Do CCSSI and RTTT Mandates Ensure Educational Exellence..or is it Something Else that the Government Hasn't Yet Mandated?

Are government mandates the answers to educational success?

"Boys Hope Girls Hope" is a program in St. Louis and other cities designed to help at risk students.  The St. Louis Post Dispatch recently ran an article explaining how the privately funded program works and the enormous commitment needed from the students and families so students succeed in school.

What I didn't read in the article that made kids successful were the following talking points from the Obama administration on how education needs to be reformed:

• The need for global competitiveness
• Common Core standards
• Race to the Top funding
• The need to be tracked into the workforce via Longitudinal Data Systems
• The need for charter schools
• The need to track teachers via assessment scoring to determine if they are effective

According to the article, what helped make these students successful in school were:

• Structured daily life
• Two hours of study each night
• Dinner at a family type setting
• Weekly chores
• A designated bed time
• No tolerance for disrespect
• Mentors providing academic support, tutoring, and serving as role model
• Every student is required to attend some kind of worship service weekly and prayer is said before dinner

The article states the program moves students into an environment that encourages development, promotes scholarly ways.  Some those in the organization also believe an active faith life is essential to healthy personal development. 

Are these the magic keys for education reform?  Students learn to take control of their own development on educational and emotional levels.  If so, do any of the current educational reforms mandated by the government incorporate these successful methods by "Boys Hope Girls Hope"?  Or are they reforms designed to track children for the workforce and create jobs for private corporations funded by taxpayers that are then unaccountable to the taxpayers?

From Havens for learning help keep St. Louis children on road to college:

Last year, the Boys Hope Girls Hope organization was named by the Educational Policy Institute as one of 10 exemplary programs in the U.S. that prepare students for college.

In Boys Hope Girls Hope, all of the more than 3,000 students in the last 20 years who stuck with the program have graduated from high school, and 79 percent of those students have either completed their college degrees or are on course to do so.

The success comes from what the organization calls "arms around care." The organization picks up the tab for food, clothing, transportation and any other needs of the students, including college. Costs per student can go as high as $50,000.

How can the government create a nurturing and structured environment for students?  Is this what a private group can accomplish that the bureaucracy cannot?  Local, state and federal governments are systems.  Systems are designed for efficiency (since when is a government system efficient?) and are not designed for personal needs.  What these students in the STL Post Dispatch article were missing were people in their lives unable to attend to the students' financial and/or emotional needs.  College money may be available due to a federal program in the future, but if the student is not prepared emotionally and educationally, college entrance is meaningless if the student is unable to perform well.

If a nurturing and structured environment is important in student success, how can the government mandate loving, caring, stable, and attentive parents and/or other adults to tend to their children?  Do any of the current reforms allude to the important aspect parents and other caring adults play in their childrens' lives?   Can governments mandate parents or other adults care and become responsible for their children? 

The title of the Dispatch article, Havens for Learning, says it all.  Much of what creates student opportunity for educational excellence is to provide a haven for children which traditionally has been a family's responsibility.  That's what's missing from these billion programs, isn't it?

If you agree the Boys Hope Girls Hope is a valid recipe for educational success and you believe it is government's job to educate children, then the government's only logical choice is to use this recipe to ensure educational success for failing students.  Otherwise, if CCSSI and RTTT are the government's idea for educational success, without the parental/adult support, they will be useless and expensive mandates doomed to fail. 

Look Who Else Is Concerned About Data Collection and Privacy

We have been warning parents about the potential for their child's personal data to be widely shared across government agencies and with private interests who claim some link to education. Now teachers are beginning to realize that they will be part of the data collection process and their entire teaching careers will be tracked, assessed, and possibly publicized.

Anthony Cody at EducationWeek Teacher posted a great piece a couple months ago summing up the concerns with the longitudinal data systems.

What will it mean for every one of the nation's 50 million students to have a unique ID number, and be included in a national database that tracks every test they ever take? And teachers will get ID numbers as well, so the database can track the test performance of our students over our entire careers...

The core of the technocrats' push to reshape education is the all-powerful DATA that they believe ought to be driving all of our decisions...

The Gates Foundation has been funding an organization called the Data Quality Campaign, which operates to pressure states to develop "longitudinal data systems" to track student and teacher test performance in fine detail over time. In much the same way the NCTQ is in the process of rating schools of education across the country, and the Media Bullpen is acting as self-appointed "umpires" to "hold the media accountable," the DQC has developed a system to give "grades" to states for their educational data systems. To get their seal of approval, state data systems must have the following ten features:

1. A unique statewide student identifier that connects student data across key databases across years.
2. Information about each student's demographics and participation in programs like Free and Reduced lunch.
3. The ability to match individual students' test records from year to year to measure academic growth.
4. Information on untested students and the reasons they were not tested
5. Statewide Teacher Identifier with a Teacher-Student Match. This enables the use of VAM systems, and also the comparison of teachers from different teacher preparation programs.
6. Student-level transcript information, including information on courses completed and grades earned.
7. Student-level college readiness test scores
8. Student-level graduation and dropout data
9. The ability to match student records between the P-12 and higher education systems
10. A state data audit system assessing data quality, validity and reliability

As usual, Arne Duncan's Department of Education is in lockstep with these ideas. They have made the expansion of data systems a central feature of Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers. States are being asked to develop systems very much along the lines laid out by the Data Quality Council, and the DQC's recent summit in Washington featured Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee - that expert on quality data -- as speakers..

It seems as if we will then have, in effect, a nationwide data system with detailed information about every single person enrolled in a public school. (emphasis added)

If the data collected were only used in accordance with its true value, we might not have such a reason for concern. But as we are seeing with the VAM fiasco in New York, where dedicated teachers are being pilloried in the press because of a flawed system.

Mr. Cody correctly points out in his piece that once the collection system itself is put in place, even its designers lose control of the data within. And with DoEd's new broad distribution powers there can be no serious guarantee of the data's protection.

Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation received $7.65 million in seed money from The Gates Foundation to support the creation of a special LLC, which will then funnel $44 million to Wireless Generation to create a national student and teacher database.  Why invest so heavily in a system that currently has no access to district data? Because all the requirements of RTTT will force districts into providing this data. Once Wireless Generation has it, they can "crunch" it and sell it back to districts which is a nice revenue stream. Once the national standards and uniform assessments have been forced into every district, it will make manipulation, oops sorry, analysis of this data much much easier.

Cody writes,

This is the trouble with technology. You can create tools, but often the tools themselves wind up only leading you towards solutions that they can provide. If our data consists of test scores, we seek ways to boost them, even if they only represent a fraction of what truly matters.

It would be one thing if this data was the magical tool its adherents claim. They suggest that low performing districts do best when they "become obsessive over using data to drive instruction." But we have collectively obsessed over data for more than a decade now, thanks to NCLB, and we have very little progress to show for it. 

The national obsession with data seems more like a business development model than a bonafide tactic to improve education. Teachers have been evaluating student progress for more than a century.  The good ones, who have the time because they aren't busy collecting the next sector of data, can work with students who seem not to be getting it. Teaching requires time and care. You have to have the time to teach what you want to pass on the students and you have to care about each of them learning and developing. A business is only concerned with efficiency, data and profit. Why are we trying to apply one model to the other field?

To read more on data collection go to:

The National Education Data Model website, which reveals the incredibly detailed data that the technocrats would like to assemble.

The Department of Education rules designed to protect student privacy. It's good because rules are never broken.

Sunday Education Reform Comic Strip that Isn't Funny...and The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 07.15.12..

Featuring a Sunday comic that isn't funny or "for the kids".

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 07.15.2012.

We are highlighting a cartoon from archcomix.com highlighting education reform issues.  I picked it up from GF Brandenberg's blog:

Instead of attempting to reproduce the entire cartoon here, let me give you the URL so you can look at it.

The art isn't perfect, but it does lay out the issues behind NCLB, RTTT, charter schools, TFA, and so on.

Click here to see it.

It does address most issues but omits probably the worst "reform" to come out of these plans: the longitudinal data system and the tracking of student/family data so that human "capital" can be groomed to supply workforce needs.

For a good basic discussion about most of the reforms, it's a good read and delves beneath the veneer of school "choice" touted by both liberal and conservative politicians.  Whether or not you agree with all the contentions, the comic hopefully will raise awareness of citizens on who is behind the reforms and why.  The reforms go way beyond "it's for the kids".  An educated citizen should understand where his/her taxpayers dollars are being spent, who is controlling those dollars and who is benefiting from those expenditures.  It might surprise you that tax dollars are headed to "public" education controlled by private corporations unaccountable to those same taxpayers funding the educational reforms.

 It goes beyond just the desire for private corporations to make money in charter schools, however.  Think data capture.  That will yield much more money in the long run than charter schools.

You can access the entire comic here.

DOEd - The Master of Loopholes?

The DOEd has just released their draft regulation for the latest round of the Race To The Top grant competition. Many have noted extensively how they no longer seem to care that they are forbidden by law from developing national standards. Duncan and his representatives have repeatedly stated that they are not doing that. Rather, it is state consortia (which DOEd incentivized the creation of through the first RTTT) who are developing standards (which they require states to adopt to receive second round awards in RTTT).  But it is this latest round of RTTT that is by far the biggest power grab by a federal department who was originally only designed to be a clearing house for education information. In it, DOEd seems to have perfected the technique of loophole optimization by taking on things that are so far afield from public education that no one could say they are in opposition to their original mandate to focus on education delivery.

Applicants for this RTTT award will be Local Educational Agencies (LEAs).  DOEd has drilled down below the states directly into your school board through this version of RTTT. Here are some of the requirements for receiving this latest award.

At least forty percent of participating students across all participating schools (as defined in this document) must be students from low-income families, based on eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch subsidies under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, or other poverty measures that LEAs use to make awards under section 1113(a) of the ESEA. 

Clearly this round is meant for a very specific type of school district. Only those districts who are in urban areas or extreme rural communities will meet this qualification. However, high poverty, high needs schools must follow very prescriptive rules based upon federal and state guidelines which limits their ability to innovate. This would seem to fly in the face of the grant competition's goal of inspiring innovation. It does exploit a loophole that then allows the feds to funnel money to urban areas which, coincidentally I guess, tend to vote one way.

The next requirement is where the DOEd seeks direct control of your school board and superintendent.

• Applicants must demonstrate a track record of commitment to the core education assurance areas (as defined in this document), including, for each LEA included in an application, an assurance signed by the LEA's authorized legal representative that--

The LEA has, at a minimum, designed and committed to implement no later than the 2014-15 school year--

1. a teacher evaluation system (as defined in this document);
2. a principal evaluation system (as defined in this document);
3. a LEA superintendent evaluation (as defined in this document); and
4. a LEA school board evaluation (as defined in this document).

An assessment of the LEA school board that both evaluates performance and encourages professional growth. This evaluation system rating should reflect both (1) the feedback of many stakeholders, including but not limited to educators and parents; and (2) student outcomes performance in order to provide a detailed and accurate picture of the board's performance. 

See, now your school board members will be rated and their performance will be tied to student performance. One does not set out to create a rating without the intent to use it as a means to take action. If your district's students continue to perform poorly on the standardized assessments, something may need to be done about your school board members. Your vote for them will be greatly diminished if not negated.

And nothing can come out of DOEd without the requisite requirement to provide DATA.

The LEA has a robust data system that has, at a minimum,--

1. An individual teacher identifier with a teacher-student match; and
2. The ability to match student level P-12 and higher education data.

def. Student Performance Data - information about the academic progress of a single student, such as formative and summative assessment data, coursework, instructor observations, information about student engagement and time on task, and similar information.  

Individual districts, not the state, will now supply this information directly to DOEd. If it has the ability to match teachers to students and track students beyond P-12, it is not sanitized for your protection. While the regulation states that such data have, "regulatory protections in place that ensure Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) compliant privacy and information protection," it still maintains that such data be made accessible and usable by stakeholders. The more broadly this data is disseminated to stakeholders (who are very broadly defined by DOEd) the less control they have over it and the less secure your private information is.

Asking individual school districts to be sophisticated enough to develop the necessary software encryption to protect such information is unrealistic. Most likely they will have to go to a private vendor to purchase an existing software package. Who could be waiting in the wings to provide that little piece of business?

One of the last sections is titled "Competitive Preference Priority--Cradle-to-Career Results, Resource Alignment, and Integrated Services." The federal government has stated openly that their goal (by giving preference priority to applicants who agree to this) is to be involved in your children's lives from cradle to career (HHS takes over the grave part.) At this point does this even look like school anymore?

In this section of the draft regulation, they state they will be looking for:

Whether the applicant has formed a coherent and sustainable partnership with public and private organizations, such as public health, after-school, and social service providers; businesses, philanthropies, civic groups, and other community-based organizations; early learning programs; and post-secondary institutions to support the plan described in Absolute Priority 1. The partnership must identify not more than 10 population-level desired results for students in the LEA or consortium of LEAs, which may span from cradle to career, that align with the applicant's proposal and reform strategy.

Here is your community school.  In addition to providing a basic education for children, your school district will now be evaluated on:

family and community results (e.g., students demonstrate social-emotional competencies, students are healthy, students feel safe at school and in their communities, students demonstrate career readiness skills through internship and summer job opportunities)

This is a gargantuan power grab by the federal government that, sadly, some individual school districts will actually ask them to do. It seems unfathomable that school board members, superintendents and tax payers would want the federal government this involved in the running of their schools, just for the benefit of a few dollars.  Nowhere in the grant application are districts required to show fiscal feasibility of maintaining any program started with RTTT funding. If DOEd isn't going to ask for this, maybe the taxpayers should, because they will be the ones on the hook for increased "school" (and I now use that word loosely) funding.

The Adminstration Goes For the Education Hat Trick

They started with RTTT for K-12 education. Their stated goal was to help states with the problems created by NCLB which specifically addressed K-12.  It was the first wedge into the public school system  for Common Core Standards. However, in the RTTT grant application was a requirement for developing early childhood (pre-K) education programs. They had no intention of being limited to K-12.  States like Missouri, who did not receive RTTT funding, still began implementing pre-school programs because more money would be available in the future and they had to show they were really committed to what the feds wanted.  Given the lightening pace of standards developments, we know have standards for pre-K.  But last week the administration went for the hat trick of education and proposed RTTT type funding for higher education.

At a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, Duncan summarized the administration’s plans for higher education, including a Race to the Top-like program for college affordability and completion and a major expansion of the Perkins Loan Program. While much of the discussion was about elementary and secondary education, many of the most pointed questions from members of Congress dealt with the administration’s proposed new spending on higher education.

Much of the administration's proposed $70 billion increase in the Education Department's budget for 2013 will go to higher education, including the Perkins loan expansion, the Race to the Top for College Affordability and Completion, and Obama’s proposal to spend $8 billion on community colleges over the next two years, Duncan said. What it won’t do, in many cases, is add new money to existing programs, including the TRIO and GEAR UP programs for college readiness and federal aid that helps minority-serving colleges.

Aside from the Department of Education's blatant intrusion into state run education, which they are forbidden to do, the biggest problem with the administration's proposal is that it would penalize colleges for the actions of their state legislatures.

If enacted, though, the fiscal 2013 budget would lead to more money for traditional four-year colleges as well. The budget would create a $1 billion “Race to the Top” fund to reward colleges that keep their net price low and their value high, as the president proposed in his State of the Union address in January (though details of how that would be measured remain unclear).

Because state budgets have been cut, the subsidies to state schools have dropped which has forced colleges to raise tuition. This latest administration proposal would penalize schools for being fiscally responsible and would, in essence, force federally mandated spending/allocation changes on state legislatures. As if we don't have enough unfunded federal mandates to deal with.

The $8 billion price tag for the next two years may seem like a deal, but when you consider the pre-K education requirements from RTTT will cost our state alone $1.6 billion, you have to wonder how far that $8B will go for all 50 states.Legislators at the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies where Arne Duncan testified about this program, questioned why the administration was funneling money into new untested programs, when existing programs with proven track records existed. Mr. Duncan's response was to defend the community college spending as absolutely necessary to addressing the problem of unemployment.

This administration can't seem to remember their goal:  is it college graduation or jobs training? Duncan said the new Race to the Top program, as well as a similar competition to encourage innovation, are needed to encourage colleges to keep prices down and states to spend more on higher education.  But perhaps his most telling comment was,

“We at the federal level can’t do it by ourselves. We have to put some incentives out there to try to encourage them.”

Who has been telling the people over at the Education Department that they have to do it by themselves.... or even at all?

Also inlcuded in the administration's proposal was a $55 million competition for colleges and nonprofit institutions called “First in the World,”

"that encourage productivity and efficiency, with up to $20 million reserved for minority-serving institutions. The “First in the World” grants would be administered through the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, according to a person briefed on the administration’s plan, so no Congressional action would be needed to make that happen, beyond funding FIPSE."

Here's an interesting little fact about FIPSE.  One of the programs it supports is an EU-U.S. one-semester study program which provides opportunities for seniors and graduate students to study at one of the EU partner institutions by completing coursework and/or research, and broadens the field of study from food to non-food agricultural  materials and applications. One of the EU partnering institutions is Ghent University, Belgium who has departments in cutting edge fields like genetics, biotechnology, and physical land resources. You may recognize the name Ghent if you are familiar with Agenda 21. Their Centre for Sustainable Development is world renowned for its work on developing systems to aid localities in implementing the objectives of Agenda 21.  Given that this particular grant program focuses on biomaterial production and utilization, we now know that your American tax dollars, through the funnel of the department of education, are going towards developing biofuels.  Apparently nothing is beyond the grasp of Mr. Duncan's department, even energy research.

Combine all this with the Community Education schools proposed and we will truly have cradle to the grave big government indoctrination and oversight of everyone in this country.

Your Preschool Human Capital, DESE and the Early Learning Challenge Grant

"It's all for the children.  It's all for the children."  Repeat that mantra 500 times and you too, will become a DESE-like mindless and bureaucratic zombie when it comes to setting and making educational decisions for Missouri pre-school human capital.  DESE wants more money from the Federal Government so the Federal Government can institute more control, mandates, and create more debt for the state and local districts.

Does this make sense to you? An unelected state agency is plunging the citizenry under more governmental control and taxpayers into unfunded debt for programs that will employ more bureaucrats.  So what's the new "flavor of the day" in the educational puzzle?

It's named the "Early Learning Challenge Grant" and DESE has applied to receive a $60 Million grant to:

place “more young children who are in programs outside of the home (in) high-quality programs — especially those children from families with low incomes, and also children with other risk factors.”


What does this grant mandate Missouri to do?  Here's the application of "assurance and certifications."  It is clear there is an expansion of early childhood programs involving multiple state agencies.   I cannot locate monetary figures how much these programs will ultimately cost the state and local districts.  Is this $60 Million grant akin to the $250 Million grant DESE applied for from RTTT?  That "loan" would have only partially covered the $400 Million it was projected to have cost according to Chris Nicastro.


Here's an article about how this Early Challenge Grant will impact preschoolers, er, human capital:



The latest Race to the Top competition from the U.S. Department of Education also supports the idea that college- and career-readiness has to start even before a child enters kindergarten. It's offering $500 million for states with plans to improve early-learning programs. Thirty-five states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have submitted applications. Most of those states or territories have adopted the common core, which means their early-years plans must reflect the new standards' expectations.

Edward Miller, a senior researcher at the Alliance for Childhood, an advocacy group based in New York, said, "We feel that the early-education [K-3] standards—particularly the kindergarten standards, but also the early elementary grade standards—in the common core are a disaster, and are going to greatly worsen what is already a crisis situation in early-childhood education."

"I'm not opposed to the idea of standards," Mr. Miller said. "We know a lot about what children need in order to be successful. But it has very little to do with very narrowly defined bits of knowledge. . . . If you expect every 5-year-old to be able to read and drill them on reading skills, the ones who don't get it are defined by the schools and by themselves as failures." (emphasis added)

Little preschoolers are not just expected to play and color inside the lines:

"What never served early childhood well was when we were seen as a separate entity," said Shari Ostrow Scher, an early-childhood specialist in Frederick, Md., who has been in the field for 20 years. "You can't have really meaningful early-childhood education and not have it tied to the entire flow of curriculum and what children learn." 

It's educational utopia!  Your child will find a place in the governmental system by the time he/she is 3 years old and receive structured learning and assessments to become prepared to be productive human capital in the workforce.  You won't have to pay for it because it's "free".  But as we all know, if we care to realistically face the facts, this control and massive governmental expansion of education is not "free".  It's not "free" in terms of actual expense and districts setting policies.


A reader sent me this comment about this expansion into preschool and its consequences for the children, parents and taxpayers.  But don't despair after you read it, remember the mantra, "It's all for the children, it's all for the children".  Maybe then you can become as giddy and excited as DESE when it applies for grants that cripple states and taxpayers even more.  It also is saddling the same children the government purports to serve with "high quality" programs with debt they didn't incur on their own:

I don't anybody is thinking beyond next week these days and have no 

doubt the crowd for a subsidized preschool would be three times as great

as the full day K one.  

Been thinking lately how the smartest thing the pro-government movement

has done is to make these universal entitlements like social security, 

medicare, and public schools.  People think if they pay a few

thousand dollars in taxes a year they are entitled to retire at 65

(50 if you are public employee)and have all of your health care

needs taken care of.  And people think a few thousand dollars

a year entitles them to 10K+ education for  their children.  

I don't see either constituency giving in.  Even though many people 

these days could work until 70 something is no problem,

raising the retirement age is not 
going to be done by our spineless politicians.  And on the other side,

as we have seen, no entitlement is too good for our public 

school children (turf fields, indoor swimming pool, subsidized daycare,

etc). 

If things don't fall apart soon, we are heading for massive 

generational warfare between baby boomers 
and gen x and y when these two unsustainable spending trends collide.

People have their heads in the sand.

 

The Writing on the Wall

The thing about writing on a wall is that everyone can see it, but most people are so busy getting to their destinations, they don't stop to read it. That's too bad, because sometimes there is really useful information on that wall.

Kirkwood recently sent out a survey to the district asking for public input to their strategic plan. The survey asked people to rank the priority of these goals:

• Provide students with multiple opportunities to participate in clubs and extracurricular activities.
• Provide up-to-date computers and other educational technology
• Offer a challenging curriculum
• Provide staff with the training to use innovative strategies to help students achieve academic excellence
• Create individualized learning opportunities for all students
• Keep facilities up-to-date and current to support the District’s curriculum objectives
• Provide full day, tuition-free kindergarten
• Provide a safe and welcoming school environment
• Provide the opportunity for students to learn about and appreciate global culture
• Include families in the education and decision-making process
• Engage the community and alumni in working with the District to seek alternative private fundraising sources
• Build student's social skills so they can make meaningful contributions to their community
• Provide online learning opportunities for students
• Collect and analyze student data to maximize instruction to meet the unique needs of each student
• Provide Character Education programs for students

Those who have been reading the walls recognize much of this plan. It's genesis is not the Kirkwood School Board. These came from RTTT.

• Global and character education (the socialization of children and recognition of themselves as global citizens),
• A computer for every child (to accommodate common core assessments),
• Expanded Early Learning programs (tuition free kindergarten)
• On-line learning (to satisfy the mandate for more virtual learning)
• Assure a "welcoming" environment (e.g. anti-bullying, GLSEN curriculum)
• Implement a statewide longitudinal data system

Good to know Kirkwood recognizes some of what is coming inexorably down the pike for them. Hopefully they know the other pieces from the wall that are coming too. Maybe the School Board there (and in other districts looking to adopt the same goals) should respond as to how they plan to accommodate these other requirements of RTTT:

Ensuring equitable distribution of effective teachers and principals - Your best teachers may be pulled to go to a struggling district. How will you compensate for that? Teachers - How will you handle this involuntary transfer?

Building strong statewide capacity to implement, scale up, and sustain proposed plans - The RTTT only gives a single grant. Districts will have to find the money to continue any programs started under RTTT. How will you fund these after the grant dries up?

Developing and adopting common standards - What role do you actually see yourself having in determining curriculum once you have signed on to CCCS? How will you fund the retraining of your staff to teach these standards?

Making education funding a priority - Currently the state spends over 50% of its annual budget on education. There is no other single line item that comes close to that ratio. If we already think we do not fund education enough, how much will we need to pay to demonstrate that we have made it a "priority?"

The other problem with graffiti on a wall is that it is often hard to get rid of. Even when you try to paint over it, it keeps bleeding through.

What Makes a Republican a Republican when talking about Education?

This is one of the most coherent articles explaining why supporting centralized education (as many of our state legislators support) as proposed by the present (and past) administration is NOT a conservative viewpoint.

Emmett McGroarty raises the crucial questions in this debate: Both candidates believe that public education should be accountable. The real question is accountable to whom? Should it be bureaucrats in Washington? Or should it be parents acting through the local decision-making process?

In the past (Thing 1 Bush presidency) and current administration (Thing 2 Obama presidency), parents and tax payers have had no voice or decision making ability. The current plan set forth by Arne Duncan will just give us more of the same dreadful policies.

Thing 1 is the same plan as Thing 2, except that Thing 2 has even more mandates for states, teachers, administrators and students. Is there any difference between Republican and Democrat politicians or have they all become elitists?

McGroarty starts the dialogue explaining the differences between conservative and not so conservative Republicans. Maybe the same type of article should be written explaining the difference between moderate Democrats and progressives. There are elitists in both parties selling out the American children, taxpayers and public education.

*************************************************************************

The big-government Republican instinct

By Emmett McGroarty,Executive Director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of American Principles in Action.James Bell, Preserve Innocence Policy Advisor. - 10/03/11 04:22 PM ET

Conservatives who have been closely following the Republican debates have been looking for the candidate who rejects the “Big-Government” instinct that tempts many-a-contender. The key for primary voters is finding which issues separate the conservatives from those who are not so conservative.

In the recent Republican debate, that issue was education.

Education is a big public policy issue that gets scant media coverage during the primary season. One reason for this is that many Republicans have surrendered on the Constitutional principle that education is a local matter, where it is closest to parents.

For example, the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama – No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT), respectively – are indistinguishable in the overall direction they take the country, towards increased federal control. To the media, that elitist-Republican surrender gives the illusion of a non-newsworthy consensus. But if you talk to Republican voters outside Washington, it’s clear that there’s a smoldering resentment about NCLB and RTTT.

In the debate, Rick Perry, who has a history of fighting the federal education takeover, accused Mitt Romney of “being in favor of the Obama Race to the Top … and that is not conservative.”

Mitt Romney blustered: “I’m not exactly sure what he’s saying. I don’t support any particular program he’s describing. I think that the President – I think the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is doing a good thing by saying, you know what, we should insist that teachers get evaluated and schools have the opportunity to see which teachers are succeeding and which ones are failing and that teachers that are not successful should be removed from the classroom.”

Both candidates believe that public education should be accountable. The real question is accountable to whom? Should it be bureaucrats in Washington? Or should it be parents acting through the local decision-making process?

George W. Bush and Barack Obama believe that education must be made accountable to centralized bureaucrats. President Bush’s NCLB pushed a web of unfunded bureaucracy onto the states by creating a federal underpinning for state standards and tests and instituting a system for direct federal intervention to save “failing schools.” And Barack Obama’s Stimulus Bill gave us RTTT, a heavy-handed $4.35 billion funding program for which states could compete if they first committed themselves to national standards and tests.

Now, despite lacking legal authority to issue conditional waivers, Secretary Duncan has warned states that he will only waive the onerous NCLB sanctions unless they demonstrate their adoption of national standards ,run out of Washington.

The conservative view on education accountability and decision-making is consistent with, and flows from, the Constitutional framework. Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman oppose both NCLB and RTTT, and have thus demonstrated their commitment to this principle. Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Gary Johnson have gone even further – calling for the abolition of the Department of Education.

In his RTTT battle with the Obama administration, Rick Perry articulated the conservative position with clarity when he rejected national standards, tests, and curriculum: “We would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education.”

It’s time for all candidates to reject big-government forays into education and adhere to the truly conservative position.

Emmett McGroarty is the Executive Director of the Preserve Innocence Initiative of American Principles in Action, a 501 c (4) advocacy group affiliated with American Principles Project, a 501 c (3) public policy organization. James Bell is the Preserve Innocence Policy Advisor.

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http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/campaign/185173-the-big-government-republican-instinct

Kirkwood School District to Discuss "Free" All Day Kindergarten. Be Careful what you Wish for.

Kirkwood School District will be debating if it should provide "free" all day kindergarten. Astute folks realize this won't be "free", it will be coming out of the budget. While parents will not have to pay the $3,600 cost out of their own pockets, the taxpayers now will have that privilege.

Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) published what it envisions for an optimum Pre-K program that aligns itself with Pre-K RTTT mandates. Examining the Pre-K Race to the Top mandates Missouri recently signed onto, kindergarten parents might want to re-think their delight about not having to pay for Pre-K programs for their human capital. Constitutionally minded taxpayers might question why the State School Board and the Governor agreed to sign onto mandates that once again, take away local/state control and will cost the taxpayers even more money.

Here is the Executive Summary on the Pre-K RTTT program. Most (if any) of the $60,000,000 Missouri just received for funding will not come to Kirkwood, that funding is reserved for "low performing schools". Why be concerned, then, about these mandates when Kirkwood won't receive any of this funding to offset the additional cost necessary in the KSD district?

KSD is under the same mandates for the schools that received the money even though KSD will receive no financial assistance. Grades 1-12 are also under RTTT like mandates (we are under Common Core mandates even though we received no RTTT money for grades 1-12) and we have very little local/state control over students' education. When those Common Core standards take effect in 2014, your state/school will not be able to set their own standards or assessments. Welcome to the world of nationalized education.

Why be concerned about these mandates? They come with many strings in terms of teacher/administrator staffing, unfunded mandates and what your student learns. However, the idea of your child attending all day kindergarten with someone else paying for it sound pretty enticing, right? Kindergarten is a great concept for many parents, but what will your human capital be learning?

Do you know kindergartners in Charlotte-Mecklenberg School District took 52 tests...and why?

This is just one of the districts in states across the country -- with the support of the Obama administration-- that are implementing new evaluation systems that link teachers’ pay to test scores.

Linking teachers' pay to test scores is one hallmark of Pre-K RTTT. This will occur in KSD as well...even though we won't receive any funding from Pre-K RTTT! If you think your child's kindergarten will consist of creative playtime, learning ABC's, and learning social skills...it might. But it very well most likely also consist of enormous testing to determine if the school is in compliance of federal mandates.

Is that why you send your kindergartner to school, to test them so the school can determine the worthiness of a teacher's teaching skill? Do you believe a kindergartner can be tested effectively at 5 years old? Your child is also being tracked in a P-20 pipeline, preschool to age 20 and into the workforce to determine if his/her skills are sufficient for the workforce.

To establish a solid baseline, your kindergartner better get off to a fast start. No pressure there, right? Should we be targeting kindergartners for the workforce? For more information on how education really works today and why it is not about your child, but rather the system, read this article from democraticunderground.com. This is a truly a bipartisan issue: both Democrats and Republicans are selling you and your children for the future workforce and a nationalized system of education.

Forgive me if I am not delighted Kirkwood District is considering having the taxpayers foot the bill for kindergartners and this vision. Taken from a tweet on Twitter:

"School is not about creativity. School is about compliance" - So sad but true. Ending NCLB & RTTT would help a lot.

(For more information on this vision and its connections that have less to do with education, but more for the system, read utahrepublic.org where the above chart was obtained.)

This is the Most Entertaining Explanation of the Education Reform Debacle to Date

This is a humorous (albeit dark) explanation of the education reform plan that has been many years in the making. It lays out the major players and their influence in American public education. The "educational reform movement" has truly been bi-partisan, and according to this scenario painted by the movie, the American people are dealing with power hungry philanthropists and politicians from both sides of the aisle.

This comes to you from "Gates & The Land of Oz; OII, NCLB & RTTT".

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Gates & The Land of Oz: OII, NCLB, & RTTT

By livingbehindthegates

Guardian of the Emerald City Gates

Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: “Who rang that bell?”
Dorothy, Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodsman: [all four together] “We did!”
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: “Can’t you read?”
Scarecrow: “Read what?”
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: “The notice!”
Dorothy: “What notice?”
Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: “It’s on the door – as plain as the nose on my face! It… oh… “

Guardian of the Emerald City Gates: [gasps] “The Wizard? But nobody can see the Great Oz! Nobody’s ever seen the Great Oz! Even I’ve never seen him!” [All Oz quotes, as taken from IMB, Favorite Quotes of the Wizard of Oz]

Based on the No Confidence Vote by NEA for the past two years awarded to Arne Duncan, you would think he was the man behind the curtain in the Land of Oz. This surreal classic tale is rife with reality in the Department of Education, and the Neo-Corporatocracy hostage government. Today I am writing to expose the REAL man behind the curtain of NCLB and RTTT in the Land of Oz.

Duncan as "Wicked Witch of the West" and Dorothy as "Public Schools"

Duncan’s role suddenly switches to become the Wicked Witch.

Wicked Witch of the West: “Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of spears! Thought you were pretty foxy, didn’t you? Well! The last to go will see the first three go before her! And your mangy little dog, too!”

Public Ed Caught in Storm of Century Between Forces of NCLB and RTTT

Public education is caught F5 storm of century, 2 fronts which have been building pressure like a freight train crashing down on children and teachers, NCLB and RTTT. Who is behind the scenes of this storm?

I’ve found the data, that 4 letter word teachers across the land have all begun to hate… the data that exposes the man behind the curtain of NCLB & RTTT…

Wizard of Oz: “Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz. I said come back tomorrow.”

The evidence that backs up my dogmatic thinking came yesterday from a site called AllGov- Everything Our Government Really Does.

What is lurking behind the curtain of the Department of Education, NCLB, and RTTT?

The Office of Innovation and Improvement [OII]

Overview: “Located within the Department of Education, The Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) manages various grant programs, ranging from charter schools to dropout prevention, and coordinates the public school choice and supplemental education services that are provided under the No Child Left Behind Act. In managing these grant programs and implementing new educational reforms, OII attempts to improve student achievement, increase parental awareness, and prepare the educational system, both technologically and instructionally, for more advanced learning.

What it does: The Office of Innovation and Improvement was created in order to help manage the spending of money created by the No Child Left Behind Act. In addition, the OII decides how to distribute the funds of its 28 grant programs (see below). When distributing these funds, their main goal is to improve student achievement, increase parental awareness, and keep the education system up to date. The OII is also responsible for administering earmarks, which are funds allocated by Congress to be spent on predetermined projects.

The Flying Monkeys of Earmark Funds governed by OII:

OII Grants and Initiatives

Who is lurking behind the curtain of OII, pulling the strings of NCLB & RTTT?

“James H. Shelton III has served as assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement since April 2009, putting him in charge of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. In this position, he oversees the $650 million Investing in Innovation Fund. President Barack Obama pledged to prohibit government employees from doing business with former employers.

However, Shelton was granted a waiver to deal with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for which he worked for more than five years prior to joining the Obama administration.” – [All-Gov, DOE, OII]

Clearly, James H. Shelton, III worked under the Bush Administration to govern the funding for Bush’s schtick, NCLB, and through the waiver was a hand-me-down to then govern the funding of Obama’s carrot RTTT.

But Shelton is just one of the many Flying Monkeys, leaving Duncan to act as the Wicked Witch.

Based on Shelton’s 5 years at the Gates Foundation, we know who the real man behind the curtain is now.

Bill Gates is Behind the Curtain in the Land of NCLB and RTTT

Wizard of Oz: [speaking in a booming voice into microphone]

“I am the great and powerful… “
[then, realizing that it is useless to continue his masquerade, moves away from microphone, speaks in a normal voice]

Bill Gates is exposed as the man behind the curtain who pulls all the strings for NCLB & RTTT.

Gates, Duncan, and the Flying Monkeys Hold Public Ed Hostage

The Great and Powerful Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Flying Monkeys are still alive, all of them covering the skies of every state in a Murder of Flying Monkeys, snatching up the PUBLIC, locking them up behind the Gates of the Emerald City, forever to be kept out of public education. Truth is stranger than fiction!

A 12-Step Program for Successful Schools...and the Way to End the Addiction to Federal Money and Mandates.

Some legislators and educators believe the present school choice reform and open enrollment options will ensure great education for public education students. These reforms offered by school choice advocates seem to focus primarily on children trapped in inner city failing schools. Others believe these are mandates that take away local control of school districts and do not solve the underlying problems of educational failure. What are sensible solutions for failing schools?

Apparently the current thought by many state legislators and pro school choice lobbyists is the failing schools cannot be saved. Here are some of the solutions offered by the school choice reform lobby:

• The teachers, administrators must be fired and new ones hired
  
• Charter schools opened and traditional public schools closed
• Inner city children have the option of open enrollment into a successful school district, usually in the suburbs.

What is so different about inner city schools and suburban schools? Is it all teacher and administrator difference? Standards are the same and it's not for lack of federal funding to the inner city schools. So what do you think the difference is and how do you think failing schools can succeed?

One belief I have is parents and taxpayers are so far removed from the school process, they just don't care anymore. Their voices don't matter; they have no say so in curriculum. If they have ideas or concerns, they might as well as be shouting into the wind. Chances are no one is listening on the administrator level. If they ARE listening, there might be a good chance nothing can be done due to policies that are dictated from a federal level. Another scenario is some parents turn their children over to the public school and ask no questions or come to meetings to see how their children are progressing. Those are the apathetic parents who may not even attend to the child's basic needs.

So what do you do with parents who can't/won't care and children who can't/won't learn for various reasons? Do you think open enrollment will fix those problems? It might help those kids who have terrible teachers, but again, is that the main problem?

Here's a blog from the Troy Record that addresses the failing school question. The writer has some interesting thoughts. Unlike most of the school reforms offered by the legislators and the DOE, this author believes that federal and state legislation will never, never improve schools. He gives a common sense 12 step plan that doesn't involve RTTT mandates, common core standards and other federal intrusions:

Pulse of The People: How to fix education

Published: Monday, July 25, 2011

Since the launch of Sputnik in October of 1957, America has been trying to “fix” its public school system. Educators, politicians, even U.S. presidents have committed a great deal of time and effort to improving public schools, and it has all been for naught. As a matter of fact, every attempt to improve the schools ended in abject failure. Among these failures are: The National Defense Education Act in the 1950s, A Nation At Risk in the 1980s, America 2000 in the 1990s, and No Child Left Behind in the 2000s. None of these federal laws nor the billions of dollars attached to them did much to improve public schools. Further, the new plan from President Barack Obama, Race to the Top, will amount to nothing more than The Race to Mediocrity. It must be understood that federal and state legislation will never, never improve schools. Legislating school improvement is tantamount to legislating morality. It would be nice if it worked, but it will not. (emphasis added)

First of all, we should not be trying to improve schools, we should be trying to improve student performance. Student performance is linked to three essential elements: student attendance and effort; family support and school program. School personnel can have some impact on the first two elements, but at the end of the day, the students and the families have the most control in those arenas, so I will leave those areas for another day.

The recipe for school improvement is a relatively simple one. However, like all recipes, this one must be followed step by step and in proper order. Steps cannot be skipped, and until the previous step is accomplished the next step cannot even be considered, or like the cake that flops, the school improvement effort will fail. Just as cakes are baked one at a time, schools must be improved one at a time. Federal, state, even district improvement efforts will continue to fail. If you don’t believe me just look in the media any day and see how we are doing.

Follow this simple recipe, step-by-step and schools and ultimately student performance will improve or we can keep doing what didn’t work yesterday and expect it to work today. Your choice.

- A safe and orderly environment — without this, we have nothing. Students must feel save in their schools at all times both physically and intellectually.

- A functional and well-maintained physical plant — it does not have to be a brand new building, but there is no excuse for a poorly maintained building. The condition of the building shows the kids if we care about them or not. Additionally, the students should help with upkeep of the building. It is “their school.”

- Adequate instructional equipment like computers, books, libraries, etc — we need to invest in the tools of education. This is not a huge cost but a necessary expense.

- Good attendance by both students and staff (95 percent or higher) — you have to be in it to win it is the old expression. If attendance drops below 95 percent, achievement suffers.

- Atmosphere of high expectations of students and staff — no one ever lived up to low expectations!

- Engagement of student families — school is not just about students. It needs to be a team effort including students, their family members and their teachers.

Mentoring and support system for students — everyone needs someone to look up to and to show them the way. Ideally this comes from home, however, any adult can be a mentor.

- Insistence upon the recruiting, hiring and retaining of the best staff in all areas — every hire should be the best possible candidate period. Look far and wide and find the best.

- Ongoing, job embedded staff development — hiring good staff is the first step, keeping them up on current educational practices is mandatory. Would you go to a doctor who has not been to a medical conference in over 20 years?

- Up to date, rich curriculum — now we can get to the important parts of instruction. The curriculum must be reviewed and updated on a regular basis. Most schools hardly ever to this.

- Implementation of best practices in instruction — teachers need to be on the cutting edge of their craft just like all other professionals.

- High student achievement — when steps one through 11 are in place number 12 is a snap. It is even easier than baking that cake we were talking about earlier.

Dr. John Metallo

Retired principal of Albany High School and adjunct faculty member at the University at Albany and SUNY Plattsburgh

Is the Massive Atlanta Teacher Cheating Scandal a Harbinger of Education Practices?

Here's a glimpse into the possible future for public education.

Massive cheating and test scores changing by teachers and administrators apparently are common in the Atlanta school district. Investigators identified 178 principal and teachers who they say were involved in cheating. The cheating included teachers having parties on the weekends in teachers' homes to change test answers so students would score more favorably and the school's results would improve. If the Atlanta public education system is indicative of how teachers and administrators respond to bad test scores from their students, will this become an accepted practice as Race to the Top mandates are enforced?

Arne Duncan, President Obama and Bill Gates believe more federal control and money are the answers to the failing public education system. Common core standards and federal mandates strangle and eradicate any semblance of local control. Parents and districts have no input in the education of students in public school even as they are forced to pay for this educational delivery.

Teachers and administrators are held accountable for their students to achieve certain benchmarks thanks to No Child Left Behind, otherwise, their schools may be considered failing and their jobs may be in jeopardy. Most educators and writers believe NCLB was a good idea, but has failed in its mission of raising national test scores, and has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Duncan, Obama and Gates extol Race to the Top and Common Core standards as the tickets to ensure our students are "globally competitive". More and more mandates and more and more testing will make our kids smarter. Can you foresee ultimate disaster? Many schools can't "make the grade" now, what's going to happen when the controls are turned even tighter?

The administrators and teachers performed illegal activities and should be prosecuted. but here is a questions: do you think the test results are going to be any different when RTTT and backdoor RTTT mandates are implemented ? Is implementing even more standardized testing based on common core standards and assessments the answer to reduce current poor test scores? Could the problems of education be more involved than not having the same standards nationwide?

Heck, you could have the same standards and still have people clueless on why we celebrate the Fourth of July. If you have kids who don't care about school, no amount of mandates or teachers changing scores will change the knowledge that student possesses.

What's happened in education? We have students who can't/won't learn, teachers and administrators who change tests to save their jobs, and politicians who demand even more mandates and controls. Will other districts fudge results so funding can keep coming in and all students will be deemed "college ready"?

“In sum, a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation permeated the APS system from the highest ranks down,” the investigators wrote. “Cheating was allowed to proliferate until, in the words of one former APS principal, ‘it became intertwined in Atlanta Public Schools ... a part of what the culture is all about.’ ”

From this piece "The George Bush-Ted Kennedy Chickens Come Home to Roost in Atlanta":

Why did this happen? Well it seems it all started out for fame and glory. Then No Child Left Behind came in with its adequate yearly progress goals. Teachers were more and more forced to give up teaching subject matter and start teaching tests. If students did badly, teachers were punished. If whole classes did badly, schools were punished. If whole schools did badly, districts were punished.

George Bush and Ted Kennedy, along with school officials at the state and local level, had decided to give financial incentive to success in public education. For many schools dealing with kids whose fathers are in jail and mothers are addicted to drugs, the kids are coming to school hungry and unable to read or concentrate. The only way to get ahead was to cheat.

And cheat they did. And cheat they do. Atlanta just got caught. But the odds that Atlanta is the only system involved are slim to none.

Perversely, instead of using the standardized tests to measure a student’s progress and place the child with similar performing students in the next year’s grade to help the student, the tests track the teachers’ progress and punishes or rewards the teacher based on how well the student does on the test.

We are no longer teaching a nation of children how to think. We are no longer teaching a nation of children how to read and write and add and subtract and understand American history and balance chemical equations. We are teaching our children how to take a standardized test. And then, when they fail, we use the result to punish the teacher, not help the child.

Can we now have a serious discussion in the state and national legislatures about stopping this educational plan that is nothing short of a disaster?