Yes, the Cracks are Showing in Ed Reform

 Update:  on Assessments, exhibit one, from CBS in Albany.  A teacher came to the hospital where a student is undergoing pre-brain surgery screening.  He has epilepsy and they have to withdraw his meds in order to cause a seizure to see what is happening in his brain.  Did she come to give him her best?  Nope.

She was from the district there to administer the 4th grade NY State test to the boy.  The parents say they had made arrangements for him to make it up.  The district claims it didn't share any info about the student's absence with NYS Ed Department or the hospital.  

Enough.

End of update.

“Thursday morning a woman walked into his room with a piece of paper that had his name on it and told my husband that she was a teacher from the New York City School District and that she was there to administer the 4th grade New York State test to my son,” Furlong tells CBS6. The family was shocked. They had already made arrangements with the Bethlehem School District for Joey to make up the exam if he was back in time, so someone asking him to take it from a hospital bed, never even crossed any of their minds.

Read More at: http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/the-real-deal-4th-grader-asked-take-nys-test-hospital-bed-7933.shtml

Thursday morning a woman walked into his room with a piece of paper that had his name on it and told my husband that she was a teacher from the New York City School District and that she was there to administer the 4th grade New York State test to my son,” Furlong tells CBS6. The family was shocked. They had already made arrangements with the Bethlehem School District for Joey to make up the exam if he was back in time, so someone asking him to take it from a hospital bed, never even crossed any of their minds. A spokesman from Bethlehem Schools says the first the district heard about Joey being asked to take the test in the hospital was when they got a call from the Furlongs after they had been visited by the teacher. The district tells CBS6 it did not share any information about Joey’s absence with the NYS Education Department or the hospital. A spokesman from Cohen Children’s Medical Center says under NYS law, the hospital must offer school instruction to any child who spends more than three days in the hospital and that includes standardized testing. The Medical Center has five full-time New York City School Teachers on staff who get age and grade information from patient records and offer their services to families.

Read More at: http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/the-real-deal-4th-grader-asked-take-nys-test-hospital-bed-7933.shtml

“Thursday morning a woman walked into his room with a piece of paper that had his name on it and told my husband that she was a teacher from the New York City School District and that she was there to administer the 4th grade New York State test to my son,” Furlong tells CBS6. The family was shocked. They had already made arrangements with the Bethlehem School District for Joey to make up the exam if he was back in time, so someone asking him to take it from a hospital bed, never even crossed any of their minds.

Read More at: http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/the-real-deal-4th-grader-asked-take-nys-test-hospital-bed-7933.sht

I have my own threads to write on the large and visible cracks in ed reform that are showing.  But in brief:

• TFA?  There is now a group of ex-TFA that have organized to get TFA to go away.  It's not just a few people, it's now a whole group.
• Common Core?  There's another big story of states starting to back away.  One reason is something I have said would come and that's the day that conservatives realize that local control goes out the window with Common Core.  (Not saying if that is right or wrong but most conservatives would not go for it.) 
• FERPA?  Along with Common Core are the the concerns over student privacy.  Will any student in K-12 today be protected from their information going out to any company/group a district deems necessary?  Where is that line?  
• Assessments?  A huge story and one that gets bigger every day.  A teacher going to visit a student in the hospital (the kid is in because of a possible brain tumor) and guess what the teacher brings?  The state test.  These moms in Texas outsmarting a Texas legislator over the 15(!) end-of-course tests that Texas gives (and their scores would count for 15% of any class score).  From the Austin Statesman:  “Who allowed these big boys to go and play in education? Now the moms have to clean it up, as usual,” said Theresa Treviño, a child psychiatrist and Austin mother who helped launch the parent group, Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessments.
•  Michelle Rhee?  In a couple a years, it will be Michelle Who?  Her latest? Her StudentsFirst group says the "Reformer of the Year" is an anti-gay lawmaker in Tennessee.  This comes from Salon.   StudentsFirst claims they had no idea.  That seems to be Rhee's party line for anything that smacks of accountability on her part.  Salon also points out that StudentsFrist has endorsed mostly conservative, anti-immigrant, anti-union and anti-LGBT candidates. 

For now, read this compelling piece from The Atlantic by John Tierney called The Coming Revolution in Public Education.   It's important reading.

Critics of the contemporary reform regime argue that these initiatives, though seemingly sensible in their original framing, are motivated by interests other than educational improvement and are causing genuine harm to American students and public schools. 


Here are some of the criticisms: 

• the reforms have self-interest and profit motives, not educational improvement, as their basis; 
• corporate interests are reaping huge benefits from these reform  initiatives and spending millions of dollars lobbying to keep those benefits flowing; 
• three big foundations (Gates, Broad, and Walton Family) are funding much of the backing for the corporate reforms and are spending billions to market and sell reforms that don't work; 
• ancillary goals of these reforms are to bust teacher unions,disempower educators, and reduce spending on public schools;  
• standardized testing is enormously expensive in terms both of public expenditures and the diversion of instruction time to test prep; 
• over a third of charter schools deliver"significantly worse" results for students than the traditional public schools from which they were diverted; and, finally, 
• that these reforms have produced few benefits and have actually caused harm, especially to kids in disadvantaged areas and communities of color. (On that last overall point, see this scathing new report from the Economic Policy Institute.)