The woman who told the story is the USDOE employee who granted Secy. Lowery’s request for a waiver to align SIG rules with RTTT rules so she could have unilateral and complete control in the event of Union-District stalemates over how to “improve” schools with one of 4 turnaround models…..

Her name is Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana and she is a featured alumna……click here.

Story: HERE.

At a gathering of teachers in an Oregon school district last week, a high-level official told a story that might sound familiar.

It’s about Teddy Stoddard, the boy who got off to a bad start in Miss Thompson’s fifth-grade class with his dirty clothes and listless academic performance.

At Christmas, he brought his teacher a rhinestone bracelet with missing stones and a half-used bottle of cheap perfume wrapped in a grocery bag. They had belonged to his dead mother.

Horrified that she misjudged the boy, Miss Thompson stayed with Teddy after school every day

until he caught up. Over the years, he kept his teacher informed of his progress with three letters. In the final one, Teddy is a doctor and asks Miss Thompson to take his mother’s place at his upcoming wedding.

Teachers in Eugene, Ore., sniffled and gave a standing ovation to Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana, the assistant to the U.S. secretary of education, when she finished the story.

But former Virginia Beach resident Elizabeth Ungar wrote “Three Letters from Teddy” nearly 40 years ago about a boy she called Teddy Stallard.

Reached last week at her new home in Rockingham, N.C., she was dismayed to hear it’s still being passed off as truth. “I think it’s absolutely wrong to do that.”

Ungar wrote the story under her first married name, Elizabeth Silance Ballard. It was first published in 1974 by HomeLife magazine, a Baptist family publication. She said she gets requests to republish it every year, and it has been in several “Chicken Soup” compilations.

Many of the details, including the homemade wrapping paper and Teddy’s wedding date, were taken from her own life. She remembers vividly her humiliation at giving a home-grown present to a teacher as a child in North Carolina, she said. The broken bracelet and perfume were a tidbit from a teacher friend who had gotten such a gift from a child in the class where she was a long-term substitute.

Ungar, 67, lived in Chesapeake and Virginia Beach from 1989 to 2005, working as a bank manager, earning a degree at Old Dominion University and working as a social worker in Norfolk.

Over the years, many people have told her they identify with the child.

“So many times, childhood is a living hell. When you know how it feels, it hits you.”

One of Melendez’s aides said Melendez was “saddened to learn it’s not a true story. There are so many teachers who are making such an impact that many of us know.”

Lois Weiner: Race to the Top WILL lead to increased stratification (i.e. more inescapable poverty…….) This interview is a MUST WATCH…..another DOE special…..

More RTTT funnies from Delaware

School reform’s meager results

Monday, September 6, 2010

As 56 million children return to the nation’s 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, the promise of “reform” is again in the air. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced $4 billion in “Race to the Top” grants to states whose proposals demonstrate, according to Duncan, “a bold commitment to education reform” and “creativity and innovation [that are] breathtaking.” What they really show is that few subjects inspire more intellectual dishonesty and political puffery than “school reform.”

Since the 1960s, waves of “reform” haven’t produced meaningful achievement gains. The most reliable tests are given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reading and math tests, graded on a 0-500 scale, measure 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds and 17-year-olds. In 1971, the initial year for the reading test, the average score for 17-year-olds was 285; in 2008, the average score was 286. The math test started in 1973, when 17-year-olds averaged 304; in 2008, the average was 306.

To be sure, some improvements have occurred in elementary schools. But what good are they if they’re erased by high school? There has also been a modest narrowing in the high school achievement gaps among whites, blacks and Hispanics; unfortunately, the narrowing generally stopped in the late 1980s. (Average test scores have remained stable because, although the scores of blacks and Hispanics have risen slightly, the size of these minority groups also expanded. This means that their still-low scores exert a bigger drag on the average. The two factors offset each other.)

Standard theories don’t explain this meager progress. Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the student population increased 8 percent and the number of teachers rose 61 percent. The student-teacher ratio has fallen sharply, from 27-to-1 in 1955 to 15-to-1 in 2007. Are teachers paid too little? Perhaps, but that’s not obvious. In 2008, the average teacher earned $53,230; two full-time teachers married to each other and making average pay would belong in the richest 20 percent of households (2008 qualifying income: $100,240). Maybe more preschool would help. Yet, the share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool has rocketed from 11 percent in 1965 to 53 percent in 2008.

“Reforms” have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) “scalable” — easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains. Efforts in New York and the District to raise educational standards involve contentious and precarious school-by-school campaigns to purge “ineffective” teachers and principals. Charter schools might break this pattern, though there are grounds for skepticism. In 2009, the 4,700 charter schools enrolled about 3 percent of students and did not uniformly show achievement gains.

The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail.

Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a “good” college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school “reform” is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers. The reality is that, as high schools have become more inclusive (in 1950, 40 percent of 17-year-olds had dropped out, compared with about 25 percent today) and adolescent culture has strengthened, the authority of teachers and schools has eroded. That applies more to high schools than to elementary schools, helping explain why early achievement gains evaporate.

Motivation is weak because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard and don’t do well. In a 2008 survey of public high school teachers, 21 percent judged student absenteeism a serious problem; 29 percent cited “student apathy.” The goal of expanding “access” — giving more students more years of schooling — tends to lower educational standards. Michael Kirst, an emeritus education professor at Stanford, estimates that 60 percent of incoming community college students and 30 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges need remedial reading and math courses.

Against these realities, school “reform” rhetoric is blissfully evasive. It is often an exercise in extravagant expectations. Even if George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program had been phenomenally successful (it wasn’t), many thousands of children would have been left behind. Now Duncan routinely urges “a great teacher” in every classroom. That would be about 3.7 million “great” teachers — a feat akin to having every college football team composed of all-Americans. With this sort of intellectual rigor, what school “reform” promises is more disillusion.

Buzz up!

Blended Learning Changes Minds, Widens Perspectives

by Douglas CretsSeptember 3, 2010

If you have been paying attention to the rise in frequency of stories about blended learning, then you are at least caught up in the knowledge that it is the next iteration of education in this country.

For your Labor Day Weekend sampler of blended learning changes happening in the US education system, here are a few stories worth keeping an eye on:

Grand Rapids is advancing at a somewhat slower pace than originally planned, due to unnecessary push back over launching blended learning programs in several subjects. Grand Rapids will now launch only two subject areas delivered in a blended model, math and social studies, and only, it appears, in the middle school years.

Knee jerk reactions against blended learning don’t take into consideration that it actually improves the student to teacher ratio for all classes in which it is deployed.

City Polytechnic students will be able to start taking college-level classes during their third year, followed by attending classes in person at the College of Technology. This approach is the first of its kind, allowing students to take professional studies like construction management and IT, and will no doubt promote higher graduation rates, a simpler assimilation to college and a higher rate of college attendance and graduation.

And a school in Colorado was actually able to grow, and take in more students who are looking for opportunities in different subject areas. One of the drawbacks of the budget crisis is that much needed and much called for subjects like AP and other advanced courses are taken out of the pipeline. they are too expensive, and they just stay out of reach of the kids who might want them. But Ralston Valley High School is taking the blended learning approach, and parents are happy. So are the students.

Here’s a video about the change:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid34762914001?bctid=602787551001

What do you think of this for Christina?

We are truly presiding over the most precipitous decline in American Education since its inception. All being perpetrated by ill-informed policy wonks..

This is an attempt to wake us up!

Race to Nowhere Trailer

Delaware Ed Secretary Lillian Lowery talks about the secrets of winning Race to the Top

Fascinating take on Education…..

From a new report: HERE.

A review of the technical evidence leads us to conclude that, although standardized test scores of students are one piece of information for school leaders to use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation. Some states are now considering plans that would give as much as 50% of the weight in teacher evaluation and compensation decisions to scores on existing tests of basic skills in math and reading. Based on the evidence, we consider this unwise. Any sound evaluation will necessarily involve a balancing of many factors that provide a more accurate view of what teachers in fact do in the classroom and how that contributes to student learning.

Salty Language alert….

Selective Data Analysis

I’ve seen so much pole dancing on the Los Angeles Times’ article regarding public information on teachers that it is starting to become nauseating.  The latest op-ed that I read came from the San Jose Mercury News, which wonders “what there is to hide” from teachers opposed to the article, and feels that the information “helps broaden our understanding of what ails public schools”.  

I’m wondering when San Jose Mercury News is going to actually go find all the statistics that go into what “ails public education”.  So does the Merc have the balls to go to San Jose Unified and ask for the attendance figures for each and every student?  Seriously.  If we are going to really go after the major problems within education, grow a pair and make a public demand for the names of the students and parents with piss poor attendance.  Compare the attendance figures with the test scores of the students and make those scores public.  As the article said, “disclosure may be painful”, but hey, a little humility to solve educations ongoing ills might be just what the doctor ordered.  Right?  In fact, how about we release all the student grades publically so we can actually show how serious we are about education.  That way, brilliant “policy-makers” can see that when a Second Language Learner is failing English, Math, Social Studies, and P.E., and is not showing up for school, it is probably still the teacher’s fault. 

Then I would like the demographics of each and every classroom made public too, because that Advanced Computer Graphics teacher in Tiburon should be judged on the exact same level as the Special Needs teacher in downtown Oakland.  Oh wait, my wife taught Special Needs kids for years in a Special Day classroom.  Almost no kids passed the standardized tests, but she actually got emotionally disturbed kids to take the test, work hard on the test, and more importantly, become functioning members of society.  But the value added data says that she’s fucked.   I’m safe though because I can get Advanced Placement students to kick the shit out of standardized tests.  I mean, my data is so damn good that the next step for me is sainthood in the cathedral of St. Angeles, the patron saint of ass-kissing society for subscriptions. 

No one is yet brave enough to reveal the real statistics though because that would actually mean self-criticism.  It would mean that accountability for kids would first rest with the parents before it rests with anyone else.  It would mean that all parties; teachers, administrators, policy-makers, parents, and students would be expected to educate society at a higher level. 

And it would mean that newspaper reporters would actually do research on societal problems because they would be more educated to do so, instead of whoring to populist crap.  

It’s the Poverty, Stupid

The education reform debate is misdirected.

By Roger Bybee

With America’s public schools struggling to survive slashed budgets and unequal funding, school reform is back on the national agenda—but will the new model of market-based “reform” promote greater educational quality?

Already, schools in low-income areas see abysmally low achievement levels. In many cities, less than half of students graduate from high school.

To combat the crisis of low achievement, the Obama administration, led by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, cobbled together a group of political and corporate powerbrokers, including Bill Gates, to spearhead education reform. Their efforts have been vigorously applauded by major media from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Newsweek.

In her recent book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermine Education, Diane Ravitch, education historian and former assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, takes the education reform establishment to task.

Ravitch blasts what she calls the “Billionaire Boys Club” vision of public education. “Three foundations—Gates, Broad and Walton—are now committed to charter schools and to evaluating teachers by test scores,” she told Democracy Now in March. And that’s now the policy of the Department of Education. “We have never seen anything like this, where foundations had the ambition to direct national educational policy, and in fact are succeeding,” says Ravitch.

The close attention, even obsession, with teacher performance distracts from socio-economic obstacles to education.

“The focus on demonizing teachers in the media means that then you don’t talk about poverty,” says Bill Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois in Chicago and a member of the In These Times Board of Editors. Because of the way U.S. schools are funded (mainly through property taxes), wealth disparities directly impact school districts. For example, some Chicago-area suburbs spend about $30,000 a year to educate each child, while inner-city Chicago schools spend about $4,000 per pupil.

Poverty and unemployment contribute to a high rate of transience among students, as their families move from apartment to apartment in search of lower rents or better living arrangements.

Poverty doesn’t affect just attendance. Milwaukee children suffer from one of the highest rates of childhood lead poisoning, which can cause learning disabilities and severe behavioral problems. In one African-American neighborhood, 67 percent of the children age six or under had elevated lead levels. In a primarily Latino area, the rate was 43 percent. On top of that, in the last 30 years Milwaukee has lost 80 percent of its industrial base and nine of its 10 hospitals. In 2006, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, “An African-American infant in Milwaukee is at a greater risk of dying in his or her first year than an infant in Malaysia, Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica or Chile.”

Broad and fundamental institutional failures, which directly hinder student achievement, are rarely implicated in the “failure” of public education. Instead, elite reformers highlight anecdotes about incompetent or abusive teachers. The result is a vilification of teachers and teacher unionism.

Bob Peterson, a former “Wisconsin Teacher of the Year” and a founder of the progressive education journal Rethinking Schools, says Obama and Duncan are heightening antagonism toward the public sector. “They’re pushing a general distrust of the public sector. Instead of trying to improve [it], they are abandoning it,” Peterson says. “Duncan and Obama would deny it, but that’s what’s happening.”

To win the battle of public opinion, and the larger battle for education reform, teacher unions and advocates of egalitarian public education must frame the issue in a way that puts educational achievement—or the lack thereof—in its proper context. They must make clear that until society redistributes resources fairly, many schools will continue to fail, and with them, the nation’s schoolchildren.

Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures

Welcome to September!!!

Earth, Wind & Fire – September (Video clip)

FYI here is a legend:

Code Red is Race to the Top.

Jack Markell is Nicholson.

Kilroy is Tom Cruise.

Pvt. Santiago is Local control.

LOL.