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As anyone who has engaged charter supporters in their quest to determine what is best for education in the long run, knows these myths are false…..
- Charters teach better.
- Charters score better on standardized tests
- Charters have few discipline problems
- Charters have a high demand for seats, you can’t argue against high demand.
None of these hold up under scrutiny… One quickly finds that in Delaware, whenever anyone argues for the continuation of Charter Schools, they are arguing for the continuation of one single charter school: The Charter School of Newark. or CSN for short.. (One almost wishes they would add Yorklyn to their title so we could experience fond memories whenever we called it: CSN & Y…)
There is only one argument for charters that has any merit, and that merit is not logical, but a strong one politically… People want to send their children to charters so why get rid of them…
True, Newark Charter (sorry Yorklyn) does have a waiting list, and so does Red Clay’s Wilmington Charter…
But what about the great and prestigious Academy of Dover?
Mr. Blowman noted that the school’s enrollment has declined steadily over the years, from 308 students in school year 2013-14 to 247 students this school year.
So… Here is the bottom line….
IF……
- Charters can’t teach better.
- Charters can’t score better on standardized tests
- Charters can’t have few discipline problems
- Charters can’t have a high demand for seats,
Why do we still have this failed policy in place??? For just one school protected by the legislator who wrote the original legislation allowing Delaware to expirement with the then new innovation then called the Charter School theory? He is, after all the head of the Senate Education Committee and he will have to be voted out or overridden by all other members to effect any change…
Why are we letting one person run the rest of Delaware’s public schools into the ground? Even with one fifth of their income stolen from them, Delaware public schools are still the main choice of Delaware parents… Charters can’t even keep the minimum required number of seats filled?
This is why all need to send a donation to Dave Sokola’s opponent, Meredith Chapman. If you live in the eighth, which runs the western border from Newark Charter School up to Hockessin, you lucky few get to vote to replace him.
Common Core was supposed to be about educating children in a better way. Who could be against that? Do we really expect someone to stand up at a presentation and say, “NO, I OBJECT! I DON’T WANT MY KIDS LEARNING IN A BETTER WAY.”
If one did, and we had a great product, we would welcome such challenges because it would open for us an opportunity to show off the superiority of what we have to offer. I mean to paraphrase Biblically, no man lites a lamp and puts it under a bushel.
For instance if one is promoting Democracy over Soviet Style Communism, do we build walls to keep communists out? Do we block out all their words and propaganda? Do we imprison all those on our street corners preaching communism to the masses? Or do we laugh at them and point out that they have to wait all day in their system for a loaf of bread, whereas we can walk into any store and have a plethora of types to choose…
If we have something good, we flaunt it. We don’t work in secrecy, mistrust, and use the force of intimidation.
The Soviets operated that way, because their philosophy was flawed, and needed additional support to prop it up.
Recently several meetings regarding Common Core have hit You Tube on the Internet. Parents trying to raise concerns are treated as militants and extradited out the door.. “Out the door you two pixies go… ” That they were handled Soviet style, makes one wonder immediately what the supporters of Common Core were so afraid of? Why so fearful of one parent’s question. Are they worried that the truth regarding the ineffectiveness of Common Core could be espoused? Would the whole Common Core bubble burst, if the wrong question requiring a truthful answer were ever to get asked?
Yes, it would. And like Soviet Style Communism, we must ask, why are we imposing this upon our kids? Would we impose Soviet Militarism upon children? We seem to be with common core, based on the reactions of our former Chief of Education, Lillian Lowery, currently the head of Maryland’s education.
How could “teaching children better”, degrade to throwing out and charging with a criminal record, parents who “dare” question authority and ask as most of us alread have, “what is good about common core?”
Because… just like communism. there is something very, very bad about common core. They don’t want you to know the truth.
The truth that there is nothing wrong with our children’s education today. Overall, American education is the best in the world.
The truth that Common Core lowers college ready standards all the way down to community college entrance levels.
The truth that Common Core destroys kids desire to learn, by forcing them to study material 5 grades above their level.
The truth that Common Core is a mix-mash of educational gobbledygook, that really does nothing new.
The truth that Common Core does not cover Literature.
The truth that Common Core tests cannot be passed by most adults, even those tests at 5th grade level.
The truth that Common Core has netted American corporations almost 50 billion so far.
The truth that Common Core failed 70 percent of New York’s children, who all did fine the year before. accepted by colleges nationwide.
The truth that Common Core must be taught, and no one has the right, even home-schoolers to opt out.
The truth that Common Core lowered Delaware’s last year test scores, instead of raising them.
The truth that Common Core is all about making money, and has no interest in how it affects our kids.
And to think that all this, came from a simple idea that every child should have a core of knowledge, that was common to all Americans so no matter where you came from, you all had a core of knowledge in English and math, that was the same…
What we got, is something that makes corporations wealthy, and hurts kids. Imagine Common Core telling your kid they are a failure to society at age 8, when that little kid did better on their test than you could have!
Divorce yourself from the platitudes, theories, and ideas behind common core. After all, Communism in “idea” form sounded deceivingly great too. Instead look at the product you will be given. Ask to see the tests. Ask to see the instructional materials. if you don’t understand what you are seeing, ask those proposing it to explain it to you. Ask Lillian Lowery and the Mark Murphy’s to answer those test questions that stumped you. See if they read the answer guide before attending the meeting, lol.
If this is your first time and you are wondering about what all the fuss over Common Core is about, I apologize for not covering it extensively herein. I have elsewhere uncovered a lot stuff regarding Common Core that they attempted to keep hidden. Feel free to browse in the topics below.
But it would be very wise for you, if every time you attend a hearing on Common Core or education in general, to wonder at who poisoned the water hole. Proponents of Common Core always offer witnesses, paid actors who all stand up and say this new program will be great. When you ask them how it will be great, they are stunned. They don’t know.
That is a problem. So ask, who poisoned the water hole. And in doing so, remember finding out who will make little difference to you, if you ever drink the water…..
http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/full/
Let’s assume I were to tell you to stop what you are doing, get up from where you are, go to the nearest outside door, open it and go outside, and look straight up at the sky… Then, return and tell me in 5 sentences what it was you saw, and I would rate you against my own personal preconceived notion of what you should have seen…
Oh, did I add,… if you didn’t guess the same as I, you’d flunk, possibly retake a year of school, you would not graduate, it would cause your teacher to get fired, it would close your school, and cause your district to lose funding… It’s all on you, babe.. You had better guess right!
I apologize for not thinking of this sooner… and getting it into the House and Senate committees before the voting of SB51… Those creative neurons just didn’t fire. It was afterwards that the thought occurred to me to find out where the tests were graded, search the local papers there, and find some exposé interviewing people who grade standardized tests.
The tests are graded in Minnesota, and in the Minneapolis City Pages, there it was… Written back in February 2011 by Jessica Lussenhop. .
Here are some excerpts:
DiMaggio had good reason to worry. His score could determine whether the school was deemed adequate or failing—whether it received government funding or got shut down.
DiMaggio soon learned that his boss was a temp like him. In fact, the boss was only the team leader because he’d once managed a Target store.
DiMaggio found out that the human resources woman who’d hired them both was a temp. He realized that their office space—filled with long tables lined with several hundred computer monitors and generic office chairs—was rented.
======
Eventually, DiMaggio got used to not asking questions. He got used to skimming the essays as fast as possible, glancing over the responses for about two minutes apiece before clicking a score.
Every so often, though, his thoughts would drift to the school in Arkansas or Ohio or Pennsylvania. If they only knew what was going on behind the scenes.
“The legitimacy of testing is being taken for granted,” he says. “It’s a farce.”
=====
In 2009, K-12 testing was estimated to be a $2.7 billion industry. Today, it has almost doubled to a $5.3 billion dollars. Today, tens of thousands of temporary scorers are employed to correct essay questions. This year, Maple Grove-based Data Recognition Corporation will take on 4,000 temporary scorers, Questar Assessment will hire 1,000, and Pearson will take on thousands more. From March through May, hundreds of thousands of standardized test essays will pour into the Twin Cities to be scored by summer. Now scorers from local companies are drawing back the curtain on the clandestine business of grading student essays, a process they say goes too fast; relies on cheap, inexperienced labor; and does not accurately assess student learning.
——
As part of their training, Indovino and her co-workers read through pre-graded examples out loud, then discussed why each had been scored the way it was. The process quickly divided the room into two camps—the young, unemployed kids who were just there for a paycheck, and the retired teachers. “The retired teachers would argue everything,” says Indovino. All over the room, the teachers were raising their hands and disputing the rubric. Indovino preferred to keep her head down and just score the way she was told to. “I was good at the bad system,” she says.
—-
One student wrote, “Martin Luther King Jr. was a good leader.” With artfulness far beyond the student’s age, the essay delved into King’s history with the civil rights movement, pointing out the key moments that had shown his leadership.
There was just one problem: It didn’t fit the rubric. The rubric liked a longer essay, with multiple sentences lauding key qualities of leadership such as “honesty” and “inspires people.” This essay was incredibly concise, but got its point across. Nevertheless, the rubric said it was a 2. Puthoff knew it was a 2.
He hesitated the way he had been specifically trained not to. Then he hit, “3.”
It didn’t take long before a supervisor was in his face. He leaned down with a printout of the King essay.
——–
There were the students who wrote extremely well but whose responses were too short—in his mind he saw them, bored with the essay topic, hurrying to finish. Or the essays where the handwriting got rushed and jumbled at the end, then cut off abruptly—he imagined the proctor telling the frantic student to lay down his pencil on a well-written but incomplete response.
And there were the kids who just did what they wanted. Like the boy from Arkansas who, instead of writing about the most fun thing to do in his town, instead wrote a hilarious essay on why his town is terrible and how he wanted to burn it down and pee on the ashes.
“I wanted the kid to get the score they deserved,” Puthoff says of his time in the business. “But they want to put them in boxes.”
—–
Farley now understood the reasons why, when he’d been a scorer, his team leaders would tell the room he wanted to start seeing more 3s or 4s or whatever. Supervisors were expected to turn the test scores into a nice bell curve. If his room did not agree at least 80 percent of the time, the tests would be taken back and re-graded, wasting time and money. The supervisor would be put on probation or demoted. When Farley complained to a fellow supervisor about his problem, she smiled wryly and held up a pencil.
“I’ve got this eraser, see,” she told him. “I help them out.”
So Farley simply began changing Harry’s scores to agree with his peers’. The practice soon spread well beyond Harry. “I’d just change a bunch of answers to make it look like my group was doing a great job,” Farley says. “I wanted the stupid item to be done, and so did my bosses.”
——
That’s when the representative informed Farley that the rubric for her state’s scoring had suddenly changed.
“We can’t give this many 1s and 2s,” she told him firmly.
The scorers would not be going back to re-grade the hundreds of tests they’d already finished—there just wasn’t time. Instead, they were just going to give out more 3s.
No one objected—the customer was always right. “They get paid money to put scores on paper, not to put the right scores on papers,” he says. “They have a bottom line. Why anyone would expect anything else is beyond me.”
——
And I love this one… When Pearson was contacted for their take on this article, the spokespersons response was “why would anyone take a former employee’s view seriously.”
But then…. who would take the word of a spokesperson for a multi-billion dollar corporation whose profits mostly derive from its perceived legitimacy in honestly grading tests?
If you think testing scores are still real, you must read the whole article here. It crystallizes the problem perfectly, for in it you can see this is not the work of bad people. Just the efforts of a lot of people treading water desperately trying to keep their heads afloat….
But the point I am making and one that must be dear to every parent’s heart, … is this the best system to insure your child gets guided correctly through his life? Remember, this information will be shared and available to every future employer of his.
Is this adequate grounds for firing a teacher?
Is this adequate grounds for closing a school?
Is this adequate grounds for cutting funding to a district?
Is this adequate grounds for scrapping the 31st best(2012) educational teaching facility in the number one best teacher preparation country in the world?
According to Jack Markell, Mark Murphy, RTTT, Rodel Foundation, and 59 of all 63 state legislators… it is.
And now it is Michelle Rhee herself. The DC darling who was praised by both McCain and Obama during the 08 campaign, now has to contend with the fact that she knew all along the cheating was beyond the parameters of normal and did nothing about it… It is one thing if you don’t know, and your underlings who you have told to “produce or else” change their scores underneath of you, but it another to actually know and understand the implications (that she and her principals erased and changed the answers from wrong to right), that what you may be proposing is false and to then go forward and propose it anyway using the compromised data to back you up….
Just this year, we had Texas acknowledge that the test results then under then George W. Bush governorship, were faked. That pilot project went on to become the “No Child Left Behind” which left a whole generation behind.
Again just this year we had almost the entire district of Atlanta whose amazing results sold the rest of the nation into diving towards Common Core and RTTT , indicted under falsifying all the test results…
You see.
This new fangled educational system does not work unless the results are fabricated.
This is the same new fangled educational system which the Markell administration and Mark Murphy seem to be forcing upon Christina School District as we speak. This system is dependent upon holding teachers accountable to standards that don’t work…. Then pulling out these faked test results from Texas, DC, and Atlanta, waving them and saying… we want results like these….
Ummm. No thank you. Things used to be much better before corporate got involved…
Anyone who has ever worked in any corporation, no matter what geographical spot you live or work in, knows very well your success depends on how you look doing it, not on whether or not things get done ethically… On the other hand, our sports teams have the opposite philosophy. To them, it is what you accomplish that matters, no matter how you look in achieving it.
It is time we switch and use the sports model, not the corporate model for our educational needs. Our children deserve the best.
We are now receiving the hard data. Throughout the Charter versus Public School debate, the concern on one hand was that allowing Charters to compete, would force Public schools to close, and once done, the charter schools would perform no better than did the public……
In the ’90’s as these ideas were first proposed and debated upon their merits, but there was no evidence; it was all theoretical.. Now, we have actually done it and are getting hard data….
Here is their history in one paragraph. If a charter school opens up in a failing school system and the public money per student is allowed to follow that child, obviously parents at no cost to themselves will opt to put their children in a charter school. Simply put, if their public school is rated “F”, the charter school can be no worse. So the charter School being someone’s private investment, now begins accepting children with public school money that comes from citizen’s assessed property taxes… As more charter schools open up in that same failed district, they siphon even more public money into these private enterprises, pulling it of course out of the public school system in that local area. So the public school which was previously failing, is now accepting a much lower number of students, yet trying to maintain the same infrastructure covering that wide geographical area.. For example, its school buses have to run the same routes whether they receive cash per student to carry 5 students or 35… Obviously the public schools have to do with less, while the charter schools have to do with more… The charter schools choose their students in certain cases, and can send them back to public if they don’t meet expectations. The Public schools must take whomever is left, in. Gradually the quality and sheer numbers of students deteriorate so much, that these public schools have to be shut down. Too many schools are too empty and that is too costly… Consolidation must occur.
Philadelphia and Chicago are closing schools. And Guess what? Most of both are black.
The argument can be made that we are accidentally closing the door on the only one way a person can pull himself out of the inner city quagmire: with a quality education….
Now let us back up. The argument for charter schools was that they would provide that door or that opportunity for these citizens to help pull themselves out. Theoretically, if all charter schools had huge success stories, then this plan could be a viable option.
If such were the case, all of us including myself would be in favor of charter schools… As I look back over the past 20 years I can now see how we were seduced into allowing them to happen. If someone had substituted the word “private schools” instead of “charter schools”, no one would be against; we’d all be in favor….. private schools (which used private funds), competing with public schools would be a good thing. People would have a choice if they could afford to let their children get a great education or a good one… I think Britain has functioned fine with its Eton School for Boys.
Then, when the argument became enhanced, that drawing such a line financially was not fair to underprivileged children who had talent, a lot of us felt that yes they should receive scholarships to go to good schools, and that was fair. Then, when the lack of scholarships for the amount of private school openings became apparent, all were lulled into letting the public money for that child, follow the child where he wound up going… even if it was outside the school system and into someone else’s private pockets….
Allowing public money to enhance private pockets, particularly in a urban environment where lots of potential students surround a converted building, opened up great possibilities for some to get wealthy… Just a hundred students at $15,000 each per year, could bring one a gross of $1,500,000.. One could squeeze that few into just three rooms of 35 students… Double that, and one gets $3 million. Do it across the city, and gross $100 million….
So is it really that bad for someone to get wealthy IF… kids are getting a much better education?
And up to now, this was the dilemma .. No one really had that answer because no one really knew. No one had ever tried it before….
That was then. We now have results and can analyze this experiment and see, once and for all, how charter schools can impact the growth and development of our children!… This is truly awesome, actually!…. .
In Philly, over a quarter of the district’s 195,000 seats are now empty. That is 48,750 empty spots… But more important, is the number of the remainder: 146,250…
The actual number of Charter School Students within the Philadelphia School District, according to the National Alliance for Charter Schools, is 47,800… just 950 student shy of the district’s empty seats……..
Quite a coincidence!
In all 23.4% of Philly’s children are enrolled in Charter Schools…. The district projects a 37 percent increase in costs associated with charter schools over the next five years, bringing the total charter cost to more than $800 million…. That will come out of the public school budgets.
Last year, Philadelphia charters met AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)at only 29 percent, yet that was still better than the 13 percent tally for Philadelphia’s district-run schools…..
Mathematically that stacks up thusly….
(0.13)146,250 + (0.29)47,800 = Total Philly students meeting requirements…. The math gives us this many successful students: 32,874…
In 2005, there were 185,000 students in the city district’s public schools. At that time, 34% were deemed advanced or proficient….. Doing the math we get this result…. 62,900…. actual students who were advanced or proficient…
In 2005, the Philadelphia School District put out 62,900 students meeting standards. In 2012, after experimenting with Charter Schools, the same geographical area spit out 32,874 students meeting standards…
Conclusion. Having charter schools and public schools duke it out over scarce resources, not unlike the recent movie Hunger Games, cuts our actual passing students down by almost half….
We now have evidence.
This is a dilemma. A red letter day for educators everywhere….
I get this call, paraphrased it went like this.
Hello,
My son was just issued a warning that he had missed more than Christina’s required days of school(5). No longer am I, their parent, allowed to excuse them for being sick with a note from myself; he must now have a note from the doctor. We are one of those with no insurance, so you know how much that would cost us! There is nothing permanently wrong with my child; just over the fall, he woke up too sick (fever with sniffles) to go to school in our opinion, and we kept him home to get well, as well as not contaminate others. Usually the next day he was fine, and quite able to catch up on missed work and with this pattern he has kept his grades up well. Today, he sent a message home he was coughing up blood, and came home, announced he had the flu, and went to bed and is coughing now. I can’t send him to school tomorrow; I have no money till payday next Monday. What can I do? Why do they have that stupid rule anyway? That’s barely one sick day a month, so far, and there are 7 months left!
So that is what started this investigation.
First the Christina Code of Conduct to verify the story….. Remember this is based on state law, to which they have to comply. However, in the state code I did not see this limit on 5 excused absences requiring further documentation. I am hoping a comment can direct me there?
The fines were rather severe, particularly to families in financial dire straits which would probably include 99% of Christina’s district.
It it my reading that these would only be used as a last resort. But the point I am making, is that the choice between a) sending a sick child to school; b) going to a doctor and paying 50% of one weeks salary to get a written excuse, and c) court settlement, fines, and imprisonment, choice a) is going to win every time.
And that is just plain wrong….
Now I actually remember why this was put in place. Schools were incapable of monitoring children who didn’t show up. Parents were legislatively held responsible. If a parent is going to jail for not insuring their child is in school, there is a better chance than not, that the child will show up in school.. I get that. However what is appalling is that there is no safety valve, one allowing good students who get sick, to stay home with their parent’s permission…..
It gets worse.
This flu is reported to be one of the deadliest in our lives. We appear to be on the cusp of a real pandemic. This is not the normal flu. This is one like the 1918 one. You have to read it to appreciate it’s extent….
Just a quick search. Three dead in Vermont. 2 dead Orange County. 2 dead in Sacramento. 8 in Oklahoma. 9 in South Dakota. Fifteen dead in Indiana. 18 in Massachusetts. In Minnesota as of today, 27 people are dead, out of 400 infected. Making the death rate 6.7%. The flu of 1918 worldwide in a time of no modern medicine, killed at estimated a 10%-20% level. The normal level is 0.1%. Put in shock and awe language, that means there is a 6700 greater chance you will die from this flu, than any of the past in our lifetimes….
If this sounds uncharacteristically shocking, it is because I’m just finding out the figures now… Last week, we incurred 801 deaths from influenza and pneumonia (they work hand in hand so both are included). the CDC is probably processing a future warning right now.
The CDC is reporting that the week before 12/29/12, 2961 persons tested positive for flu. The next week, 801 died. If there is any correlation between the numbers, that means a death rate of 27.05%… That is too high to believe, but it should be enough to sound the alarm… We are in the middle of a crises.
Because looking on the surface, out of roughly 3000 cases of flu, 800 died…. I don’t want to get too distracted upon the argument of just how bad this is looking, just want acceptance that is is bad…
If you look for national data on this right now, through the internet engines, it hasn’t been compiled yet. This is just the first attempt to make sense of the raw data being reported by the CDC. For us in Delaware, this just appeared out of no where over Christmas break…. I don’t think anyone has looked at this nationally on the scale required yet. We have flu’s every year. In truth, the only reason I would be delving through it today, is because or the random request I mentioned at the top of this post….
Courtesy of CDC FluView.
And that doesn’t yet include the data from this past January 5th week.
Here is kavips recommendation on what should be done.
A) The requirement for a doctor’s note for each absence needs a temporary abatement based on the virulent nature of this flu. One doctors note for a duration of absences needs to be sufficient.
B) All parents in the district and in the state, need an email blast alerting them to the extreme danger of this flu, which states that if a child is sick or exhibiting symptoms, he is required to stay home to stop the spreading contamination. It would be kind to mention that grace will be extended to all absences over this time, simply to put parents afraid of legal ramifications at ease and prevent them from being too scared to comply with the order.
C) If a school gets below 80% attendance level, it needs to close for a week. We don’t need to teach something, and teach it again, and teach it again, and teach is again as the surviving students filter back into class. That is a waste of resources.
D) Recommend use of hand sanitizer whenever possible, at home, work, or school.
E) Warning that flu shots are a state priority, and should be mandatory considering the high rate of death this time. Those not having one, need one now.
To help our administration out, I’ll point to this option in the state code regarding relaxing regulations in the schools.
(This was from another Chapter other than that previously quoted on attendance, but it shows the precedent and legal standing for exercising extraordinary measures in extraordinary times.)
As I alluded to, this is all coming so fast. It is as if trying to cross the street and peaking around a parked truck and seeing death in the form of a truck barreling down right on top of you. It’s a little unnerving.
After every tragedy we’ve talked about doing something to stop random violence with assault weapons.
We talk.
The last person who “did” anything, was James Brady who said enough is enough and pushed the “Brady Bill” over the NRA’s dead body into law.
It is time for the next step.
Every American must ask themselves. Since there will be no compromise, which is more important for America’s future?
Photo Courtesy of KRCRTY
OR
Photo Courtesy of Amherst Gun Show
???
Did you choose?
Then we need to start to work. I think it is safe to say that after Newtown, Connecticut, we are done with options. It has now become,… an obligation for us to stop this trend….
We need to act soon, before the next perpetrator, tries to outdo even this tragedy……
It seems like only recently that atrocities are cropping up in Afghanistan. They may have been on going, but the rash today could be explained by the long years, and many repeat tours, which have taken a toll on our best and brightest.
War is not grade school. War takes a toll. And using the same people over and over, would cause the breaking down of moral fiber.
When you are in an impossible situation for a very long time, and it seems like it is such an absurd environment so that old rules don’t apply; you tend to take those old rules for granted. Instead you move yourself into a surreal world; one where your emotions impact your perception of reality.
These atrocities are not new to mankind. If you haven’t fought, just going to the movies should give you enough perspective to understand why these men react they way they do.
What’s different lately, is not that our men are acting like barbarians. Instead, it is that they are not acting to the highest standards possible. That is the norm for the US military. But after being there too long, they are acting like normal men. Like men in every other army.
The same situation is occurring in our high schools. Currently Christina School District has three teacher incident investigations on going. Three. All three of these people would not doubt, still be teaching, had they not been forced to survive the bizarre environment that is high school for so long. An incident came up, and that part of us that constantly protects us from over reacting except in dire emergencies, released that pent up anger prematurely.
We blame the teacher because it isn’t something all teachers are doing.
However we need to look at the system, the way the military is looking at solving their problem. Which is that men have been fighting longer than WWII without a break.
Our schools need more money, not cuts. We need to raise money. The General Assembly should double resources this year and raise tax rates to cover it.
We’re done trying to stretch our schools thinner.. It is time to start building them back.
kavips 