Let's work together to Educate All Our Children.  Below is a listing of a CVPE (Community Voices for Public Education) event to be held in Houston on February 9.  Support of these voices is more important than ever.

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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU CENTRALIZE!
Or, A Lesson My Teacher Taught Me  

When President Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education as a cabinet department in 1979, educators across the country were thrilled.  In the post-US/Vietnam war era, the education of America’s children would have the same official standing as the US treasury, the military (“defense”), agriculture, and foreign affairs. No longer sandwiched in between “Health” and “Welfare,” Education would leave the old HEW department and be an official national priority:  a Cabinet department.  Surely this independent standing would create leverage for research funding, for special programs, for innovation and, most important, for implementing and monitoring and enforcing equity – the rights of all children to an equitable education.   Teachers, parents, and educators at all levels celebrated this affirmation of their work and of the children.

By Spencer Rich Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Sep 28, 1979;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post pg. A1

But I heard a word of caution.  John Palmer, my doctoral dissertation advisor and Dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Education, is a historian and an astute observer of the uses of power.  He saw the new Cabinet department through a different lens.  I recall his very quiet words of wisdom:  “You know, when you create a new program or a new structure, you have to think very carefully about whether this is what you would want to have in place if the other party were in power.  What might this new department mean if the other party were in control of it?”

For some reason, those words stuck in my mind. Perhaps because John Palmer is one of the wisest people I know and, yes, though I was officially his student all those years ago, he continues to be my teacher.  At the time, I think we thought the worst that could happen would be reduced funding for education research and for attention to such critical issues as special education, bilingual education, and the advocacy and enforcement of equity provisions not always reliably maintained by some of the states.

Never did we (or, at least, I) envision that having “the other party in power” would mean a threat to the very existence of the nation’s public schools.  The public’s schools.  Yet that’s where we are:  a person whose stated goal is to destroy the public’s schools has been appointed to be the United States Secretary of Education.  A person who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to elect politicians willing to de-fund the public’s schools and shift the public’s tax dollars to corporate charter chains: to private companies that will get rich at public expense using our children as the raw materials in their money machines.

Our schools – and our teachers – have survived four recent Secretaries of Education of questionable qualifications, often open antipathy toward teachers, and a deficit view of children and their families.

I personally heard Rod Paige, when he was superintendent of Houston’s public schools, describe Mexican American parents who called his office concerned that in late October their high school-age children still did not have textbooks as “interfering with my [his!] schools.”  Margaret Spellings seemed chosen just to keep the Texas-style accountability system in place under George W. Bush.  Arne Duncan famously bragged about closing schools in Chicago, a red flag that should have been an immediate disqualification, especially when President Obama had other, stellar, choices among talented and dedicated educators to choose from.  Duncan and Obama doubled down on the Bush policies of punishing under-funded schools rather than investing in them and their children, giving the corporatizers (Democrats as well as Republicans) the excuse they needed to justify closing schools in minority neighborhoods, shifting our tax dollars to wealthy charter chains and their money managers, and generally promulgating a rhetoric of “failing schools.” (And of John King, the less said the better.)

So in walks Betsy DeVos.   It doesn’t matter that Donald Trump knows nothing about public education, its central role in our democracy, its anchoring of our communities and their local economies and civic life.  If he knew that the public’s schools are pillars of our democracy, are a true public good, he wouldn’t agree or even be interested.  But he didn’t have to know. We  learn now that Betsy DeVos has been pursuing a “long game,” for years funding politicians to do her bidding to destroy the public’s schools, to weaken the teaching profession for its voice in education policy and its previous fairly reliable votes for Democrats and their pro-public education policies.  Her “long game” is to divorce the education of children from the control of their parents and the people their parents elect.

So now we look at all those functions (and budgets) under the centralized control of a Secretary of Education and recall those cautionary words of my great teacher, John Palmer: is this the structure you’d want to have in place if the other party were in power?

Professor Palmer’s close colleague and another professor of mine, Herb Kliebard, expressed the caution differently.  He always told us that as chaotic as the American system of public education is, with so many local, county, state and federal jurisdictions overlapping and often contradicting each other, that chaos was in fact the strength of the system: federal policies mitigated the racist exclusions in George Wallace’s Alabama, federal and state funding brought special education to poor or reluctant school districts, and local school boards had to answer to parents.   The potential for crazy still lurked at all levels, but all these intersecting policy venues assured that no one bad policy was controlling the whole system.

The chaos a Betsy DeVos will wreak is not what Herb Kliebard had in mind.  He saw openings for dialogue, for invention, for questioning, for local quirkiness, for experiment on the one hand and for holding on to good traditions on the other.     Conservatives need to remember their mantra against “big government.”  Progressives need not to feel we have to apologize for invoking democracy. We will have to build new coalitions of resistance to fight privatization of education, to protect our treasured public good, and to assert positive solutions at every jurisdictional level, leveraging the chaos where we find it.

Our children deserve no less. Our democracy depends on the education of its people.

THE TYRANNY OF TESTING:
WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

Data-driven
Data files
Data-philes
Data walls
TweedleDee and 
TweedleDatum
Data-
Driven
Crazy

Data are indicators, signifiers, proxies.  Representations.  What is being represented?  A test score is not a child. A test score is not a child’s knowledge or growth.  A child’s test score is no signifier of a teacher’s caring or guiding of the intellect or openness to curiosity and questions.

Then why are these headlines not entirely good news?

“GRADES 5, 8 GET PASS ON STAAR”

Citing “glitches” in the computerized administration of the test for some children in some grades, in the loss (seriously, the loss!) of scores for students in one entire district, and other “reporting” issues, the Texas Commissioner of Education, Michael Morath, declared that scores on the STAAR test, a product of the Educational Testing System, would not be used this year to determine grade retention or promotion for students in 5th and 8th grades – a waiver from this legislated state requirement.  

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2015-12-25/
abbott-appoints-new-education-commissioner/

 The Commissioner promises to “hold the Educational Testing Service accountable.”  Does that mean the failure to fulfill contractual obligations will require ETS to refund our tax dollars?  Does the contract, in fact, have a penalty clause for non-performance?  And if not, does “accountable” mean that everyone in the Texas Education Agency or other state offices who had anything to do with negotiating and authorizing the contract will be fired?  What is “accountable” when children’s education is at stake?

We wish the headline had read “Commissioner Admits STAAR Useless, Apologizes to Teachers and Children.”  We wish the story explained that the Commissioner called a press conference to admit that the “emperor of standardized testing wears no clothes.”  He would go on to say that for more than 20 years the test scores had been indicators of not much (family wealth as an exception), that the school ratings they produced were proxies for a real investment in our children’s education.  

Good news that this year’s scores will not have “high stakes” for 5th and 8th graders.   Bad news that the reasons given are superficial, themselves poor substitutes for admitting it’s time to move beyond “data-driven” schooling and get back to educating all our children.

“NO MORE EVAAS FOR HOUSTON”

The Houston Independent School District’s board voted earlier this month not to renew its $680,000 contract with SAS Institute Inc for the EVAAS system of teacher evaluation based in large part on the students’ scores on the state-mandated standardized tests.  Teachers and parents, and many principals have known for years the system is a hoax, its claims completely phony, and its entire logic flawed: there has never been a test of children’s learning designed to measure teacher “performance” nor the “impact” of a teacher on a child’s learning.   It is, in fact, unethical to use a test for a purpose it was not designed, piloted and validated for – thus even using children’s test scores to determine the “value” a teacher “adds” to even one child’s learning, is unethical.   

Here's what SAS says it can do with your kids' data:

http://www.sas.com/en_ph/software/analytics.html

Did the HISD board reject the test because the district faces huge budget shortfalls left by the prior superintendent as well as requirements to share tax revenue with poorer districts?  Is the HISD board trying to get out ahead of the lawsuit brought by a group of Houston teachers challenging its validity and citing its harmful effects on many of our best teachers?  Is there another vendor lurking, circling, lobbying with even grander claims for improving learning through their system of measuring teachers?

SAS Institute Inc markets its expertise in “analytics,” tracking and analyzing corporate data, from shipping logistics, to health care data, to casinos and the military, to “education.” (Be sure to click on their "Industries" tab for a sense of how education appears as one among many industries they serve.) Our children aren’t shipping containers and their learning can’t be captured by “metrics” and “analytics.”  

When will they ever learn?

See Audrey Amrein-Beardsley’s analysis of EVAAs, including her study of its use in Houston.
see Diane Ravitch’s comments on this decision by her hometown school board. 

BORDERS:  WALLS OR BRIDGES?

Honoring Families and their Funds of Knowledge

The visit to Houston this spring by a Danish educator coincided with dramatic news of refugees, campaign threats by a US presidential candidate to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it,” and debates in the Danish parliament to about whether Denmark would confiscate the personal possessions of Syrian (and other) refugees wanting to settle in their country.   I wanted Professor John B.Kresjler of  Aarhus University to see classrooms where teachers do not see children as “the other,” even if those children and their families come from far away.  Especially if they are “not from here.”

So of course our first stop was the Gabriela Mistral pre-K center in southwest Houston where two amazing teachers have created a rich language laboratory where very young children learn English in a nurturing environment where their own language – and their family’s story – are treasured assets to learning.

The Oral and Written Language Lab is a collaboration between Rice University  (Rice “Owls”!) and the Houston Independent School District, a next step in the Classroom Storytelling work of Rice’s School Literacy and Culture Project.

In a district where 62% of the children are Hispanic and a large percentage of those are themselves immigrants or the children or immigrants (from all over the world), the pre-K years are the perfect time to excite children about learning and about the power of words.

The Mistral OWL Lab is in no way “subtractive.”   Instead, classroom teacher Lori Espinoza and her Rice colleague Debra Paz, team up to make the classroom as inviting to parents as it is to the children.   From the first day of school, Lori and Debbie invite parents to write a note to their children telling them their aspirations for them, notes posted with a photo of the child and family and kept all year. A classroom map pinpoints the home country of each family.   The parents are the acknowledged experts on their children and on their family’s hopes for that child. The OWL lab embodies these teachers’ deep knowledge of research on language learning and on children’s development in spirited, well-crafted and enormously fun activities.

I was thrilled to bring Professor Krejsler to meet these amazing teachers, see the children’s enthusiasm for play and books and story.   He already knew of our state’s disastrously inadequate and inequitable funding of schools; he was well-acquainted with Houston’s role in exporting the standardization of schooling beyond its borders in the No Child Left Behind Legislation.   I wanted him to know that every day there are classrooms where borders are being broken down and bridges are being built:  between newcomers and local families, between families and the children’s school experience, between good research and learning as children experience it, between children’s imaginations and the stuff of schooling.

I’m grateful to Lori, Debbie and their principal, Ms. Troutman, for so generously welcoming Professor Kresjler into the OWL lab. I knew they would because that’s the welcome they extend every day to the youngest children and the families that brought them to our community.   We have much to learn from the European (and other) countries who are creating new opportunities from refugees from war zones.   I hope Professor Krejsler is already sharing the story of the OWL lab with his colleagues:  evidence that even with all the hate-filled talk of walls, or maybe in response to such hostility, it is possible to teach in ways that build bridges and open the whole world to our children.

The Tyranny of Testing: Houston Parents Opt Out

Important information for parents thinking of opting their children out of this week's STAAR test: Community Voices for Public Education tells you where your children can be given a wonderful day of real learning on test day. And CVPE connects you to other parents taking a stand against the test!

The standardization of our children's schools started in Houston. These parents think it's time to end it here! 

Photo credit:  CVPE

TEACHER VOICES

This post introduces our guest blogging feature “Teacher Voices,” regular content that will spotlight the passion, talent and brilliance of teachers in our community.  I’m honored that Pansy Gee, who inspires us as a classroom teacher and as a teacher leader in the Rice Center for Education teacher seminar, Writing and the Arts, brings her voice to our understanding of the real power of reading.

JOHNNY STILL ISN’T LEARNING TO READ

Webster’s Third International World Dictionary, 2001, says in part that “Reading is the scanning or looking at letters or symbols, representing words and/or sentences with  mental formulation of the words and sentences….”  Do multiple-choice tests measure students’ “mental formulation of the words and sentences”?

Johnny still isn’t reading!  Some children aren’t reading by third grade for very real reasons.  Learning disabilities, dyslexia, processing issues.  But what about those children who have no labels, no physical, diagnosable issues?  Teachers know these students, too.  They are the ones who don’t do well on the worksheets; who miss too many days of class and don’t do well on the worksheets; who either don’t read fluently or read fluently and don’t do well on the worksheets. Worksheets that ask students to choose an answer do not teach reading and do not assess reading levels.

Words in Action!

Reading instruction should look much different in a kindergarten class than it does in a fourth grade class.   Reading looks different to a 5-year-old than it does to a 9-year-old. Reading instruction should be different as well.  It should be different, and it should be taking place in both grades and in every grade in between.  Obvious statement?  A 5-year-old discovers s/he is a reader when someone points out the environmental print all around.  The McDonald’s, the Cheerios and the Disney trademarks are all, when in context, words recognizable to the youngest charges.  Once a teacher, a parent, a caregiver points out this talent, children are on their way to the “mental formulation of words and sentences.”  

Recognizing environmental print and alphabetic connections, playing with words, recognizing sound-symbol relationships and patterns, singing, and being read to should be the foundation in Emergent literacy in the preschool-kinder class rooms and at home. 

In an ideal early childhood classroom, children should be surrounded by what would naturally be in a world of make-believe and play.  Drama centers decorated with props to pretend with:  One day there may be pizza boxes, tables set with red checkered cloths and plastic dishes, note pads and pencils to take orders, play telephones to receive orders; note cards to write down recipes.  Another week a vet clinic could be opened in its place. Stuffed animals lie waiting in labeled cages. Doctor instruments on hand to examine the pets.  Familiar books in the waiting room.  Patient charts to be filled in with ailments and remedies.  Sign-in sheets so the nurse can call the next patient.  Appointments recorded in the notebook by the phone.  

Everywhere, there would be words—meaningful print that goes with the setting.  Words to be copied, words to be spoken, words to be read.  The block center would have clipboards with pens tied to them so that maps of the roads and cities being constructed could be drawn and labeled. Block Building Words taped to the shelves to help the engineers communicate what’s being built and created. The book center would have a listening station and dolls to share the books with.  Perhaps there would be a familiar poem or chant on a large chart with a pointer so the “teacher” could read to the dolls; or a “mommy” to read to her baby.  Notes written about what books were the best are left for the next group. 

Words Everywhere!

The math center may have Cuisenaire rods, counters, paper and pencils to design, copy or figure out a problem. Math words on the walls to read, to copy, to say.  And the science center may have the water/rice table for pouring, measuring, weighing.  Each scientist would be recording his or her findings in a science journal using drawings and words. The science vocabulary would be displayed for the young scientists’ “mental formulations” of their knew knowledge. Every day, the class would gather at their teacher’s feet for read a-louds, finger plays, news of the day, dramatization of their own dictated stories and adult authored stories.  Each chunk of time in these early childhood classes are carefully planned with the idea that reading (alphabetic awareness, vocabulary, phonics, fluency, spelling…) is being introduced, practiced, taught again, or evaluated. Each whole group, small group lesson, center activity, workstation, and together time would be intentionally designed to provide opportunity to manipulate the very sounds, symbols and concepts needed to be readers and writers.

This intentionality, authenticity and opportunity that’s so gently folded into the preschool classroom should not be lost in second through fifth grade classes.  There should be real reading materials: books, magazines, newspaper articles, and yes, textbooks and real instruction.   Figuring out meaning is not automatic once decoding is mastered. Reading is about “mental formulation.”  It’s thinking.  It’s understanding the ideas and the intent the words represent.   Students should be reading individually and in small peer groups, as well as with the teacher.  Reading, discussing and writing should be the mode of operation in all subjects. A class discussion on the rights of girls in Afghanistan to an education inspired by the reading of I am Malala, by M. Yousafzai fosters the understanding of both fiction and non-fiction reading. It provides ample opportunity to teach the higher-level skills necessary for comprehension.  The talking is the “brainstorming,” a first draft.  It allows the student who isn’t quite sure to hear some ideas to get started and the bit more confident student to try out different ideas.  Classroom discourse is the forum for questions, new ideas, and reinforcement of concepts. Giving opportunity for students to talk and then write about their opinions allows for clarifying, deepening and organizing understanding of the facts, as well as establishing individual beliefs and values.   Original written responses, essays and poems in journals and notebooks, provide concrete ways the teacher can understand deeply what students understand deeply.  The written word is tangible evidence of thought.  

Before conversation, before written response, and before the process of critical, deeper understanding, teaching has to occur -- directed instruction. Lessons on how to infer, draw conclusions, understand an author’s purpose, distinguish between fact and opinion,-- all must be ongoing.  Just because Johnny can sound out words and orally “read” the page does not mean there is comprehension.

If We Know How Kids Learn to Read, then Why….?

Or Don’t Blame Johnny…..

More and more, classrooms in Texas have stopped looking like the reading-rich classrooms described above.  Students sit and get worksheets.  Even the youngest are being given worksheets with multiple choices.  Teachers feel forced to change from “best practices” to training children to look for the one right answer.  Hours are spent on test practice, test prep, testing strategies.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each school year on tests, test practice workbooks, extra duty pay for after school and Saturday tutorials and incentives for children to attend.  Even science and social studies are being taught with worksheets that look like the STAAR and IOWA tests. Teachers will say “off the record” that too much time is spent on test activities.  But when districts send out “snapshot tests” every 3-4 weeks starting in late September and continuing to Spring Break, teachers have little choice. These are the benchmarks that the supervisors analyze and let principals know the results and the principals let the teachers know the results.  Teachers are then told what objectives need to be drilled upon.  This is how teachers use “data to drive instruction.”

The district begins testing in December with IOWA testing (Norm referenced) for kindergarteners; and then late fall-early winter Co-Gat testing for all 4 and 5^th graders; late January brings DLA (District Level Assessment; i.e. STAAR Practice), in early April is state testing (STAAR) of 4^th grade writing and 5^th grade reading and math; then a few weeks later in May there is the 3^rd and 4^th grade STAAR reading and math and 5^th science.  In early May children in first through fifth grades take the IOWA Test for an entire week.   AND there is the additional testing of the English Language Learners (TELPAS) worked in there somewhere!  More Co-GAT testing for Gifted and Talented qualifying follows in Mid-May!  

Testing is what the schools in the Houston Independent School District are focused on, because it’s what HISD is focused on. It is the district’s yardstick by which everyone—teachers, students, principals, and schools are measured.  Whether a teacher is “highly effective” or needs to be on a “growth plan” depends on test scores. How much bonus is awarded depends on test scores.  Whether a school is exemplary or low performing depends on test scores.  Some schools are better at looking like they’re not focused on testing, but look at what is being used as instruction.  Multiple choice, fill in the blank, one answer worksheets?  Or opened-ended questions that require thinking and explaining both orally and in writing?  Look at what’s being graded.

Yes, it’s true, HISD has a reading problem.   It didn’t happen overnight.   It has taken years of requiring teachers to rely on test data to determine whether Johnny can read or not.  HISD’s Literacy by 3 Initiative will not solve the problem.  Getting Johnny to a passing score on the state reading test will not make him a life-long learner who uses reading as a tool to acquire knowledge and be inspired to develop new ideas.  Skill-specific instruction will not help Johnny read.  He may be able to sound out every word on the page, stop, pause, and read with expression.  That does not equal understanding.  Pronouncing all the words in an article on chemical reactions, pausing and stopping, and answering ten multiple choice questions is neither a reading lesson or a chemistry lesson.  This activity will not the help the chemistry illiterate reader comprehend a passage he has no schema for; nor will it help the future chemical engineer to be inspired to inquire further.  But it is the way “reading” is being currently assessed.  And so it is the way classrooms are being conducted. 

Reclaiming What We Know

A teacher leading a class discussion, listening to what is said, noticing who is talking and who is not.  Accepting questions as part of the thinking process.  Filling in background knowledge as needed. Having students form opinions and support those opinions based on text evidence.  Having students bring their own ideas to the discussion and explain how the ideas were formed.  Clarifying, organizing and writing down their thoughts that were based on the reading or responding to a well-asked question about the reading reveals more “data” on what and how a student understands than choosing one answer out of four.

Pansy W. Gee

Leader, Writing and the Arts

Rice University Center for Education

Teacher, 39 years