Stephen Krashen speaks to Chicago Teachers Union on Standards and High-Stakes Testing

The ever-succint teacher-educator Stephen Krashen @skrashen spoke to the a group of teachers at he Chicago Teachers Union recently.

“Everyone thinks our schools are broken and that’s why we have standards and tests.”

http://vimeo.com/33371571

An Open Letter to Arne Duncan: Adopt an Education Bill of Rights

Secretary Duncan-

Thank you for your letter.  You make some good points.

But they often ring hollow as we are used to Reform Initiatives that teachers recognize as band-aids for a broken system.

Teachers do know what we need in the classroom for children to learn, and frankly we also know what our students need before they come into the classroom each morning.  Breakfast.  Enough sleep.  Safe communities in which to walk or ride to school.  A beautiful school building that appreciates creativity in the hallways, where I can walk by and hear band and orchestra practice or see my students paint a mural on the wall.  Luckily, my school does appreciate art.  I wish it were the case in every school I have had the pleasure of visiting.

Students need healthy meals at school.  Enough of this Corn-Syrup-laden prison food that makes them bounce off the walls when they get back to my class.

Students need safe places to play in and near school, help with homework, local mentoring and employment opportunities, and people to read to them before bedtime.

You are right about the narrowing effect of NCLB.  We have dumbed down our craft to a flacid set of “skills” that would do No Child Any Good once they graduate.

Last week, as I set up a make-shift triangle stand with which to balance a DVD-player in my classroom, I quietly proclaimed, “Thank you, Pythagorean Theorem,” and a student responded, “Wow, Mr. H.  I didn’t think you could use that after the tests in high school.”  No joke, Mr. Secretary.

But it is not enough to say to us teachers that should change their curricula. Policies other than NCLB must change too.  That will only happen in the courts after we establish a radical precedent.  We need to make a strong commitment to the youth of this country that their education in all its forms will be valued and protected as they grow and develop as young Americans.

In this climate of Edu-Reform, it is time for America to adopt an Educational Bill of Rights.  Please humor me to read my suggestions (This was part of my Master’s Thesis):

Teaching and Learning Partner’s Bill of Rights
I. All Teaching and Learning Partners have a right to a clean and safe environment in and around which learning takes place.

II. All Teachers and Students have a right to access information and informational resources useful and appropriate to the learning objectives at hand.

III. All Students have a right to a high quality school experience that appropriately addresses their needs.

IV. All Teaching and Learning Partners have a right to a class size that is developmentally appropriate.

V. All Teaching and Learning Partners have a Right to equitable and appropriate funding for education.

VI. All Students have a right to have access to adults with expertise in adolescent psychological and socio-emotional health.

VII. All Teaching and Learning Partners have a right to affordable and high-quality health care.

 Mr. Secretary, I will be willing to start a new relationship with you, if you are willing to push this agenda in good faith to Congress and/or the President.

I will even write a Thank You letter at the beginning of Gov’t Officials Appreciation Week.

Thanks for reading.  I am going to grade some papers.

I look forward to your comments, Mr. Secretary.

And everyone else :-)

This is what it will take to restore Dignity to our American Education System.

IL Senate Edu-Reform Bill Hard to Swallow

Recently an Education Reform Bill was unanimously passed (59-0) by the IL Senate with the stated goal of improving the quality of teachers throughout IL.  What the 106 page Bill amounts to was what the Chicago Teachers Union leadership described as “avoiding a missile, but getting hit by a bullet.”

Senate Bill 7, sponsored by Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D) was lauded as a “Compromise Bill” where twenty parties interested in Education Reform were able to come up with a recommended plan together.  It would be the first time in which the leadership of the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT-AFT), the Illinois Education Association (IEA-NEA), and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) would lobby together for a bill to improve education and teaching conditions.  Lobbying together is perhaps an overstatement. It was more like fending off hungry lions when you are in the room with corporate-style edu-reformers Advance Illinois and Stand for Children.

In more concrete terms the CTU was asked to “sit at the table, and be force-fed” or leave the table and go back to Chicago.  If we left the table and refused to bargain, a Bill would have been passed that would have de-certified our Union altogether.

Because the Teachers Unions decided to be a part of the discussion, that didn’t happen.  What was put into the final legislation was a vote for 75% of Union members to go on strike, after an extensive arbitration and waiting period.  Take it, or leave it, with the understanding that “if we leave it, the state will legislate whatever they want,” and they don’t like us down there.

In Illinois, Chicago and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have historically been viewed as burden to the state legislators, the Illinois State Board of Education, and a burden to the IL budget.

According to Rod Estvan, an Education Policy Analyst for Disability Rights Organization Access Living who attended a hearing on the Bill, noted that, Chicago is viewed as having a “hopeless case of bad schools,” so the attitude of legislators is one of dismissal.  It has been this way for a long time, leading in 1995 to “Mayoral Control” of Chicago Public Schools.  So now, there are usually two sets of rules issued in any education legislation: Rules for Chicago, and Rules for the Rest of IL.

The Best parts of this Bill include the requirement of training for School Board members on labor, education issues, and school finance which wasn’t required before.  We also like the “portability of tenure,” which had not been available to teachers in IL before.  If a teacher chose to move from district to district, that individual would have to start all over.

The part of the Bill that requires a “Survey of Learning Conditions” to be done by all stakeholders is toothless.  Another layer of data that just sounds good.  If legislators had any sense in them they would realize that mass amounts of data don’t help create more voice or better conditions.    If they really wanted to listen to the voice of community members, the legislation would mandate public fora to be held in each school on a quarterly basis.  (Oh, wait, these are the same people who are implementing Race to the Top value-added model initiatives, ever mind, just another standardized test.)

The Bad parts of the Bill describe a sort of, tiered-tenure seniority system, where after evaluations are taken into account, then seniority is a tie-breaker when it comes to reduction in force (RIFs). After two “Unsatisfactory” evaluations in seven years, the teacher is dismissed, and would potentially have her or his Illinois teaching license revoked.  I call this part the “Bad Teacher Prevention Bill,” because that’s what the “uninformed legislators with good intentions” want it to do, but I am skeptical that this is what will happen.

The problem with this is that we don’t know what Unsatisfactory even means yet! The language of this part of the Bill is completely dependent on a new evaluation system that was passed by law in summer of (PERA) 2010, but has yet to be designed.  More than thirty individuals some of whom are teachers, administrators, and scholars, sit on the evaluation design panel, but which also includes Edu-Reformers including Advance Illinois and Teach for America(!).

The new evaluations must be “data-driven,” (read: more testing) by a fast-approaching date.  In actuality that date is approaching here in Chicago two to four years faster than in the rest of IL because that’s the way the law was written and our the CTU under Marilyn Stewart did not fight against it (spring 2010).

I don’t like that my evaluation will be based on tests scores.  Every teacher knows that tests don’t measure what students know, and certainly don’t measure how good I am as a teacher.

However, the worst part of the Bill is the last part which legislates that to go on strike, three-quarters of our membership need to vote for it.  This is unprecedented, unfair, and clearly idiotic on the part of the legislators and edu-reformers who are force-feeding us.  What I expect to happen, is when teachers across the state start getting unsatisfactory evaluations that don’t reflect their classroom practice, I have a feeling it’ll be easy to get a 75% or rather a 100% vote to strike.  Call me naive, but what goes down, must come up, and teachers are about to get sick to their stomach.