Tag Archives: Education Reform

Standards Based Education is Bad Education Theory

30 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/10/2015

While discussing a student’s next class schedule with an outstanding student counselor, I learned my colleague had become dependent on testing data to place her students. That is not a surprise; it is one of the fundamental errors permeating education globally. Standards based testing is a fraud; a mirage that falsely projects an aura of objective analysis. As soon as high stakes are tied to these tests, their validity is undermined.

The learning standards upon which high stakes testing is based come from a mistaken philosophy of pedagogy that posits: a standardized learning rate, standardized interests, linear learning progression, developmental alignment, etc. Humans are not standard. Some learn to speak at 16 months and some don’t acquire that skill until 72 months. Some are short, others are tall. Some are fast, other are not. A child from urban Chicago has different perceptions and interests than a child from Winnemucca, Nevada. A global curriculum will not meet the needs of an endlessly diverse population. One size truly does not fit all. Even if it did, it would still be a bad idea to have political entities in centers of power deciding what that curriculum should be.

About 500 BC, the ancient Pythagoreans were a mathematically based cult. One of their beliefs (mathematical standard) was that there was no such thing as an irrational number. An irrational number is a number that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two numbers such as ½. The most famous irrational number is the ratio of the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter which is expressed as π (≈3.14). The writer, Morris Kline, claims that the man credited with the discovery of irrational numbers was a Pythagorean named Hippasus who had the bad sense to announce his discovery while at sea. He was thrown overboard for his heretical thinking![1] This story may be apocryphal but it does delightfully illustrate the danger associated with ossifying thinking with standards.

The longest most sustained use of standards and standardized testing arose in China more than 2000 years ago during the Han dynasty. It was an attempt to select government official based on some sort of meritocracy rather than feudal family station. However, local Lords were able to subvert the testing criteria and maintain the power of appointment. Starting in about 200 AD, China entered a 400 year long warring states period of instability.

In 581 AD, the new Emperor Wen of the Sui dynasty achieved a coup over his employer the Northern Zhao and then militarily unified China. Emperor Wen believed he needed to protect himself from the power of feudal lords, so he reintroduced the ‘keju’ or testing system to select government bureaucrats. Meritocracy based on test results became the sole path to a government position. University of Oregon’s dean of global education and professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Yong Zhao, recently wrote about the ‘keju’ system:

“The emperor’s biggest concern was keeping China unified under his family’s rule. Learning from his own example, he realized he needed a way to weaken the hereditary power of certain families and tribes. Thus, he needed to find people who could help govern the country without relying on the existing ruling class. He also needed a way to prevent capable talents from rising against the empire and reinforce among his subjects the need to obey the rightful rule of the Son of Heaven.

We can’t know how much Emperor Wen planned and strategized, but the establishment of keju accomplished every one of the goals.”[2]

The ‘keju’ exams focused on memorization of the Confucian cannon and interpretive expository writing about the cannon and current political affairs. By far the most prestigious position in pre-industrial China was a government appointment obtained by success in these exams. This testing became the focus of education for virtually everyone living in the most advanced civilization on the planet.

It has been estimated that in 600 AD, China had at least a 400-year scientific lead on the rest of the world. So why didn’t the industrial revolution occur in China? Former Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, Justin Yifu Lin posits:

“I believe the real reason of the absence of scientific revolution was not due to the adverse political environment that prohibited the creativity of Chinese intellectuals, but due to the special incentives provided by the civil-service examination system. Because of this examination system, curious geniuses were diverted from learning mathematics and conducting controllable experiments. Because of this system, the geniuses could not accumulate crucial human capital that was essential for the scientific revolution. As a result, the discoveries of natural phenomena could only be based on sporadic observations, and could not be upgraded into modern science which was built upon mathematics and controlled experiments.”[3]

 In China’s case the test became the education standard and that has been an ironclad law of standards and standards based testing ever since. Even David Coleman, the man who sold the Common Core to Bill Gates and then directed their development, knows that the tests become the real standards that will be taught. In a speech, he said:

“It was Lauren who propounded the great rule that I think is a statement of reality, though not a pretty one, which is teachers will teach towards the test. There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that. There is no amount of hand-waving, there’s no amount of saying, and ‘They teach to the standards, not the test; we don’t do that here.’”[4]

For America the first large scale standards movement was led by the Committee of Ten which published its report in 1894. Prepared under the auspices of the National Educational Association, this report was first published by the Bureau of Education, at Washington DC. The Committee of Ten was led by Harvard University President, Charles W. Elliot. The ten members supervised the development of standards for 9 different subjects. Nine subcommittees of ten members each worked in various locations around the country on their particular field of expertise.

There was an attempt to insure that the subcommittees were constituted by members representing diverse geographical locations. The committees were dominated by college staff and administrators but there were one or two classroom teachers on most of the committees, but the largest group of educators in America appears to have been ignored. There were no women on any of the committees.[5]

Two of the published standards – and there are many more – illustrate the innate problem with codified standards:

“They recommend ‘that the course in arithmetic be at once abridged and enriched; abridged by omitting entirely those subjects which perplex and exhaust the pupil without affording any really valuable mental discipline, and enriched by a greater number of exercises in simple calculation, and in the solution of concrete problems.’”[6]

So in mathematics, the committee called for more drill and skill which is exactly the kind of teaching Benjamin Bloom’s ‘Taxonomy of Educational Objectives’ called into question. The following comes from the science standards:

“As regards Resolutions 3, 4, and 5, it should be said that the order recommended for the study of Chemistry and Physics is plainly not the logical one, but all the members with one exception voted for Resolution 3 because they felt that the pupils should have as much mathematical knowledge as possible to enable them to deal satisfactorily with Physics, while they could profitably take up elementary Chemistry at an earlier stage.”[7]

This decision is why to this day we teach biology then chemistry then physics. This order is exactly backwards. To read a biology book a student needs knowledge of chemistry and to understand the forces that drive chemical reactions the principles of energy from physics is needed. San Diego Unified School District tried to rectify this order but they abandoned their expensive effort. The district was unfairly punished when their 9th grade physics student test scores did no compare well with the scores of mainly 11th and 12th grade students from across California on mandated standardized testing.

Mark Silver of John Hopkins reports,

“The standards movement has its roots in curriculum content and skills. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) was one of the first national professional organizations to publish national curriculum standards and goals.”[8]

These standards were guiding documents for the development of the California math standards which are widely considered superior to the common core standards. The common complaint I heard from fellow teachers implementing the California math standards was that they were “a mile wide and an inch deep.” These standards took us from “uncovering” mathematical principles to “covering” the material. Constructivist approaches like problem based learning were completely undermined and math instruction was pushed back to 1894’s drill and skill model. The high stakes involved made success on a narrow range of tested material paramount.

Since the inception of the California math standards, ossified standards have existed; for example rationalizing denominators. This procedure insures that there are no square-root factors in a denominator. Before calculators, rationalizing denominators significantly eased difficult arithmetic, but after calculators dividing by radicals became no more difficult than dividing by sums. Still the California teachers were compelled to drill their students on an antiquated algorithm.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Japan and China reacted differently to being behind the West scientifically and technically. China maintained its education culture and purchased technology. Japan completely changed its approach to education and engaged in a strenuous effort to catch the West in science, mathematics and manufacturing. The hallmark of Japan’s approach was authoritarianism. The goals of education became modernizing and producing loyal disciples for the Emperor. These purposes were to be insured by tested education standards. The education reformer, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, criticized both the goals and the methods. He denounced standards based education as mechanized education and agonized over putting children through “testing hell”.

With authoritarian standards based education, Japan became both a world power and a menace. China’s equally authoritarian standards based education led to weakness and vulnerability. Both countries were on a path of ruin.

The renowned historian, Arnold Toynbee established a criteria for judging whether a civilization was in a stage of growth or decline. He wrote:

“We must ask whether, as we look back over the ground we have traversed, we can discern any master tendency at work, and we do in fact unmistakably decry a tendency towards standardization and uniformity: a tendency which is correlative and opposite of the tendency towards differentiation and diversity which we have found to be the mark of the growth stage of civilizations.”[9]

Both John Dewey and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi counseled against standardized education. Dewey stated “Imposing an alleged uniform general method upon everybody breeds mediocrity in all but the very exceptional.”[10] And Makiguchi theorized that “Education integrated into the life of society will yield benefits of well-planned living, without the undesirable effect of mechanical uniformity an inherent danger in standardized education.”[11]

What is the root of the persistent and two millennial old tendency for politicians with minimal knowledge of education creating education standards and mandating testing accountability? It originates in a deep rooted innate and evil desire in humans to control other humans. If we do not fight this tendency, we are doomed to live in an authoritarian society where political elites ensure subservience by controlling education standards enforced by standardized testing.

A better path forward is the development of consensus about the purposes of education through continual dialogue. Then allow professional educators to create curricular guidance by a process of peer reviewed research. Community schools should use that curricular guidance in the best way they see fit and should be encouraged to experiment. Statistical sampling identical to the National Assessment of Education Progress should be used to assess progress and provide information for the purposes of continued dialogue, research and further progress. It should be an ongoing process with no shortcuts; no silver bullets and no miracles.

As for my colleague’s concern about guidance in student class placement, teacher grades and recommendations along with input from the student and their parents is a far more reliable method of placement than relying on dubious standardized testing scores.

  1. Morris Kline (1990), Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, page 32. Oxford University Press
  2. Yong Zhao (2014), Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Jossey-Bass of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Page 38
  3. http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/cepa/docs/seminar/papers-nov2006/Lin-Paper.pdf
  4. http://atthechalkface.com/2013/12/23/this-is-the-common-core-you-support/
  5. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7129384M/Report_of_the_Committee_of_ten_on_secondary_school_studies
  6. https://archive.org/stream/reportofcomtens00natirich#page/105/mode/1up
  7. https://archive.org/stream/reportofcomtens00natirich#page/119/mode/1up
  8. http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/Transforming%20Education/Articles/Trends%20in%20School%20Reform/
  9. Arnold Toynbee (DC Somervell), “A study of History” abridgement Volume 1 – VI, Oxford University Press, 1946, page 555
  10. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan, 1916. Page 203
  11. Ikeda, Daisaku. Soka Education. Santa Monica, California: Middleway Press. 2001 Page 18

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Illusion Motivates Education Reform

29 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/29/2014

My earliest memory of public education criticism was overhearing my mother and her teacher colleagues talking about a book memorably named, “Why Johnny Can’t Read.” It was a sensation that implicitly stated that public education in America was a dismal failure and that the nation was on a path to its own cultural and fiscal demise. Recently Jim Arnold & Peter Smagorinsky wrote this amazing paragraph about the history of declaring the failure of America’s public education system:

“Admiral Rickover published “American Education, a National Failure” in 1963, and in 1959 LIFE magazine published “Crisis in Education” that noted the Russians beat us into space with Sputnik because “the standards of education are shockingly low.” In 1955 Why Johnny Can’t Read became a best seller, and in 1942 the NY Times noted only 6% of college freshmen could name the 13 original colonies and 75% did not know who was President during the Civil War. The US Navy in 1940 tested new pilots on their mastery of 4th grade math and found that 60% of the HS graduates failed. In 1889 the top 3% of US high school students went to college, and 84% of all American colleges reported remedial courses in core subjects were required for incoming freshmen.”

The paragraph above recalls more than a century of national failure to properly educate our citizenry yet in that same century America became the world’s leader economically, scientifically, militarily and culturally. Does this mean that education quality does not matter or is it more likely that the perception of American education failing – is and was an illusion?

By the middle of the 20th century, cities and villages throughout the USA had developed an impressive educational infrastructure. With the intent of giving every child in America the opportunity for 12 years of free education, this country was the world’s only country not using high stakes testing to deny the academic path to more than a third of its students. The physical infrastructure of our public schools was of high quality and schools were staffed with well trained experienced educators.

Furthermore, a trained administrative structure was in place and the path to continuous improvement had been established. No one should deny that public education can be improved, but what is also undeniable is that America’s current system has a history of producing successful citizens. To call public education in America a failure is to make better the enemy of good. It promotes a destructive illusion.

I feel a surrealistic connection to what might be the most important driver ever for this destructive illusion. Terrel ‘Ted’ Bell, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Education, instigated a commission that gave us the infamous, “Nation at Risk.” Beyond just claiming that public education in America was failing and needed drastic reform; the claimants said that reform needed the leadership of people who were not professional educators.

First of all, the idea that you should ignore the advice of practicing professionals concerning any field of human endeavor is foolhardy, but foolhardiness permeates modern education reform. It is through Bell I feel a chimerical connection to imprudent reform.

Bell was from Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. I too grew up in rural Idaho. He attended Albion State Normal School in southern Idaho. That was my mother’s alma mater as well as that of more than half of my public school teachers. Like most of the Albion graduates, Bell taught while continuing his own education. He eventually earned a doctorate of education from the University of Utah. This man with roots close to my own became a key instrument in advancing the attack on America’s public schools, which he loved.

Bell’s “Nation at Risk” was a political document written by business men and famous scientists. It claimed without substantiation or peer review that the very fate of the nation was at risk because of our failing schools. The authors said “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people” and claimed, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

The paper was a very successful polemic and not an honest scholarly effort. Its prejudicial analysis of education was based on unsupported beliefs and ignored data that countered those beliefs. “Nation at Risk” significantly advanced the destructive illusion that public education was failing and the rescue must be led by corporate chieftains.

Terrel Bell was a idealist and an realist. He supported the department of education and Medicare. He had a profound religious faith in Mormonism. As a classroom chemistry teacher for many years, he devoted his life to public education. Bell was an unlikely choice to head Ronald Regan’s Department of Education. Bell, however, was picked because of his high standing as a leader of education policy in the Nixon and Ford administrations which purchased him favorable standing among the education community.

Bell was supposed to oversee the demise of the department of education and support the states’ rights views (definitely not national standards) of the new President, but he had his own agenda. Bell said, “There are three things to emphasize in teaching: The first is motivation, the second is motivation, and the third is (you guessed it) motivation.” It is strange that an experienced educator with this kind of understanding about the crucial nature of motivation for learning would be a champion of national education standards. But he was.

By the 1980’s, many education theorist and observers knew that wherever standards had been tried they tended to circumscribe curriculum and engender jejune pedagogy which stunted the intrinsic motivation to learn. In many ways, Bell is typical of a modern education reformer. He was idealistic, moral, selfless and believed fiercely in the destructive illusion that American public education was failing.

Teach for America and the ‘education entrepreneurs’ who developed the “no excuses” charter school movement also spring from that same kind of idealistic passion based on the heartfelt belief that America’s schools are failing and that they have a mission to save our country’s future.

People like Doug Lemov, Stacey Boyd and John King deeply believed that public schools were failing. With no substantial background in education (which they saw as a strength), they started ‘no-excuse’ charter schools. Deriding education theories taught by university professors, it was clear to them that the first item to fix in schools was discipline so they put children in uniforms, made many rules about everything the children did and enforced those rules harshly. In some ways, it was reminiscent of 19th century teaching.

‘Education entrepreneurs’, because they have no respect for education professionals, are doomed to reinventing the wheel. The truth is that even with the tremendous financial and political support their movement secured; the results have been mixed at best and as far as improving education practices they are abysmal failures.

The truly difficult outcome from these disciples of economist like Eric Hanushek instead of educators like John Dewey is that they are still true believers in the need to ‘disrupt’ public education because it is failing. Everything they have done and believed in about education is based on the failure illusion that they hang onto tenaciously.

The godfather of the ‘education entrepreneurs’ seems to be the MIT trained economist, Eric Hanushek. His major claim to fame is proposing value added measures (VAM) to evaluate schools and teachers. Economists often function today as modern era soothsayers. To me Hanushek is little more than a mountebank.

His VAM has been widely criticized as being statistically absurd, but that hasn’t stopped “elite” schools like MIT and Stanford from singing his hosannas. Hanushek reminds me of a description of economists in the book “An Incomplete Education“:

“Economists are fond of saying, with Thomas Carlyle, that economics is ‘the dismal science.’ As with much of what economists say, this statement is half true. It is dismal.”

Hanushek’s bad science has done a lot to advance the perfidious illusion that American schools are failing.

I too was a victim of the American schools are failing myth. I decided to become an educator in 1999. I left a successful career as a research scientist working in the recording industry to become an educator. With strong beliefs about the importance of public education, I saw myself as a talented guy who could make major contributions to righting the distressed ship of public education.

My mindset wasn’t that different than that of the ‘education entrepreneurs.’ I was not in the classroom for many months when I started to realize I might be the most inept teacher at my school. Teaching is more difficult than being a research scientist and experience in teaching is also more important. It became clear to me that I had been bamboozled. The teaching profession and the condition of public schools in San Diego County in 2002 had never been in better shape.

It is interesting the way this deception has manifested in the neighborhoods of America. In middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods, people believe the illusion but are thankful that their own neighborhood public schools are such wonderful exceptions.

Here in San Diego, parents at Torrey Pines Elementary School or Challenger Middle School or Poway High School love their schools and would fight for them. At the same time they believe that public schools in poor neighborhoods are failing. The result is that people in poor neighborhoods who don’t have the political capital to fight for their schools no longer can send their children to quality public schools.

They must send them to charter schools or drive them to another neighborhood. Poor communities are having their wonderful public institutions like the venerable Compton High School taken from them.

I will conclude with words that the great historian Arnold Toynbee wrote in his masterpiece study of five millennia of human development concerning publicly supported education. He observed that “The bread of universal education is no sooner cast upon the waters than a shoal of sharks arises from the depths and devours the children’s bread under the educator’s very eyes.” I hope this was a warning not a prophecy!

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Education Caste System

12 Jul

In 1999, motivated by idealistic impulses, I quit working on the next greatest hard drive to become a teacher. Like most people, I knew public education was in bad shape with bad teachers and poor administration. I hoped to advance the American promise that anyone’s child could become a captain of industry or even the president of the United States. America is supposed to be a meritocracy with equal opportunity for all.

I heard about “Nation at Risk” and I knew “Johnny” never could read. I was confident that a person with a successful engineering career under his belt could make significant contributions to public education. So it was off to the new masters of education program at University of California San Diego and my crusade to save public education.

These past 15 years have been enlightening. I soon learned what I knew about the state of public education was absolute baloney. The experienced teachers were amazing and once I got past the initial arrogance that blinded me to that fact, I realized that I had a lot to learn about teaching. I was not going to school the existing teachers; they were highly skilled and effective. My first two years in the classroom, I literally did not encounter any bad teachers who were not motivated to do a good job. The schools in San Diego were much better than the ones I attended 30 plus years earlier and the students were far more accomplished than my peers.

Concurrent with my entering the class room the bi-partisan No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was adopted. It soon became clear that education for working and middle class students was becoming more skills oriented with lessened creativity and minimal independent thought. The new education reform was based on standards and accountability for standardized testing results. This new theory of good pedagogy ignored the advice educators like Dewey and Herbart and adopted what Alfie Kohn mockingly dubbed the “longer stronger meaner” theory of education. This kind of pedagogy diminishes thought and creativity. It implies that thinking is for the children of wealthy people in private schools who are the natural leaders of society. The other students have utilitarian purposes but thinking undermines that value. It is all driven by an ancient and evil ideology that posits it is OK to use lesser human beings for the purposes of social elites.

El Puente founder, Frances Lucerna, has a similar observation:

“In the public schools now it’s basically all about standardized testing, and mechanical literacy. This is resulting in dumbing down, watering down, the experience that young people have in school. It is equivalent to telling students that they are not to go deep within themselves and think in complex ways about things, but that they need to go back to memorizing and stuffing their heads with knowledge that has nothing to do with their experience and their world. This is not by accident: there is a reason that this is happening, why it’s happening in public schools and not in private schools and other places. This is an education for followers, not for leaders. And that’s why I think a movement for change has to arise, and the arts are fundamental in this.” (Muses Go to School, Page 58)

In 1973 David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission produced “The Crisis of Democracy” a report in which they indicate that too much education for common people is a threat to democracy. On page 115 on the report they conclude, “The vulnerability of democratic government in the United States thus comes not primarily from external threats, though such threats are real, nor from internal subversion from the left or the right, although both possibilities could exist, but rather from the internal dynamics of democracy itself in a highly educated, mobilized, and participant society.” In other words, don’t teach common people to think, to have philosophy, or develop their own ideas – the elites of society will take care of that. It is not in the interest of the upper class to have too much education – too much democracy.

Of course, this elitism or classism is not new. I recently studied a lecture on an event that occurred in 1279. Twenty peasant farmers living in Atsuhara (present-day Fuji City, Japan) were arrested and falsely accused of stealing rice from a local priest. When the second most powerful figure in Japan questioned them, he did not ask about the charges. He offered clemency if they would just renounce their religious beliefs and join the approved Buddhist sect. Surprisingly, all twenty farmers refused the free pass. Three of them were executed and the other seventeen were exiled to remote regions of Japan.

Known as the “Atsuhara persecution” this event is significant in the history common people. Daisaku Ikeda, the founder of the Soka Schools said, “Set in 13th-century feudal Japan, this was truly a pioneering struggle for human rights that will shine forever in history.” In the same lecture Ikeda commented,

“…the devilish nature of authority fears the awakening of the people. To those in power who forget to serve the people and instead exploit them, wielding authority for self-serving ends, the presence of individuals who discern their true insidious nature and are determined to take a stand against them is a hindrance and inconvenience. That’s why the powerful do everything they can to crush them.” (July 2014, Living Buddhism)

Another struggle for rights that shines eternally in history is the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson penned these famous lines:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

As a boy growing up in rural Idaho, I was thrilled by these words. The precept that all men are created equal and have the right to seek an equal station based on merit excited my idealistic yearnings. For me, America was “that shining city on the hill.” It was some time before I started coming to grips with the contradictions that inhered from the beginning. Jefferson was a slave owner; women were denied human dignity and if you were not a member of the land owning class, the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God did not entitle you to equal station. But the ideas were pregnant with idealism and the potential for human advancement. It still gives me hope.

In our country, over the past more than two centuries there have been many advances in human rights, but the ugly side of human nature that wants to use others for personal purposes has not been conquered. It has merely transformed to forms which use less obvious and possibly more insidious methodology. Doctor Ikeda spoke directly to this point in a speech he delivered at Harvard University in 1993:

“I propose that self-motivation is what will open the way to the era of soft power. While systems depending on hard power have succeeded by using established tools of coercion to move people toward certain goals, the success of soft power is based on volition. It is an internally generated energy of will created through consensus and understanding among people. The processes of soft power unleash the inner energies of the individual. Rooted in the spirituality and religious nature of human beings, this kind of energy has traditionally been considered in philosophical themes. But without the support of a philosophical foundation to strengthen and mobilize the spiritual resources of the individual, the use of soft power would become nothing more that ‘fascism with a smile’, In such a society information and knowledge would be abundant, but subject to manipulation by those in power. A citizenry without wisdom would fall easy prey to authority with self-serving goals. For these reasons, the burden of sustaining and accelerating the trend toward soft power lies with philosophy.” (New Humanism page 189)

In the 1930’s the philosopher historian Arnold Toynbee observed in his masterpiece, A Study of History, “The bread of universal education is no sooner cast upon the waters than a shoal of sharks arises from the depths and devours the children’s bread under the educator’s very eyes.” In his deep study of more than three-thousand years of human history, Toynbee saw this pattern repeat.

Toynbee also saw a pattern that gave him pause about the future of our civilization. He wrote:

“We must ask whether, as we look back over the ground we have traversed, we can discern any master tendency at work, and we do in fact unmistakably decry a tendency towards standardization and uniformity: a tendency which is correlative and opposite of the tendency towards differentiation and diversity which we have found to be the mark of the growth stage of civilizations.” (A study of History page 555)

As I read the words of great men of character and think about my own observations, I am convinced this is a time of opportunity and peril. We must fight against the arrogance of elitism which looks down on common people as mere pawns and considers their own good fortune a matter of birth right or superiority. We must fight against the whole concept of Teach for America (TFA) and its untrained student teachers from elite schools which reeks of this kind of stinking thinking. The fraudulent charter school movement is the shoal of sharks rising from the depths to devour the children’s bread. Standardized education; standardized testing and common core standards seem to exactly match Toynbee’s description of the trends in decaying societies.

A witch’s brew of arrogance, greed and elitism is poisoning public education in America. Eli Broad (a billionaire home builder) did not think experience in education was valuable for administrators who run educational institutions, so he created his own non-certified institution that trains non-educators to lead the schools of common people. Bill Gates does not think class size matters. He sees no problem with classes of 50 students, but he sends his children to a private school in Seattle that has class sizes of 12 to 15. Michael Bloomberg does not think teacher education and experience is important. So he worked to privatize New York City’s schools so he does not need to waste money on experience and training. These attitudes would be indefensible if they were not promoted by extremely wealth elites.

We do not need to accept a society dominate by self-appointed elites who inherited their wealth and position or were able to unscrupulously bend financial law to their advantage. As educators we must educate the public and arm them against charlatans like: Jeb Bush; Arne Duncan; Democrats for Education Reform; Joel Klein; Michelle Rhee; Bill Gates; Andrew Cuomo; Daniel Malloy; Eli Broad; Bill Gates; the Walton family; etc.. We must give them the knowledge and wisdom to see the foolishness of these people. We need to make the nature and identity of the enemies of common people clear to all so no one is deceived by them. It is time to end the caste system in America and achieve the promise of meritocracy and opportunity for all.

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“What you guys are doing is a great thing!”

30 Jun

The BATs (Bad Ass Teachers) of Washington organized their first public event on June 26 – it was a smashing success! Beginning at the iconic Westgate Park, home of political expression and protest for five decades, it was the perfect spot for a gathering of BATs. By 4:30 PM teachers were arriving, making signs and setting up a stage. Music and speeches started at five and about 5:45 police closed off 5th Avenue and hundreds of us marched off to Seattle Center and the Bill Gates Foundation. Included in those ranks besides me from San Diego were teachers from Oregon, Arizona and Oklahoma.

Teachers can do anything well, make signs, speak and sing. The crowd was initially uplifted by the impassioned singing voices of adults who actually care about children. Of course, a group of teachers knew to provide everyone in the crowd a copy of the song lyrics plus the words for the chants planned for along the parade route.

I was particularly pleased to hear one of the hero teachers from Seattle’s Garfield High school speak. Last year they made national news by refusing as a staff to give the state’s standardized tests. This year, like the rest of us, they are facing CC$$ testing, which is extreme and disruptive. She is not sure what the staff will decide to do. The pressure will be even greater – after all this is Bill Gates home.

Shortly after five a park worker started gathering up equipment including the chairs some of us were using. When asking for my chair he said, “What you guys are doing is a great thing!”

By the time we headed out onto 5th avenue, it looked like an old fashion union parade from the Samuel Gompers era. There were hundreds of teachers marching. Our ranks covered more than a city block in length. Most of us were carrying signs.

The teacher chorus and guitar player continued to lead us in the songs we had just practiced in Westgate Park. Here’s an example of some of the wonderful lyrics:

“I’m gonna lay down my bubble sheets
Outside the Board of Ed
Outside the Board of Ed
Outside the Board of Ed
I’m gonna lay down my bubble sheets
Outside the Board of Ed
Ain’t gonna teach to the test no more”

We also regaled the locals on the streets with chants like:

“Hey, hey, ho ho.
School closings gotta go!
Hey, hey, ho ho.
Privitization’s gotta go.
Hey, hey, ho ho.
Standardized tests gotta go.
Hey hey ho ho.
Charter schools have gotta go.
Hey hey ho ho.
Arne Duncan has gotta go.”

As we marched along people came out of their stores and businesses to observe. Most of them were smiling, giving us thumbs up, clapping and shouting encouragement. It was clear that at least in downtown Seattle, that teachers and public schools are more popular than those attacking us. At one point cars were traveling down the opposite side of the street and many of them were honking their horns in support. The public is clearly on our side.

Upon arriving at the Gates headquarters, there were more speeches, more songs and more chants. It was a good day for public education.

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Review of A Chronicle of Echoes

23 Jun

Chronicle’s author Mercedes K. Schneider will not be confused with Margret Mitchell or Leon Uris but she just might receive mention alongside Upton Sinclair and Izzy Stone. The book is plagued by poor editing and several passages are difficult or impossible to decode. However, Chronicle is a masterpiece of research that illuminates the unbelievable world of power, money and incestuous relations that are perverting public education in America.

In the introduction Schneider tells us “In writing this book, my purpose is to dismantle the dismantlers. As such, my words are not kind. My words expose, and that exposure is harsh. The individuals and organizations profiled in this book have declared war on my profession, and I take that personally.” As if proving these words, she calls chapter one “Joel Klein: The Man from Whom Nothing Good Comes.”

The subject is vast and this book is almost 500 pages of narrative and documentation of claims. In these pages Schneider demonstrates her extraordinary skill as a researcher. Even the most informed person about the politics and power behind what passes as education reform in America, will learn many things from this trove of information. I learned that ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council) was opposed to the Common Core until Jeb Bush intervened in 2012.

I was amazed to learn that two TFA (Teach For America) alums with no academic background in education, 6-weeks of TFA institute training and three years teaching experience were able to not only start the KIPP schools but immediately received huge donations for their enterprise. We are talking millions of dollars given by foundations to untrained, inexperienced youths to start a charter school chain. I was absolutely stunned to find that Obama and Duncan gave a $50,000,000 “Investing in Innovation” grant to KIPP.

$50,000,000 appears to be the amount of money given to the top preferred “reform” organizations. The Fisher Foundation (GAP) was the first supporter of KIPP and has given them fifty million dollars. Today, Wendy Kopp (the founder of TFA who amongst her many grants got fifty million dollars from the Walton foundation) is married to KIPP CEO, Richard Barth. With Wendy’s cheap untrained teacher force and all the philanthropic gifts, KIPP is awash in money. They have nearly twice the dollars to spend per student than the local public schools with whom they are “competing.”

Most of all what I learned from this book is that the big money being used to privatize public education in America is Republican money. It is true that there are groups like Democrats for Education Reform and even our current Democrat President who are facilitating the demise of public education and the teaching profession. But these self-proclaimed Democrat groups must create sub-groups with names like “Education Reform Now” that do not have Democrat in their name in order to get the big donations.

Schneider makes a good case that the biggest enemy of public education in America is Jeb Bush. She devotes three chapters to the shenanigans Jeb and his organizations have done. Jeb Bush comes off as a cynical elite using education as his ticket to political power. And like cynical elites everywhere, he does not appear to give a damn about the students of the poor and middle-class.

This tale of eleven million dollars here and fifty million dollars there to support the untested and inexperienced is mind boggling. What is the purpose of people like Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, spending time and money on KIPP, TFA, Rocket Ship, etc. while undermining public schools in communities of poverty and degradation? It must be to destroy the current public education system in America and replace it with a privatized system.

Mercedes Schneider has created a community asset of great value with this book. It is a must read for anyone concerned about public education and the forces arrayed to steal public school funding.

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Another Destructive Tenure Meme

14 Jun

(Promoted by “Reasonable” Liberals)

Bad enough that Judge Rolf’s decision in the Vergara show trial appeared to be based on political talking points instead of evidence. Now, tamed liberals are appearing in all types of media claiming the truth is that the California tenure law was bad. “It needed reform.” They make specious claims like the 18 months time is too short for a proper evaluation and the muscular protection is unreasonable. It is all foolish rhetoric that supports the diminishment of professionalism in education.

The 18 month claim must be based on California’s school year consisting of 182 days. If you add legal holidays and divide by 5, you arrive at enough weeks to equal 9 months. There is no credit for teaching summer school, attending seminars or anything else. So even based on this formula, the very fastest a probationary teacher can complete the required time is 21 months.

But, a teacher cannot get a probationary contract until they have a California teaching credential and 1 year of either student teaching or teaching under an intern contract (for master of education students). So, the minimum time is really 33 months.

Using Harvard University style economics analysis, I can say that only 23.47% of newly minted teachers with their year of student teaching done receive a probationary contract. The rest who don’t happen to be in their 20’s and also are not a product of a preferred teacher education program get temporary contracts. Temporary contracts provide no protections and do not count towards a permanent position.

Using the Cornell University education research methodology, I have found that it takes the average teacher 2.3 years working under temporary contracts before they are offered a probationary contract. So the fact is that it takes most teachers nearly 5 years to achieve a full time position with guaranteed job protections. I am being a little facetious here but the 5 year number is probably pretty close to the time the average California teacher takes attain full time status as a teacher.

During my first year teaching five teachers at my school were fired and all of them had tenure. As far as I could tell they were all competent teachers who were doing their job. In fact, the principal made a big deal about the outstanding winter music festival organized by the music teacher she fired. For some reason, the “powerful” teachers’ union could not save their jobs. So, the job protections for California educators is not that muscular.

The Vergara trial results and fallout along with the material in Mercedes K. Schneider’s book, “A Chronicle of Echoes,” which documents the destruction of public education by rich powerful business men and politicians, called to mind a portion of the dialogue between four Buddhist philosophers published in 2000. They started discussing modern civilization being out of control.

Ikeda: “We are driving at a reckless speed on a winding road. We are like a fearless child infatuated with the excitement of speed, stepping harder and harder on the accelerator of the automobile. We are risking catastrophe at any moment.”

Endo: “Knowing neither where we are headed nor in what direction we ought to go, we continue to careen recklessly into impenetrable darkness without a sure path. That is the state of humankind today.”

Ikeda: “Since my dialogue with Dr. Peccei in the 1980s, this situation has not improved in the least. And I am deeply perplexed by the sense that recently even the energy to try to improve things seems in increasingly short supply.”

Saito: “It seems to me that the cause may lie in the fact that people have, in some sense, been ‘left behind.’ Machines have advanced in both power and speed. And although the ‘automobile ‘ of a civilized society that brings together the fruits of this progress has been created, the people who must sit in the driver’s seat have not themselves matured to the point where they can properly fulfill that role. As a result, it is as though CHILDREN ARE CAUSING THE AUTOMOBILE OF SOCIETY TO CAREEN OUT OF CONTROL AND ARE THRILLING AT THE SPEED.”
(From: The Wisdom of the Lotus Sutra – A Discussion, Vol. II Page 119)

It is teachers across this country who are uniting to bring maturity and reason to the progress of education and therefore the progress of our civilization.

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LA Elementary

26 May

The push for STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) education is based on a fraud, a corollary of the H1B visa program fraud. There is no shortage of STEM educated graduates in the US nor is there likely to be in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, when presented an opportunity to participate in STEM day activities at Lincoln Acres Elementary School, I jumped at the chance.

As a member of the San Diego County CAL Pass Science Council (council was destroyed in 2013 when a corporate data mining company purchased CAL Pass), I had participated in a learning enhancement program at LA Elementary two years earlier and fell in love with the place especially the children. Primary grade kids are really fun. They are thrilled at the idea that a high school teacher is coming to teach them. My regular students are not thrilled, maybe engaged but not thrilled!

Lincoln Acres Elementary School was established in 1927 and sits in the middle of an economically challenged neighborhood in National City, California. Ninety-four percent of the school’s students qualify for free and reduced lunch and 65% are language learners so of course the federal government labels this a failing school!

Anyone who visits the campus and meets the staff and students sees a wonderful institution. It’s professionally run and organized, the students are in uniforms, the school has a wonderful mix of veteran and youthful educators. The rooms are equipped with Promethean electronic white boards and class sizes are reasonable.  The students are engaged. Learning is happening and some of these students will go on to achieve academic excellence at elite Universities throughout the US. A friend of mine traveled the LA Elementary school path to Yale and then to a Doctorate in Economics from UC Berkley.

For STEM day, I arrived early and met a campus assistant in the staff parking lot who showed me where to park and let me into the campus. Soon, I saw that assistant supervising breakfast for all of the school’s students. An assistant principal took me to my room where I would be doing an hour long hands on lesson about simple DC circuits. She told me they feed breakfast and lunch to 100% of the students because it was more cost effective than trying to separate out the 6% who did not actually qualify. Breakfast looked great. I like eggs, muffins and bananas.

I noticed that as students arrived they were putting their backpacks in numbered circles on a large paved area then walking in an extensive circle. I joined them for a morning constitutional all the time wondering how this large school wide event was organized and how efficiently the students would arrive in my designated room. Soon teachers appeared near the circle of walking students, the bell rang and the students immediately joined their teachers in their class’s designate area. Announcements were broadcast and the students recited the pledge of allegiance to the US flag.

Students and teachers all disappeared in different directions. Within three minutes an announcement was broadcast for everyone to go to the day’s first event. In less than five minutes 16 sixth graders showed up at my room with a packet of tickets, the first of which was for admission to my circuits’ lesson.

The real joy began. I gave the students in groups of two a light bulb, a battery, a piece of wire and a written prompt. I told them to turn on the light bulb. Very quickly one young guy got his light bulb on just after telling me it was impossible. Of course, then everyone else saw his success and pretty soon I had eight functioning lights. We used science vocabulary and drew pictures of complete circuits. The children were engaged and on task. It was wonderful. Some of them just might have had their love of science further stoked.

Near the end of our session, I started discussing what it would be like at Granger Middle School next year and Sweetwater High School in following years. That is when corporate education reform raised its ugly destructive head. One of the girls said, “Granger and Sweetwater are bad. They have bad test scores. I am going to Bonita.”

Bonita Middle School and Bonita High School are in the same school district but in a much wealthier community. When I taught at Bonita High, most of the cars in the student parking lot were far better and more expensive looking than the cars in the faculty parking lot. I know from personal experience that Granger and Sweetwater are equal to the Bonita schools as far as quality of programs, teachers and institution, but they get lower test scores. So, the parents of every student at Lincoln Acers Elementary School is sent a letter telling them that Granger and Sweetwater are failing schools therefore under NCLB, parents have the right to send their child out of the community to a school with good test results.

These benighted federal policies are harming great schools and undermining community development. Top down standards based education and accountability are perfidy harming democracy. Excellent schools are falsely labeled failures based on test scores that do accurately reflect the cultural capital of the community, however these scores are obtained by instruments that are not designed for judging quality of education or capable of providing cogent information for those judgments.

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King the not Professional is Propagandist

5 Jan

It is unfortunate that the Democratic Party got into bed with corporate driven education reform. This piece seems like something a flack would write supporting a political agenda and not a well reasoned informed response from a top professional education bureaucrat. King rails against misinformation at the same time he spouts unsupported non-sense. Clearly the federal standards are being implemented before being field tested and the early evidence is that they are terrible.

The standards are strong on financial and political support and have little support from professional educators who have seriously studied them. No experienced professional educators were involved in writing them and among the few who reviewed the standards, some refused to sign off on them.

Mercedes Snyder looked at tax returns and makes a very convincing case that the CCSS were spawned as a vehicle to allow corporate access to education dollars. They are not about improving schools or helping minority communities. Their purpose is the transfer of education dollars to corporations who sell digital devices, testing, test preparation materials, scripted (mind numbing) lessons, consultants and the list is endless. In California, voters approved a tax increase to help education, but all of that money is going to build the needed testing infrastructure and other related Common Core expenses. Classes are remaining huge and the learning environment is becoming more repugnant as the testing load intensifies.

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Unwarranted Demise of Mar Vista Middle School

27 Mar

By Thomas Ultican 3/27/2013

In February, while attending a science teacher’s professional development at Mar Vista High School, I first heard the rumor that Mar Vista Middle School (MVM) was going to be closed, all of its staff dismissed and the school reopened as a charter school. Since 1961, this venerable institution has been a treasure in the poverty stricken neighborhood situated one mile north of the world’s busiest border crossing (San Diego-Tijuana). At the March 11, 2013 board meeting (Sweetwater Union High School District) the rumor was confirmed, a restructuring plan for MVM was approved. Or as one person observed, “they legally stole an asset belonging to a poor community for their own purposes.”

This is modern American school reform and truthfully speaking, no one knows what is really motivating the Sweetwater School Board. Oddly, Thomas J. Winters, the current principal of MVM, a man with only one year of experience as a principle was tasked with making the decision about which restructuring plan to select. He chose from available alternatives specified in education law “close the school and reopen it as a focus or theme schools [sic] with new staff or staff skilled in the focus area.” (1) So, a high quality staff, which in most cases had spent more than a decade providing heroic service to one of San Diego counties poorest neighborhoods, was to be relieved of their positions. They were guilty of working in a poor neighborhood! The enormity of cynical school reform for profit and self-promotion is beyond injustice.

The Elementary and Secondary Education ACT of 1965 as amended in 2002, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) specifies that schools which fail to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for five years shall be punished and mandates a menu of remedies. MVM had failed to reach AYP from the very inception of this law bringing it the dubious record of being labeled a failure by the federal government for ten straight years. Many local residents, especially those with no direct involvement with the school, believed what they were repeatedly hearing about this “failing school” – “the problem is bad teachers unwilling to change.” Even teachers from across town who do not work with students of poverty or significant numbers of language learners suspected there must be something wrong with the MVM staff.

I worked at MVM in school year 2004-2005. It was clear to me that as motivated and competent as the staff was they were going fail unless this obviously flawed law (NCLB) was modified. Schools in communities with high poverty rates were set up for failure by this ill-conceived federal takeover of education. How is it possible to convince people that MVM is a wonderful highly effective educational institution, when a federal law is written that makes even significant growth in performance look like failure? Was disaggregation an evil plot or just bad law with unintended consequences? I don’t know, but I do know that MVM is actually a very successful school and is a significant community asset. In a just world the staff and school would have been lauded for both their efforts and achievements. These valiant educators should have been lionized as an example of what can be accomplished when selfless teachers work to fructify the weal. Instead they have been vitiated!

My personal reasoned conclusion solidified by practical experience is that standardized testing is odious. It clearly narrows curriculum and promotes soporific lessons that develop mimesis not creativity or the ability to think. That said: these same horrible tests show that the staff at MVM got the message. The teachers saw that the school’s survival depended on effectively teaching to the tests. The baseline year for NCLB testing was 2002 in which math and English are the only two categories that matter. The arbitrary level for passing was set at 16% of math students scoring proficient or better and 13.6% of English students scoring proficient or better. In 2012, AYP pass rates entered the hockey stick portion of the law (the period when pass rates go up precipitously to reach a whimsical 100% proficient or advanced by 2014). The 2012 AYP pass rates were set at 79% proficient or better for math and 78.4% proficient or better for English. The 2012 targets are so unrealistic that even Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, was predicting an 82% failure rate. (2) Nevertheless, they are still being effectively utilized by questionable actors to declare schools like MVM failures and take control of them away from the local community.

From 2002 thru 2011, the overall school scores at MVM always exceeded the AYP targets. In 2011, 51% of the eight graders at MVM took Algebra with 40% scoring proficient and 44% scoring advanced on the California Star Tests (CST). The 44% advanced was the highest percentage of advanced algebra scores in the district. That year the algebra students at MVM outscored even the schools whose students were from the wealthiest families in the district. The MVM scores were amongst the top Algebra scores posted in California that year (2011). Plus, almost 50% of English language students scored advanced or proficient. This great achievement was not acknowledged! Two sub-groups did not meet AYP so MVM continued being labeled a failing school. The scores of English language learners and students with disabilities, kept MVM from achieving AYP success. Amongst English language learners only 31.8% achieved scores of proficient or advanced in English and amongst disabled students only 31.6% scored proficient or advanced in math. Both failing categories showed a huge improvement from the 2002 levels of 0% proficient or advanced in either category, but that was not good enough.

In an open letter from “Concerned and Offended Staff” to Principal Winters it stated, “Please remember that it was not the teachers at this school who have dismantled the great programs that our parents are missing. It was not the teachers who have dismantled the award winning ASAP program and raided its grant money for general use, this was done by school and district administrators.  It was not the teachers who dismantled the NOVA team of which parents spoke so highly, this was done by school site administrators. It was not teachers who ended the award winning music program that Fred Lee built and is remembered so fondly by parents and students.”(3) The music program was truly magnificent. The jazz band was consistently judged as best middle school jazz band in California. The ASAP program was a daily 3:30 PM until 6:30 PM after school program that provided tutoring and club activities. Maria Catalina, who is a NASA affiliated science teacher, had an astronomy club. Guadalupe Trejo a motivated and talented bilingual science teacher had a robotics club and Justin Ezell sponsored the Huck Fin club. The highly talented Gugenia Gurrola was working with language learners on mathematics and of course Cathy Stutzman had the most amazing tutoring sessions I have ever seen going on in her math classroom. The NOVA team was an honors program that offered enrichment for higher performing students. Unfortunately, the economic downturn of 2008 and administrative decisions led to defunding these popular and successful MVM initiatives. When the state loosened restrictions on where money could be spent, the district defunded these programs and shifted the funds to other schools to help them achieve AYP success.

Today, music teacher Fred Lee, who was pressured into leaving MVM if he wanted to continue teaching music, still works for the district in an upper-class neighborhood weaving his magic at Rancho Del Rey Middle School. In 2006-2007, MVM received a Golden Bell for its outstanding reading program which promoted recreational reading at home by providing reading strategies to both students and their parents. (4) The San Diego Union reports, “The Golden Bell Awards, now in their 33rd year, promote excellence in education in 18 categories. The awards single out programs — developed by California teachers and administrators — for innovation, sustainability, making a difference for all students, and a commitment to meeting the needs of all students.” (5) At one time, programs like this along with Mr. Lee’s music program and the NOVA team enticed many parents to send their students to MVM even though the school was labeled a failure by first the Bush administration and then the Obama administration.

In general, schools in poor neighborhoods are set up for failure under NCLB. Schools in poor neighborhoods with large percentages of language learners and disabled students have no chance to succeed. MVM was facing a demographic impossibility.

Year      Percent Disabled       Percent ELL (a)   Percent SE (b)    Percent Hispanic

2002-2003          11%                        28%                    64%                       62%

2006-2007          12%                        30%                    64%                       69%

2011-2012            13%                        44%                    76%                       75%

a-English language learners     b- Social and economically deprived (6)

It is important to note that about two-thirds of the disabled student and language learners are also socio-economically deprived. AYP accountability rules mandate that a student is not just in one category but their scores normally count in multiple categories. A failure in any one category means failing AYP. At MVM, Socio-economically deprived students are about three-fourths of both the disabled and language learners’ categories. In all, MVM had to pass 25 AYP specified categories but just two categories were the root of the failing scores for 10 years. The NCLB rules of disaggregation were originally written to protect minority students from being hidden within the statistics, but ironically those rules became a major vehicle by which poor communities have their schools closed or appropriated by private entities.

The category of language learners is particularly insidious for MVM. In neighboring Tijuana, it is common for students who have been kicked out of school to move in with a relative in San Diego to attend school. Often, these are particularly difficult children who do not perform well. Schools are also punished for doing their job too well. If a student develops strong language skills, they are reclassified and no longer counted amongst the language learners’ category. It is a genuine “Catch-22.” MVM was facing a triple whammy, high poverty rates, a high percentage of disabled students and almost half of the students were language learners. Still this school was producing high levels of achievement. Three students from MVM’s era of “failure” have won Gates Millennium scholarships; several have gone on to The US Naval Academy and many others are attending top ranked schools throughout the US including the Ivy League. Only hubris and pecuniary desire explains not protecting and cultivating this venerable institution.

In the year I was at MVM, I got to know Cathy Stutzman among others. I remember being stunned when I walked into her classroom and saw two overhead projectors going and Cathy moving between them continuing to push the tempo and teach Algebra. Moreover, every student in the room was totally engaged trying to keep up with this high energy educator. I asked Cathy, how MVM was able to achieve such amazing test results in the 2011 Algebra CST testing. Two years prior to that, I had asked another math teacher at MVM, Randolph Arciniega, who I admired and looked to as a teacher mentor, “what is new at MVM?” He briefly described how they were following Cathy’s lead because she was showing some amazing results. Cathy said she perceived that students at MVM were behind when they came to the school and also needed more introductions with Algebra concepts in seventh grade to succeed in Algebra testing the following year. She felt the lessons needed some spiraling. Cathy convinced the administration to let her loop classes and teach all seventh grade classes one year and then move with them to eighth grade in the subsequent year. She also persuaded the principal to let her add several algebra concepts to the seventh grade curriculum. By 2009, all of the math teachers at MVM were looping and teaching Cathy’s modified curriculum in seventh grade.

The amazing 2011 results occurred in the last year that MVM looped math classes. The new principal, Thomas J. Winters, who was a brand new principal as were his predecessors at MVM, stopped the looping curriculum. That decision led to a significant drop in test scores. Maybe this is some of what the “Concerned and Offended Staff” were alluding to when they wrote, “You have stated in the past that there is “no bad data” but you have proved yourself wrong by providing the DSLT [District Site Leadership Team] with only partial and biased data regarding the efforts and accomplishments of the staff of Mar Vista Middle School. We have heard from teachers who were part of the DSLT who have stated that you purposely guided the DSLT to the conclusion that it is the teachers that are keeping Mar Vista Middle School from succeeding while ignoring other important factors.” (7)

Bush’s NCLB and Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) both stress test based accountability which has lead to jejune pedagogy. The best charter schools practice problem and project based education principles which were widely spread in public schools before these two pernicious laws were enacted. The federal government has taken more and more control of schools away from local communities and instituted rules that undermine public education. In our discussion, Cathy told me, “I felt we were fighting for survival and that testing was all that mattered. I could no longer employ project based methods. I had to focus on scoring well on tests.” Near the turn of the millennium, Cathy was able through a grant to purchase a class set of graphing calculators which besides the typical uses she also employed in a mathematics art project. The students had to create a piece of art by transferring graphs of ten different functions onto paper. When the art pieces were completed they were mounted and displayed in the school’s cafeteria. She relates the story of how one of her poorer students – almost all D’s and F’s – made a really colorful and beautiful graphing creation. When Cathy looked at it she praised the student but told her that “unfortunately it is not complete because you did not list the functions on the back.” The girl said, “That’s alright – I remember them.” The girl immediately sat down and listed all ten functions perfectly from memory. Federal accountability rules now effectively ban public schools from offering this kind of engaging pedagogy.

I believe Principal Winters came to MVM intending to succeed at his first assignment as a principal. Still, it does seem eerie how perfectly the demise of MVM fits the profile of schools being closed or taken over across the nation. It is in a poor community with a large minority population and the level of professionalism amongst the teaching staff is high. In fact, under the reporting mandates of NCLB, Principal Winters reported that 100% of the teaching staff at MVM is rated as highly qualified – meaning they all have a college degree in the field that they teach, plus they each have more than a year of teacher education training. As recently as January 24, 2013 Principal Winters officially reported, “Students at Mar Vista Middle School and in the Sweetwater Union High School District are expected to master state and district standards which will prepare them to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Mar Vista Middle School provides a safe and secure learning environment that contributes to students’ academic success.” (8) Either the latest school accountability report card is misleading or the reasons for closing MVM are fabrications. MVM is a great school with a great staff, but like schools in poor and minority neighborhoods across the country the parents have modest political capital. Schools like MVM are vulnerable to modern “Carpetbaggers.” I believe that is the true reason underlying the unwarranted demise of MVM and hundreds or possibly thousands of MVM’s across this country.

(1) http://boarddocs.suhsd.k12.ca.us/Board.nsf/Public – 3/11/2012 – Superintendents Agenda Item 6.

(2) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-15/schools-federal-standards/51949126/1

(3) Unpublished letter to Principal Winters, February 2013

(4) MVM School Accountability Report Card 2009 http://research-evaluation.sweetwaterschools.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/84/files/2012/10/SARC2009_MVM_Short.pdf

(5) http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/dec/03/seven-local-districts-among-golden-bell-award/

(6) MVM School Accountability Report Card 2009 http://research-evaluation.sweetwaterschools.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/84/files/2012/10/SARC2009_MVM_Short.pdf

(7) Unpublished letter to Principal Winters, February 2013

(8) http://research-evaluation.sweetwaterschools.org/sarcs/ – 2012-2013 SARC Mar Vista Middle School.

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