The past few weeks I’ve heard on numerous occasions about the teachers unions ‘opposition’ to Common Core as if it’s just an obvious fact. I’m not sure where this is coming from, but overall they’re not opposed, they’re on board with the new standards and in some places/ways trying to help on the implementation – which is a huge challenge and if done haphazardly is going to turn a lot of teachers against the standards. Plenty of issues to iron out down the road around accountability, innovation and technology and so forth but the standards themselves are not a flashpoint with them.
The cheating on the Praxis test that is now bursting into the news cycle is not the scandal here, people cheat on a lot of tests. The real scandal is the low-level of the Praxis test and why it continues to be used at all. The Praxis II is different, but the basic Praxis is much too low a bar given what we expect of teachers.
New CREDO analysis of charter school performance in New Jersey (pdf) is significant for three reasons. First, like Massachusetts, New York City, and other places where charters outperform it’s a reminder that different places are having different experiences with charters and a lot of that can be traced to public policy choices. The overall national data is not that useful given the diversity. Second the urban results are noteworthy in the New Jersey political context. Finally, charters are now expanding in New Jersey, worth watching to see if the state can balance growth and quality as it expands the sector.
Please respond to this Education Realist post! He makes very serious arguments! Thank you!
http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/more-on-mumford/
As always, Mr. rotherham misses the data on Newark charter schools.
Proper analysis can be found here:
http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/the-secrets-to-charter-school-success-in-newark-comments-on-the-nj-credo-report/
I am reading George Eliot’s “Middlemarch.” In it, the character Rosamund tells her physician husband that she is not fond of his profession and wishes he would do something else. He is very hurt and responds that it is the greatest profession, even though he is very aware that it is not considered a “proper” career for a “gentleman” of the early nineteenth century. And so we are reminded that this now revered profession was once looked down upon by the upper classes, just as K-12 teaching is now.
And that brings me to the real scandal in regard to the Praxis. In our country teaching elementary or secondary school is not a career that is deemed acceptable for our privileged citizens, the ones who get the highest scores on the SAT and all other standardized tests, which correlate highly with the student’s socioeconomic status. In the United States, (and strangely in other English-speaking countries) teaching school has low status unless a person does it for two or three years before embarking on a “real” job.
Because of this situation, it is extremely difficult to find enough teachers during good economic times. For many years urban districts scrambled to “cover” classrooms in September and many had to hire long-term subs for the entire semester or year. It was widely known that “anyone” could get a job in some of these tough schools and so the candidate just needed a heartbeat and a degree. And many did not score well on tests. I know because I was one of those people. Believe me when I say no one cared what I knew or what my students learned; the only thing that mattered was dependability. I did have to show up each day and be on time.
And now we are insulting those people who took the jobs (Oh, goodness, those working class dummies from State U. can’t even pass that simple Praxis!). Is this supposed to attract a better teaching force? I don’t think so.
Some of you truly do wish to improve achievement for low-income students. If so, honor the teachers that we have now while advocating for higher standards for all teachers. Until our country values the teaching of children, don’t expect to see much improvement. As with the physician in Middlemarch, only the most dedicated people opt for a career in teaching, especially in today’s environment. Show these people gratitude and hopefully they’ll encourage their high-scoring students, friends and relatives to join the most noble of all professions.
The absolute worst thing anyone can do for American education is to denigrate the people who provide it. Please consider this before you suggest how “dumb” our teachers are.
More on the CREDO joke:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/11/nj-charter-report-does-not-compare-peer.html
This is very important to understand as this is the operational methods of Mr. Rotherham and his comrades in the Professional Education Reform Movement.
Another example is here:
http://edushyster.com/?p=1263#more-1263
Mary McCarthy famously said of Lillian Hellman- “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”
And the same can be same of the educational reformers.
Linda,
No one said anything like that. And in practice, more than 4 in 5 takers pass the Praxis I, which an Education Trust analysis described like this:
“Praxis I addresses only reading, writing and mathematics. None of these sections exceeded high school level, and at least two-thirds of the mathematics items were judged to be middle school. An analysis comparing the distribution of Praxis I math items to the 1996 National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) for mathematics (see chart below) seems to indicate that NAEP emphasizes a better balance of mathematics, even at the eighth grade level, than does Praxis I.”
In an environment where in some states students are denied regular diplomas, or diplomas at all, if they can’t pass an exit exam, standards like that are troubling (and at odds with how higher performing nations approach the issue).
More generally, the U.S. does not actually have a teacher shortage outside of certain subjects (spec ed, science, languages, for instance, and certain geographies) and produces more teachers in certain subjects than schools need. Still, one could argue standards like the one described above contribute to to making teaching an unattractive career option for some professionals.
I did not say we have a teacher shortage at this time. Obviously we do not. What I said is that during good economic times we often had a teaching shortage, especially in urban districts. I believe another shortage is on the horizon, especially when the baby boomers are all retired and the economy improves. There are no more captive women waiting in the wings to take these jobs.
What I am saying is the biggest barrier to teacher quality is likely to be the disregard many people in our society have the schoolteachers. This blog seems to celebrate every loss for teachers and every stain on their reputations. This can only hurt the profession and the children it serves. For each entry you might ask yourself, “Will my words help to make teaching a more attractive career or will they reinforce the low opinion some citizens already have for our teachers?”
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