than it can handle. This has led not only to higher profits, but also to inaccurate results and huge errors in scoring and reporting.

So, a testing-industry study that shows that a law which requires massive testing is a popular thing seems unworthy of the coverage it has received.

The results of the ETS study fly in the face of the results obtained by the American Association of School Administrators, when we studied the same issues. (“Critics of NCLB Ask Congress to Overhaul It,” Feb. 23, 2007.) We concluded that the more the public knew about the No Child Left Behind law, the less they liked it. Who is right here? Well, it all depends on the questions asked. The ETS study asked whether the public liked a program that applied rigorous standards to schools and whether making certain that all kids learn is a good idea. The answer was a resounding yes. (Gee, do you think?)

The proponents of the No Child Left Behind law are fond of pointing out that whatever gets tested gets taught. True. And whatever does not get tested gets left behind. There is little doubt at this point that NCLB has narrowed the curriculum and focused on test results to the exclusion of a broader educational experience. And there is little doubt that overemphasizing results on a standardized test leads to more standardization and less innovation and creative expression—the coins of the realm in the global race for success.

Having the testing industry study the results of a massive program of testing is like having the cigarette industry do a study of lung cancer.

The AASA dug deeper, underneath the bumper-sticker goals of No Child Left Behind. We asked whether it was a good idea to emphasize testing so much that it takes away time for learning, whether testing kids in English who don’t speak English was reasonable, and whether it made any sense to treat a school that had fallen down in one area the same as another that had failed in all areas. The conclusion by the public was that it didn’t.

Having the testing industry study the results of a massive program of testing is like having the cigarette industry do a study of lung cancer.

In another recent NCLB study, the Center on Education Policy, which at least has no dog in the fight, found that after five years of placing a huge emphasis on testing, test scores have gone up. I am sure. Put pressure on the teachers and administrators in our public schools to produce higher test scores and they will do that. Ask them, however, whether the children actually know more and they will tell you that this isn’t the case.

An educational program built around tests has the same validity as a nutritional program built around Twinkies. Twinkies provide instant gratification, but it is hard to build a case that they provide the same nutritional value as a balanced meal. Some might even argue that the sugar and calories have a deleterious effect on one’s health.

The No Child Left Behind Act is currently undergoing reauthorization by Congress. People who have a vested interest in seeing that the law is renewed are lining up to ensure that it is approved with as few changes as possible. Many have no clue as to what broad effects this legislation has had on our nation’s children or our ability to compete internationally. Perhaps before building a case for No Child Left Behind, we need a conversation on what we really want from our educational system—higher tests scores or children who can fulfill their possibilities. Those are not necessarily one and the same.”

Robert Godfrey

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by | July 12, 2007 · 6:54 pm

Tell the Truth!

From Ruth Page Jones, Project ABC (Waukesha)

Hello,
Thanks to those who wrote or called our Assembly representatives about the budget. Unfortunately, they didn’t listen. But we must continue to share our views with them.

Some of you received responses like this:

Thanks so much for taking the time to let me know your thoughts regarding this important issue. By way of information, the Assembly Republican budget expected to be passed today actually increases K-12 funding by $464 million dollars over the last budget. Rest assured, I will be certain to keep your support for even greater funding at the forefront of my considerations as budget deliberations continue.

Here’s what they really did. I have submitted this as a Guest Editorial to the Waukesha Freeman.

When the Assembly passed their budget this week, the Republican majority voted to short-change children in the classrooms of our public schools. Dept. of Administration analysis indicates Waukesha schools would endure an additional $2.6 million revenue loss, and the firing of 35.4 more teachers over the next two years. Elmbrook would suffer losses of $1.3 million, Muskego-Norway and New Berlin $.9 million, Kettle-Morraine $.8 million and Pewaukee $.4 million. Waukesha’s losses are in addition to the $3.5 million cuts made this spring and projected again for next spring.

In the Freeman on July 9, Rep Bill Kramer implies their plan will benefit schools:
“Although the proposal lists an $85 million cut in public education, Kramer said, the money is directed more at classroom initiatives and spends more than Doyle’s plan”. However —

-“directed at classroom initiatives” really means it takes money from students and classrooms.

-“spends more than Doyle’s plan” really means they put more state money into property tax relief, not classrooms. The Governor included $100 million in tax relief in his budget. The Republican budget adds another $100 million to the tax levy credit for taxpayers, while taking away $85
million from students and classrooms. The extra money going for tax relief lets them say ‘the state is spending more’.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that ‘more state spending’ means more money into education! When the Assembly politicians talk about ‘the state spending more’- they refer to who is paying, not what we are buying. This is only about the 2/3 formula and what percent of school spending is paid by the state and what percent is paid by homeowners.

This has no relationship whatsoever to school budgets. If a school budget is $100, there is zero effect in the classroom when the state/homeowner share of costs changes from $55/$45 to $66/$34. It’s when they reduce the $100, which is what the Assembly did, that you will see an effect in the classroom.

Their Assembly revenue limit increase is actually less than the Governor proposed (Assembly – $200 per pupil increase vs Governor – $264 per pupil increase). It forces more budget cuts because it increases the gap between state-dictated school revenue and state-mandated inflation costs. They also cut money in a special fund, not subject to revenue limits, that would have helped us.

If this budget actually passes, the school district will be cutting again before school starts, after we already cut the $3.5 million this spring and after teacher renewal contracts have been signed. Cuts needed for this fall would have to come from aides or non-teacher expenses. Teacher’s make up 85% of the budget – what is there to cut?

Simply put, with this Republican Assembly budget, schools get less, the state pays more, some homeowners get a little tax relief, and the politicians get to claim they ‘spent more money on schools’. It’s all about taxes and politics and nothing about supporting public schools.

These politicians are going to work hard to convince the public that their budget is good for schools. IT IS NOT!!! ” Their budget is a shell game of taxes and politics, at the expense of our children’s education.”

Make the case to properly fund schools to our elected officials, to your friends and neighbors, and on the editorial page of the local newspaper. Grassroots outrage on the immigration bill changed the outcome in Washington. Grassroots outrage is the only thing that can change this outcome. The future of Wisconsin depends upon it.

—

Advocates for a Strong School System in Waukesha

Project ABC, Advocating on Behalf of Children
Ruth Page Jones, President
PO Box 1994, Waukesha, WI 53187-1994
262 521-2788

projectabc@projectabc.org
http://www.projectabc.org

Posted by Thomas J. Mertz (Thanks to Deb Gurke, ABC Madison: ABCMadisonschools@yahoo.com)

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by | July 4, 2007 · 5:49 pm

Happy Independence Day

“There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.”

Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

“This is My Country,” Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions (listen)
“Back in the USA,” Chuck Berry (listen)

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 2, 2007 · 8:55 pm

Lewy Olfson sets the record straight

From the Wisconsin State Journal

Olfson: Schools today have different objectives

by LEWY OLFSON
June 27, 2007

In a guest column headlined “What a difference 100 years makes,” Rick Berg makes a false assumption that an eighth grade test given in 1907 demonstrates that schools today are failing to achieve acceptable levels of learning in their pupils.

The world in 1907 was a very different place from the world today, and schools then had very different objectives from schools today. In 1907, American society needed a small number of highly educated workers and a huge number of unskilled laborers and farmers. Only a fraction of young people went to college.

The test referred to by Berg was designed to weed out those who were not considered suitable for higher education.

Berg doesn’t tell us how many eighth graders actually passed the difficult test he describes. He suggests that the difficult questions in that test were well within the capacity of most students. I seriously doubt that. Moreover, academic failure in 1907 was not a barrier to a young person’s ability to earn a living, nor did it carry any significant social stigma.

Today, graduation, not merely from the eighth grade but from high school, is all but essential if a young person is to achieve even a modest level of financial independence as an adult.

Schools today are attempting to meet the needs of our society as it exists in 2007, just as schools in 1907 were designed to meet the needs of society as it existed then.

Which brings me to my next bone of contention with Berg, his misunderstanding of the principles underlying government-supported mandatory public education. He proposes that the state should give parents vouchers which they would be free to use to buy education wherever they like.

In Berg’s world, schools would flourish or fail depending upon whether or not they offered programs that parents were happy with. But the each-school-has-its-own- system model simply does not reflect the underlying purpose of publicly funded education.

Publicly funded education rests on the premise that we, as a society, have a collective notion of the public good. We have a body of values that we want to inculcate in the next generation.

We have needs, as a society, that we want the next generation to fulfill. If taxpayers, even those of us who have never had children ourselves, are going to pay for the education of other people’s children, we want that education to be in the service of an ideal, an image of a future we can agree with and support.

In a democratic society, we the governed have agreed to finance a system of education for the good of society as a whole, but we don’t write that check without requiring accountability.

That is why we have elected school boards to establish policy and to oversee administration. The school board members are accountable to us, the taxpayers.

In Berg’s model, accountability is an issue between the individual school and its constituent parents. But that is not enough.

I do not intend to suggest that I think the Madison School District is completely successful. And the system can only benefit from the thoughtful suggestions of interested, serious people like Berg. But in this case, I believe his suggestions are misguided and ill-informed.

Olfson, now retired and living in Madison, was an education journalist for 25 years and is the author of a number of books for young people.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under Accountability, AMPS, Best Practices, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, School Finance

by | June 17, 2007 · 8:50 pm

Quote of the Day (consider the source)

From this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal story on the Republican effort to reduce taxes in Wisconsin’s biennial budget (Paul Soglin has more).

Bill McCoshen, a lobbyist and former Commerce secretary under Gov. Tommy Thompson, said the [Republican controlled] Assembly could be forced into making it harder for the needy to qualify for Medicaid health coverage or not increasing state money to schools.

You’ve got to love the language: “forced.” Yep, the Republicans don’t want to reduce the level of school aid below the already inadequate formula or take healthcare away from the neediest, they are being “forced” to. Who is doing the forcing? McCoshen isn’t saying, but two answers suggest themselves. Either it is the Republican themselves, which brings to mind the image of Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles holding a gun to his own head and threatening to kill himself.

Or is it Republican lobbyists and strategists, like Bill McCoshen, and the donors they represent who are doing the “forcing”?

A closer look at McCoshen’s ties gives some clues as to why he might want to obscure the “forces” who value tax reductions more than providing essential state services. His current lobbying client list is here but at this point in the session it lacks the dollars and hours details. The list from the last session is much the same and includes links to that information. Previous sessions can be accessed here. Interestingly, the 2003 reports do not list McCoshen’s efforts on behalf of the Dairy Business Association to secure passage of Assembly Bill 466 and thereby further limit the taxing power of local entities, including school boards. Reduce state taxes, reduce local taxes, reduce them both, and don’t worry about the consequences for schools or those needing healthcare.

Also of interest in understanding how McCoshen does business and whose interests he looks after (hint, it isn’t the children of Wisconsin and those in need of healthcare) are the $46.5 million his firm was to “earn” lobbying for Dennis Troha’s failed, tainted casino bid, but that’s another story; this is about public school funding.

One McCoshen Client, is K12 Inc., a firm specializing in homeschooling and distance learning software (founded by William Bennett, who resigned after his “abort every black baby” to reduce crime remarks, but not before his use of influence to to gain profits from the company’s relationship to an Arkansas virtual charter school via a misapplied Education Department grant subsidizing homeschoolers were raised). In Wisconsin McCoshen, on K12’s behalf to the tune of over $160,000, sought an expansion of and easing of rules for virtual charter schools, while increasing state fiscal obligations.

Wal-Mart is on the list of McCoshen’s clients. See here for their contributions to education.

McCoshen’s firm also collected over $10,000 by consulting on the recent Janesville school referendum campaign. Small change in McCoshen’s world, but small change that depends on the continued existence of a state finance system that requires referenda to meet the needs of the state’s students.

What I see are new twists on the “starve the beast” game that the GOP has played for years. The idea is to deny the schools the money they need to do their job and then point out how they are failing to do their job in order to further defund them or eliminate public education altogether. The new twists involve deviating from the anti-tax stance when there are profits to be made, either via charter schools or by consulting with referenda campaigns.

May the force desert McCoshen and the Assembly Republicans.

(revised 6:13 PM, 6-15-07)

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under AMPS, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, Quote of the Day, Referenda, School Finance

by | June 11, 2007 · 7:51 pm

New Math Education Blog

It is called Rational Mathematics Education. The author is Michale Paul Goldenberg. Here is the start of the first post:

Announcing the Rational Mathematics Education blog
The time has come, the Walrus said, to get to the bottom of the idiocy that passes for analysis of mathematics education in the United States and elsewhere. The ‘Net is flooded with videos, blogs, and what I view as hate lists and web sites all attacking progressive reform methods, tools, technologies, pedagogies and, most especially, text books in mathematics (although the onslaught against progressive science education is on its way, and the current focus on mathematics education reform was preceded by the still on-going war against “whole language” and related ideas in literacy education.

This blog has been created to provide direct replies to entries on other blogs where the blogger invites feedback but refuses to post negative responses, critical comments, uncomfortable questions, etc., of ANY kind, regardless of how polite they may be. What do such people fear, I wonder? That their lies, distortions, misinformation, and conscious disinformation will be put under the harsh spotlight of reality? That their perversions and conflating of such important ideas as constructivism, cooperative learning, discovery learning, guided discovery, progressive education, child-centered classrooms, and many others will be exposed as either gross misunderstanding or willful inaccuracy?

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | May 15, 2007 · 5:22 pm

Free Speech in the Classroom

This reporting gives ample space to a very important issue facing every teacher in the classroom today: free speech. I was fortunate enough to have met Deb Mayer on a couple of occasions here in Madison while her appeal was wending it’s way through the court system. What you can’t glean from this article is the kind of person Deb is; kind-hearted, thoughtful, almost understated. Certainly not of a strident nature. And yet this school teacher’s blandly stated “I honk for peace,” has slowly become a foundation for further appellate decisions throughout the country. A teacher rep. summarizes this issue cogently, “”If I were a public school teacher, I would live in fear that some innocuous remark made in the classroom in response to a question from a pupil would lead to me being terminated” under such a ruling.” As Deb Mayer says, “My free speech is not for sale at any price.”

Robert Godfrey

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