Greg Meece runs Newark Charter School. For 18 years, Newark Charter School is rated not only one of the top charter schools in Delaware but one of the top schools. There is a multitude of reasons for this but it boils down to diversity. At their public hearing for their charter renewal process, Meece made a comment that is sure to rile up the diversity crowd all over again. Meece openly lied about his own school.
Delaware Senator David Sokola is frantic over his upcoming election. Meredith Chapman, a Republican in his district, filed earlier this year to run against the long-time Senator. So how does Sokola respond to the many allegations that his actions have thwarted Delaware education for 25 years? He writes a letter to the News Journal pimping the very same bad policies he helped create. He does this by praising a report on how America has No Time To Lose, brought to us by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Oh, and Dave helped write the report…
I felt the need to point out some of Dave’s fallacies in this letter.
We’re lucky in Delaware to have collaboration among our public and charter schools, businesses, unions, and higher ed institutions, plus community, foundation, and state leaders. If we are going to succeed, and sustain that success, we need to be open, transparent and inclusive.
In Delaware, we call this the Rodel Foundation and their ten-year roadmap Vision programs and coalitions. They send out surveys that lean heavily towards what they want and call that stakeholder input. And since so many Delawareans believe in “The Delaware Way”, these education leaders and members of the business community feed the fire by sitting at the table. Meanwhile, Dr. Paul Herdman pushes this because, well, that $344,000 salary sure is groovy. Sokola’s firm belief in successful schools led to the creation of one of the most discriminatory schools in America, Newark Charter School. Everything he does props up this school which he relies on for votes every time the election cycle spins around again. And we saw this district and charter collaboration really working this past weekend in one of the shadiest back-room deals Delaware education has ever seen. And I have no doubt in my mind that Sokola was somehow involved in that charter school scam. Which charter school in Delaware would have received the most benefit from this change in funding? Newark Charter School. And it was their idea! Thank God enough legislators acted fast enough to put this very bad idea on pause. He is a bill destroyer when legislation comes around that would actually prevent his own ideas from coming to fruition. His sole pupose in the General Assembly is to pervert the masses with Governor Markell’s very bad education beliefs. In terms of “transparency”, this is a guy who doesn’t feel posting minutes for the Senate Education Committee is important. The same guy who changes agendas for these meetings at the last-minute and yells at parents during meetings when they disagree with him. Yeah, that guy…
We’re piloting innovative clinical residency programs and lab schools, on top of new models for peer observation, feedback, and reflection.
In corporate education reform lingo, we call this Teach For America, Relay Graduate Schools, and other bad teacher practices that put college graduates in low-income schools with six weeks of training. Many of these “teachers” don’t end up staying in the profession and end up working for state Departments of Education or the thousands of education poverty pimp companies out there that take money from the classroom. Sokola gutted a bill that would remove the Smarter Balanced Assessment as a sole factor in one of the components of our teacher evaluation system in Delaware. He also thought having parent and student surveys would be a good idea in determining a teacher’s evaluation score. The bill passed, but our Governor Markell hasn’t signed it yet.
The fact is that most American state education systems are falling dangerously behind the world in a number of international comparisons and on our own National Assessment of Educational Progress, leaving the United States overwhelmingly underprepared to success in the 21st century economy.
Yeah, we were fooled on this when Common Core and Race To The Top came into our lives. Race To The Top ended, and many states are attempting to remove Common Core from their state standards. The experiment failed. What Sokola can’t get through his thick head is that Americans aren’t believing the lies anymore. We don’t care what these reports say because we know they are built on statistics that are created to benefit these reports. Many of the same people involved in this latest report created the very same tests that show we are failing. And now they are telling us to trust them and find a new path for our country at risk (again)? Sorry Dave, you can only tell the same story so many times until it starts sounding like crap. This is a commercial. Paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
And which countries did Sokola visit to make these grand-standing statements?
We visited high-performing systems here in the United States, as well as Beijing and Shanghai, China, to learn more about their success.
Okay, let’s go back to the old chestnut in comparing the U.S. to China. This has been debunked more times than I can count. China uses only the most successful students to take their standardized tests. So of course their results will skew higher. Enough Dave. That is so 2012.
What kills me though is reading some of the names involved in this report. But one stands out above the rest: Marc Tucker. He is listed as the CEO and President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who wrote their own “Tough Choices, Tough Times” report ten years ago which served as an impetus for Common Core. Yes, that Marc Tucker. The one who wrote Hillary Clinton a letter in 1992 which set the blueprint for all that went down in public education since. The one who believed every single word of the 1983 horror show called “A Nation At Risk”. But now we need to heed these prophetic whispers of doom in this new report, according to Tucker:
This hard-hitting, refreshingly honest report is a bipartisan clarion call for a very different definition of ‘education reform’ than the one that has dominated the American political landscape for years. The country will ignore it at its peril.
Okay Dr. Doom. Thanks for your words of wisdom. I think America is pretty much done with you. How much money have you made on the “fix American education” racket you’ve been involved in for 25 years? Which is about as long as Dave Sokola has been pimping this same bad education policy in Delaware.
Sokola is trying to give himself some credibility where he has none. The barometer of everything that comes out of this washed-up Senator is the standardized test. He lives and breathes on these tests. He ignores the realities behind them and how they aren’t a true measurement of student success. He is a broken record, stuck in the same groove since 1990. He knows he is in extreme danger of losing his Senate seat. But he isn’t listening to anything the majority of Delawareans are telling him: “Shut up Dave!” Instead we get these cash in the trash reports designed solely to make corporations richer that take desperately needed funds out of our schools.
On Election Day this year, do the best thing in the world for the children in the 8th Senate District. Vote for Meredith Chapman and help our children in the 21st Century to be one notch away from bad education policy in Delaware. Look beyond party politics. People like Sokola, who pretend to be Progressives, ride that train so they can get in the system for their own twisted agendas. Dump Dave!
Yesterday, a presentation was given to the Delaware Senate Education Committee by the Parent Advocacy Council for Education (PACE) on the highly controversial Component V portion of the teacher evaluation system in Delaware. Component V is the part of Delaware’s teacher evaluation system tied to standardized tests. The group also felt that the recently concluded DPAS-II Sub-Committee on teacher evaluations was found lacking with a diversity among its members.
PACE is an initiative of the Christina Cultural Arts Center, which advocates and promotes the arts in education. Centered out of Wilmington, PACE is comprised of concerned citizens who feel that parent education organizations are underrepresented by minorities. The Christina Cultural Arts Center is run by Raye Jones Avery, who also sits on the board of the Rodel Foundation.
PACE began a few years ago but gained more momentum last fall when Elizabeth Lockman began running the organization. As a result of Lockman’s connections and influence in the Wilmington community, the group was able to define themselves and began conducting workshops to gain perspective on education in Delaware.
The workshops offered different topics in education. Some examples of their workshops included presentations from or topics on the following: Parent Information Center of Delaware (PIC), members of the Delaware Department of Education Teacher/Leader Effectiveness Unit, Early Education advocates, the Metropolitan Urban League, School Board governance, Community Schools, Title I Schools, Education Funding, College Readiness, “Opportunity Gaps”, the School To Prison Pipeline, the State Legislature, the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission (WEIC), the Wilmington Education Strategy Think Tank (WESTT), TeenSHARP (run by former DOE employee Atnre Alleyne), Discipline and School Climate, ACLU/Coalition for Fair and Equitable Schools, and a presentation by Alleyne shortly before he resigned from the Delaware Department of Education. This last presentation is very important in the context of this article, but I will touch on that later.
Upcoming presentations include State Rep. Stephanie Bolden explaining how Education Policies become law, the education landscape in Wilmington, School Choice & Climate, Quality: Teacher Inequity & Ed Quality, Readiness: Getting from Early Ed to College & Career, Accountability: Inside Title I & Assessment, and Support: Empowered Parents = Ready Children. In addition, PACE partnered with the Delaware Charter Schools Network on the Public School Choice Expo and hosted the Michael Lomax presentation in January.
The DPAS-II Advisory Sub-Committee is an offshoot of the DPAS-II Advisory Group. Created through House Joint Resolution #6 last year, sponsored by Delaware State Rep. Earl Jaques and Senator David Sokola, the legislation stated the following about the goals of the committee:
The group met for the first time on September 15, 2015. Based on the first meeting minutes, the membership of the group consisted of the following:
DPAS-II Sub-Committee Members
As well, Senator Sokola’s Aide, Tanner Polce, sometimes sat in for Senator Sokola.
Various members of the DOE attended meetings, usually from the Teacher/Leader Effectiveness Unit.
The biggest recommendation to come out of the DPAS-II Advisory Sub-Committee was reducing the weight of Component V. This part of the DPAS-II Teacher Evaluation system is tied to the state assessment. In lieu of using the state assessment as a measure of growth, the assessment could be one of several other measures. As well, the weight with component V, both parts, would be equal to the other four components. Each one would carry a weight of 20%.
When this recommendation came out in its full context at the Sub-Committee meeting in January, Delaware Secretary Dr. Steven Godowsky was most likely planning for another big event coming the next day, on January 14th. Neither Donna Johnson nor Chris Ruszkowski from the DOE attended the meeting on January 13th. The very next day, the Delaware House of Representatives knew State Rep. John Kowalko would attempt to get an override of Delaware Governor Markell’s veto of the opt out legislation, House Bill 50. To do this, he would need to have a majority of the House vote to suspend the rules to have it get a full House vote. While that didn’t happen, I am sure Secretary Godowsky was in constant contact with Governor Markell and his Education Policy Advisor, Lindsay O’Mara. Since Alleyne attended the Sub-Committee meeting on January 13th, it would stand to reason Godowsky was notified the group was leaning towards the Component V recommendation. On the evening of January 14th, the PACE sponsored Michael Lomax presentation occurred.
At some point in February, Atnre Alleyne announced his resignation at the Delaware DOE. His last day was on February 29th. On February 13th, an announcement went up on PACE’s Facebook page announcing their next set of workshops.
At the 2/16 meeting of the Sub-Committee, Secretary Godowsky showed up and listened to the group’s recommendations.
Alleyne attended this meeting as well. He was very concerned about the wording on part of the draft for the final report of the committee
Two days later, on February 18th, Alleyne was the speaker at the PACE Workshop on Teacher Quality and Assessment. Without knowing what was said at this workshop, I am speculating that a discussion ensued about the DPAS-II Advisory Sub-Committee and their findings. Keep in mind he was still an employee of the Delaware Department of Education at this point.
By the time the next meeting came on February 29th, it was Alleyne’s last day at the DOE. Several people gave public comment, including two members of PACE: Althea Smith-Tucker and Mary Pickering.
Alleyne served his last day at the Delaware DOE after this meeting. On March 7th, the day before the next meeting of the Sub-Committee, Alleyne put a post up on his blog, “The Urgency of Now”, entitled “Do #blackvoicesmatter in Delaware schools?” The blog article touched on many points which do show an underrepresentation of African-American students in the teaching profession in Delaware. Citing some other examples that I somewhat agree with, Alleyne brought up the DPAS-II Sub-Committee. In writing about both the DPAS-II Advisory Committee AND the DPAS-II Sub-Committee, he touched on the fact the Advisory Committee had no members of color aside from himself and he was a non-voting member (as an employee of the DOE). But what he did in the next paragraph failed to distinguish between the Advisory Committee and the Sub-Committee:
At the committee’s most recent meeting, a few black parents from Wilmington sat through the meeting and provided comments during the public comment section.
But what happened next made it look even worse for the committee:
After the meeting, they followed up on their critique of the committee’s lack of parent representation (it has one parent representative from the PTA) with the PTA representative. He noted that he agreed we need more parents on these committees. One of the parents pressed further and said, “Well I’ve seen you as the one representative of parents on a number of state committees. You should share the wealth.” His response: (paraphrasing) I’d love to not be the only one on these committees if other parents could learn enough about these issues and systems to be able to participate.
Apparently the two parents from PACE did not like this response. As well, Alleyne, who was STILL a DOE employee at this point (granted, it was his last day), jumped to their defense:
I joined the parents in letting him know that we found that notion offensive. He chided me for not understanding the research and advocating for ineffective and uninformed parent engagement. I retorted that perhaps the problem is we have policy wonks and interest groups advocating for adults at the table. Meanwhile, nobody is asking the simple questions and speaking from the heart about what is best for students.
I reminded him that ours is a democracy that lets everyone participate even if they are seemingly less informed. I also reminded him that the hoops and prerequisites he was promulgating as a barrier to participation seemed painfully similar to hoops black people had to jump through to prove they were smart enough to vote. One of the parents informed him (sarcastically) that she had a doctorate in education and that she was pretty sure she could figure out Delaware’s educator evaluation system–but it shouldn’t take having a doctorate degree to be worthy of sitting at the table.
I found this assault on the parent representative from the Delaware PTA, Bill Doolittle, to be absolutely unfounded. In my years of blogging, I have met many people involved in education. As a parent advocate with the Delaware PTA and the Governor’s Advisory Council for Exceptional Citizens, as well as his own personal advocacy, there are not too many “non-educators” who have the resolve, knowledge, and depth of compassion for students that Bill Doolittle has. To turn his comments into an issue of race is very offensive to me. As well, by referring to “we” in his response to Doolittle, he removed himself from the reason he was there, as a non-voting member of the DPAS Sub-Committee, and became Atnre Alleyne.
But since Alleyne never made the distinction between the Advisory Committee and the Sub-Committee in the rest of the article, one would assume there was no person of color on either committee. What Alleyne left out was the fact two of the administrators on the Sub-Committee were African-American.
Now keep in mind, Alleyne had not written an article on his blog in eleven months. But by the time he wrote this, he was no longer an employee of the DOE and most likely felt he could express his thoughts as a private individual. This is certainly his right. But to leave an impression about a lack of diversity on an important education group when he very well knew there was diversity on this committee is disingenuous. I wouldn’t bring this up, but it does play a huge role in what happened after.
At the final meeting of the DPAS Sub-Committee on March 8th, the final recommendations of the committee came out, and Ruszkowski and Alleyne were not happy about them at all.
As well, members of PACE, Alleyne (now speaking on behalf of TeenSHARP), and a Delaware student gave public comment:
Now the name “Halim Hamorum” sounded very familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it. I Googled the name and couldn’t find anything. I tried the last name, nothing. Then I tried the first name and Delaware, and several hits came up. Halim Hamroun, a student at Newark High School, was one of the speakers at the launch of the Vision Coalition’s Student Success 2025 last September. But I also remembered he wrote a column the same day in the News Journal about the student voice.
I am also a veteran of at least three state test programs meant to improve our educational system, and a guinea pig for various scheduling and teaching methods. Each year there’s a new flavor.
As I sit here writing this, I find myself wondering how a Newark High School student would find out about the DPAS-II Sub-Committee meeting, know exactly what it was about, and be able to attend and give public comment. This is conjecture on my part, but someone reached out to him. He was coached. They knew about his connection with the Rodel Foundation/Vision Coalition sponsored “Student Success 2025” and asked him to speak against the committee’s recommendations. In Delaware education, there is no such thing as a coincidence.
But what shocked me the most about the final meeting was the abhorrent behavior of the soon to be former DOE employee Chris Ruszkowski. His comments, especially suggesting that the committee was conducting secret meetings and “hoodwinked” the process and goals of the legislation is absolutely preposterous, especially coming from one of the most controversial employees of the Delaware Department of Education during Governor Markell’s tenure as Governor of Delaware. We all know transparency is an issue in Delaware, but I have seen many meeting minutes for all sorts of groups in Delaware. The minutes and transparency surrounding the DPAS-II Sub-Committee are some of the best I have seen in Delaware. I frequently look at the Delaware Public Meeting Calendar, and I always saw their meeting notices, agendas, and minutes faithfully listed.
What Ruszkowski may not be aware of is the large amount of DOE emails that were part of a FOIA request by another Delaware citizen that have his name on many of them. I’ve published some, and others I haven’t due to the nature of the emails. I have seen his disdain for many traditional school districts. I’ve heard the tales of his tirades against school districts who opposed his initiatives, such as the Delaware Talent Cooperative. I personally haven’t had any face to face discussion with Ruszkowski, but the one time I did, it was a childish response to a comment I made during the last assessment inventory meeting. I would not be surprised in the least, and this is merely conjecture on my part, if Ruszkowski’s resignation from the DOE was somehow connected with his behavior at the final DPAS-II Sub-Committee meeting.
To read the entire minutes from this final meeting (and I strongly suggest you do), please read the below document. But there is much more that happened after this meeting!
Two days after the final Sub-Committee meeting, Alleyne posted another article on his blog about the meeting. This article, aptly named “Reflections after last nights educator evaluation commitee meeting”, went over his perception of the events.
The committee is also recommending that the use of students’ growth on the state Math/English assessment will no longer be required as one of two measures in a Math and English teacher’s Student Improvement component. This is currently the only statewide, uniform, and objective measure of educator effectiveness in the evaluation system.
Keep in mind this is coming from the perspective of someone who lives and breathes the same kind of education talk we have heard from Governor Markell, the Delaware DOE, the Delaware State Board of Education, the Rodel Foundation, and so many of the companies, non-profits, foundations, and think tanks that make up the corporate education reform behemoth.
What this led to next took many by surprise. PACE, somehow, was able to get a presentation before the Senate Education Committee yesterday. The man who sets the agenda for the Senate Education Committee is Senator David Sokola, the Chair. The same Senator who served on the DPAS-II Sub-Committee. The same Senator who wrote the legislation creating the DPAS-II Sub-Committee. The same Senator whose legislation stated the committee would present their findings to both the Senate and House Education Committees in the Delaware General Assembly. So how is it that a parent advocacy group from Wilmington presents their complaints about a committee that they didn’t really take action with until their last two meetings, well after the recommendations were put forth, is able to give a presentation to members of the Senate Education Committee, before the DPAS-II Sub-Committee even presented their final report to either Education Committee? And from what I’m hearing, the committee hasn’t even had a presentation date scheduled!
I attended the Senate Education Committee meeting yesterday, and I heard what Mary Pickering, who spoke on behalf of PACE, had to say. As well, a handout was given to members of the education committee and I was graciously given a copy. This document was written on March 31st, but nothing shows up anywhere online about it. PACE does not have a website, just a Facebook and Twitter page. I copied the entire document, but to prove its authenticity, I did take a picture of part of the first page:
March 31, 2016
To The Members of the Delaware Legislature:
The Parent Advocacy Council for Education (PACE) is an organization whose mission is to raise awareness among parents and people who care about the need to improve public education across the state of Delaware, and in particular, for students living in the city of Wilmington.
Earlier this year PACE became aware of the DPAS-II subcommittee (created through HJR 6) and their efforts to recommend changes to Delaware’s teacher evaluation system. We began attending these meetings, sharing our perspectives as parents during the public comment porting of the meetings, and asking questions. How teachers should be evaluated in Delaware was the focus of this committee, a very important topic that will impact all Delaware teachers, parents, and students. Yet this 14-member committee has only one parent representative, very little diversity, and each of the meetings we attended had little participation from the general public. The perspectives many parents shared during the public comment portion of the meeting, as well as those we’ve heard from other parents in our community, are not reflected in the Sub-Committee’s final recommendations. As such, we are sharing this letter in the hopes that you will consider a diverse set of perspectives on this issue.
As you discuss the future of teacher evaluation in Delaware’s public school system, we would like you to consider the following:
The importance of parent and student voice in teachers’ evaluations: Parents and students had very little voice in the DPAS-II Sub-committee process and have no voice in teachers’ overall evaluation process. Although this was mentioned in the Sub-Committee numerous times, our request was excluded from their recommendations. Parents and students can offer unique perspectives on their experience with various teachers that will complete the picture of a teacher’s overall performance. Parents are routinely subjected to surveys, none of which ask about our children’s experiences in the classroom. Although all teachers receive ratings through the DPAS-II system, this information is not made available to parents to make informed decision and protect against inequities in schools. We ask that you emphasize the importance of parent and student voice by adding a requirement that parent and/or student surveys be included in our Delaware teacher evaluation system. We also ask that legislature make information about teachers’ evaluations more transparent to parents.
The importance of diverse perspectives in decisions about teacher evaluation: The DPAS-II Sub-committee had four representatives from the teacher’s union, four from the administrator’s association, and only one parent to represent the entire state of Delaware parent population. There were no teachers of color on the committee. Although this committee is a poor representation of the diverse population you serve across the state, their recommendations will be presented as if there is a consensus. We ask that you show your commitment to diversity by engaging a wider and more diverse set of stakeholders before taking any action on the sub-committee’s recommendations. We also ask that legislation be amended to allow a more diverse set of stakeholders to serve on the DPAS-II Advisory Committee.
The importance of student learning and accountability for student learning: During the meetings we attended, we were appalled at how student learning took a back seat to the convenience of adults in the system. The committee is recommending reducing the weight of the Student Improvement component and making all 5 components equally weighted. This would allow a teacher rated unsatisfactory on the Student Improvement Component to still be rated as an effective teacher. The Sub-committee is basically saying that Planning and Preparation (Component 1) and Professional Responsibilities (Component 4) are as important as Instruction (Component 3) and Student Improvement (Component 5). It is not clear to us how an education system designed to produce academically and socially successful students, implement an evaluation system that de-emphasizes accountability for student learning. It is our concern that the recommendations of the subcommittee, if adopted, will widen the achievement gap for the children in places like Wilmington, DE. We believe there should be an evaluation system that supports teachers, but also meaningful and consistent accountability. We ask that you show your commitment to student learning and leave the weight of the Student Improvement Component as is.
The importance of including the state assessment as a part of teachers’ evaluations: The committee is recommending that Math and English teachers no longer be required to use student growth from the state assessment as one part of their evaluation. State test scores are the only objective measure of student improvements that are consistent across the state for educator effectiveness. As flawed as the test may be (something we believe also needs to be addressed), it is still the only consistent measure of student growth. The measures that the committee is recommending to replace state assessments are substantially less rigorous and comparable across the state. Removing this measure will only serve to remove accountability, widen the disparity among schools, and eliminate the ability to monitor the impact of inequitable funding in disproportionately children of color. We ask that you show your commitment to creating an objective and consistent evaluation system by leaving the state assessment as a required measure of Student Improvement for Delaware Math and English teachers.
We believe that an evaluation system where 99% of teachers are told they are effective or highly-effective does a disservice to educator professional growth. It is also inconsistent with the experiences we have (and our children have) in schools each day. We believe our recommendations will help Delaware create an evaluation system that values student learning, gives teachers accurate information they can use to improve, holds teachers accountable fairly, and values student perspectives. We would appreciate the opportunity to further discuss our recommendations as the legislature discusses this important matter. Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Mary Pickering
Advocacy Coordinator
Parent Advocacy Council for Education (PACE)
What I would like you, the reader, to do at this point is compare the handout from PACE with Alleyne’s blog article from March 10th.
This is what bothers me about this whole situation. I like the idea of PACE. I think the idea of community members getting together, no matter who may provide the funding, in an effort to improve education is honorable. I love the fact that they are very organized and set up workshops on a multitude of education subjects. I agree with many of PACE’s goals.
I firmly believe minority students are not always given the same level playing field as their non-minority peers. The African-Americans in America are still marginalized in many areas of society. But they have also come a long way depending on the path they took. We have a black President. We have very successful African-American business executives, both male and female. In pop culture, the African-American culture thrives in music. While there are still some hurdles to overcome, Hollywood is very welcoming to African-Americans.
But what hasn’t changed is the plight of inner-city youth. We still have far too many minorities who deal with poverty, violence, crime, drugs, and a gang culture that draws far too many of them away from the potential for success and into prison. Many of these children have single parents, or no parents at all. Many of these children are traumatized through the events in their lives. Some of them, and by growing numbers, also have disabilities.
Somewhere along the way, corporate businessmen decided they could make a profit off this. As a result, we saw the growth of charter schools and school choice. We saw testing companies spring up overnight. With funds sponsored by the Gates Foundation, the Koch Brothers, the Walton Foundation, and so many more, education “reform” companies came out of the woodwork. All of a sudden schools and states were contracting with these companies. Report after report came out with the following statements: Our schools are failing. Our teachers were not effective. The unions were calling the shots. Teach For America and similar teacher prep programs had better results than regular teachers. Charter schools are better than traditional schools. And every single report, every finding, came from one single thing: the standardized test score.
There are many names for these standardized tests: High-Stakes testing, state assessments, Smarter Balanced, PARCC, and the list goes on. But they all wind up with the same results, plus or minus a few abnormalities: they are socio-economic indicators that do not determine a student’s abilities but their zip code. And many in the African-American community believe it is a valid measure. In some ways, I can’t blame them. They have a valid history of marginalization. There have been equity gaps that still exist to this very day. In Delaware, we have some schools that do not accept a large population of African-Americans or other minorities, even though the demographics surrounding these schools strongly suggest something is amiss. These schools argue back and forth that they don’t get the applications from these communities, or the placement test scares them off. But these are public schools, barred from any type of discrimination whatsoever. If they have things in place that are preventing any group of students from attending, that is against the law. But this is Delaware, and we seem to think it is okay as a state to let those things slide.
Which brings me back to PACE. A group, which started with honorable intentions, has been sucked into the madness of standardized testing. In their handout to the Senate, they openly admit the current assessment in Delaware, the Smarter Balanced Assessment, is flawed. Knowing that, they still want our teachers evaluated by it. They feel that the potential price teachers could pay based on those evaluations is less important than the mirage standardized test scores give. If anything, standardized test scores have widened the equity and proficiency gaps more than anything else since black and white schools. And this is happening right now, in the 21st Century.
But here is the kicker to all of this. There is one group in education that performs far worse than any minority group. They are always at the bottom of these lists. And that is students with disabilities. I am a parent of a child with a disability. So no one can say I don’t have a voice or a stake in what is going on with standardized tests. But we don’t see parents of students with disabilities advocating for these kinds of measurements for our children. Many of us see them as an impediment to progress as opposed to a road to progress.
I was the first member of any type of media in Delaware to announce the DOE’s Annual Measurable Objective goals for all of the sub-groups in Delaware Education for 2015-2021. I was at the State Board of Education meeting in November. I saw the document just placed on the State Board of Education website that documented what the Delaware DOE’s growth goals were for all of the sub-groups, all based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. I saw immediately what the DOE’s growth goals meant for any high-need student: students with disabilities, English Language learners, African-Americans, Hispanics, and low-income students.
Take a very good look at the below two pictures. Note the growth that is expected out of these different sub-groups on one single measure: the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Look at the gains they will have to make compared to the groups with the least amount of growth expected: Asians and Whites. Think about the vast amount of work expected out of educators to get to those levels. Think about the struggles and “rigor” those students will need to get to those levels, if they make it at all (which I highly doubt). Think about the state assessment, how it is designed, the anxiety in schools based on them. Think about the vast amount of instruction time that is taken away for these tests. Time your child will NEVER get back. Think about the fact that most of us are in agreement that the Smarter Balanced Assessment is a very flawed test. Think about the fact that the Delaware DOE openly admitted these are the highest goals of any other state in the country.
Think about this: During this meeting, when I saw these goals, I assumed a DOE Employee was behind this. Her name is Penny Schwinn, and she no longer works for the DOE. She left in January. Her title was the Chief of Accountability and Assessment. When I saw these pictures, I put her name in the title of this article. After I posted it, I saw her in the hallway. She had been crying and was very upset. After the meeting, I approached her. She explained to me that she didn’t set these goals. She also explained that they are impossible goals to reach for these students. I said to her “I know who set these goals.” She looked at me and said “Chris?” to which I responded, “No, Governor Markell.” I changed the name on the article since she openly admitted to myself and another person she did not make these goals. I knew Penny Schwinn ultimately answered to the Governor, so I assumed he made the goals. Or at the very least, approved them.
Upon retrospection of this conversation and all I have learned since, Governor Markell is a corporate guy. He is a persuasive public speaker and he knows how to sell a product. But he doesn’t know how to build a product. This growth model, in all likelihood, came from Chris Ruszkowski at the Delaware DOE. The very same individual who, along with his second-in-command, Atnre Alleyne, used flawed data in every possible way to perpetuate the myth that school district teachers in districts with high poverty are failing our students. In particular, students of color. This is the pinnacle of the corporate education reform movement’s essence for being. This is the heart of everything that comes out. They use groups like PACE to further their own agendas. Both Ruszkowski and Alleyne came to the Delaware DOE with well-established resumes in the corporate education reform movement. I have no doubt they speak very well to a group like PACE. They live and breathe the data they read, study, and create every single day. They were paid by the Delaware DOE, with more money than most of us will ever see in an annual salary, to prove that public school education teachers are failing students of color. Their data is, in large part, based on standardized tests.
So when I hear groups like PACE advocating for Component V in the DPAS-II teacher evaluation system, I know for a fact these aren’t conclusions they came up with by themselves. The timing of events suggests otherwise. If you ask people in Delaware what they know about Component V, they would give you a puzzled look and think you were strange. Unless you are an educator, a legislator, or deeply involved in education matters, it isn’t something that comes across the radar of everyday citizens. But a group that has had multiple visits by Alleyne and Ruszkowski, who knew the exact right words to say to pull their chain, they would. PACE came to two of the DPAS-II Sub-Committee meetings with very advanced knowledge of the DPAS-II process within a week of a presentation to their committee by the Delaware DOE employee who opposed the recommendations of the committee. They were fed the same line of malarkey all of us have been fed. But groups like PACE are organized and they want to see different lives for the children in their community. I do not fault them at all for that. But because they so desperately want these changes in education, they can easily fall prey to the very bad data and myths surrounding standardized tests and educators.
I have no doubt there are issues of racism in our schools. We do need more African-American teachers in our schools. But to judge the teachers we do have in our schools with the highest needs, based on a test we know is horrible, what message does that send? Let me put this another way: many parents who tend to advocate for their children the most believe there is an actual barrier to their educational success, whether it is the color of their skin or a disability. It is very easy to blame a teacher when our children don’t succeed. And I am sure, in some cases (but not as many as some think), there could be a valid argument there. But to judge any teacher based on a flawed test that defines a child based on their zip code, color of their skin, disability, or income status is just plain wrong. These tests are discriminatory in nature. They are judgmental of our children, their teachers, and their schools. They are, to put them in one word, racist.
Let that word hang there for a few minutes. Racist. Standardized tests are racist. Racism doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing it did twenty years ago. Racism has evolved. If standardized tests are racist, and we have people of all diverse cultures promoting them, what does that even mean?
It is the 21st Century version of racism: the sub-groups. The African-American students. The Hispanic students. English Language learners. Students with disabilities. Low-Income Students. Students from inner-cities who are homeless or come from severe poverty. The children of the drug addicts who are born into trauma. The children whose father is in prison. This is the modern form of racism. We hear it all the time. We only have to look at some of the very racist comments when any article about race comes up on the Facebook account of Delawareonline.
None of these education groups out of the DOE or the foundations, think tanks and non-profits have the first clue about how to truly change these children’s lives. What they know is how to make a lot of money pretending to. And it goes all the way to the top. Do you want to know who has the best shot, aside from the parents of these children? Their teachers. The ones who devote their lives to helping them. Even when they know they have no control over what happens outside of their classroom. Even when they know they will most likely lose that student at the end of the year when they go into the next grade. Sure, they get tough over the years. The teachers in high-needs schools see it all. They see the poverty. They see the hunger. They see the disabilities. They see the cries for help that come out in anger from these kids. They care so much more than you think they do. They know a once a year test can’t measure the sum performance of these children. They also know these tests are flawed, but the only way they can fight this ideology is by making sure these tests don’t stop their ability to try to help your child.
When I hear advocacy groups like PACE talk about “our community”, it makes me sad. I fight some of the exact same battles for students with disabilities but it seems like we are on opposite sides in the fight. When I hear civil rights groups blasting opt out and continuing these very sick lines that are force fed to them by those who profit off the lies, I have to wonder why. When they say “our community”, it is not. All of us, we are all our community. There should be nothing that divides us. Not wealth, not religion, not the color of our skin or our hair or our language or the way our eyes are shaped. Not our disabilities, of which we are all disabled in some way to some degree. Not who we love or choose to spend our life with. We all struggle, in our own ways.
Those with money and power are blinded to the realities of the real world. They justify their decisions because they don’t come from that perspective. They look at us from their microscopes and think they know how to fix it. And if they can get their buddies to help them out, to fix all those people below them, then it’s a party. But they either don’t know or don’t care what kind of damage they leave in their wake. They measure success by their paycheck. If they make more money, or gain more power, they feel the decisions they make are the right ones.
This is the new racism. The haves and the have-nots. The same story but with a much different twist. This time, they are using children in the biggest high-stakes test of all time. They get richer, while the rest of us either stay the same or slide down the scale. We allowed this into our schools, slowly, over time. We believed the lies they were telling us. So many of us still do. But this time, they are playing for keeps. What they are setting up now will forever divide the rich from the poor and the rapidly declining middle class. They are the ones telling us what to do. Telling us our children can’t possibly succeed unless we make our schools do what they say.
Every single time your child takes a standardized test, you are giving them the power and the ability to sever themselves from the rest of us. This will continue, until we rise against them. Rome fell. The Soviet Union fell. And Corporate America will fall. It is the nature of power. But until we revolt and take back the stability our children need, we will fight this war. They will pin us against each other while we suffer. While our children suffer. The only way to stop it is to stop listening to them. Demand our teachers be able to adequately instruct our children without the shadow of high-stakes standardized testing looming over their heads. Demand our children be given better assessments that give true and immediate feedback. Demand that if they don’t, we won’t let them take their tests. We will opt them out.
Whatever you do, don’t ever be fooled into believing that your child or their teacher or their school is failing because of a standardized test. Do believe that the measurement, or the growth to that measurement, is designed to keep your child exactly where they are. Don’t believe that any standardized test will ever show the vast majority of students as proficient. They will always give the illusion that the majority of students are failing. This is how those in power stay in power. They rely on your belief that they are right. It is their constant energy source. This is the way they will keep most of the population in low-paying jobs. They want to control us. This is 21st Century racism. End it. Now.
The New Mexico American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint yesterday with the First Judicial District Court of Santa Fe County. The plaintiffs, five public school teachers and a parent, allege that the New Mexico Public Education Department is violating their First Amendment rights by forbidding them to talk negatively about standardized assessments.
The concerns are serious, touching on one of the most basic functions of government, public education. They include criticisms that government officials have prioritized profit and politics over public education; have fundamentally changed education, as teachers must now devote significant hours to teaching to the tests, not their students’ actual education needs; and have ignored that the tests are often developmentally inappropriate and traumatic for some students with disabilities.
The teachers and the parent work or live in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque Public School districts. Both districts give parents the right to opt their children out of standardized tests, but state law forbids teachers from “disparaging” standardized tests. The teachers and the parent this robs educators of the ability to advocate for students when they have first-hand knowledge of what high-stakes tests do to students. They also allege these tests give school districts false labels in accountability measures.
I could easily see this case, if not won at a state level, advancing even higher. It was only a matter of time before this country saw a case like this. This could have far-reaching implications for opt out across the country. If the plaintiff wins, it could be used as precedent in other cases across America. If they lose, I would certainly hope they would appeal. I truly wouldn’t mind if a case like this wound up in the United States Supreme Court so the decision on parental rights is made once and for all by the highest court in the country.
New Mexico uses the PARCC as their state assessment.
I salute these five teachers and parent for bringing this case forward as well as the ACLU for taking the case. It is about time people stood up for their own rights, student rights, and parent rights. I will be following this case closely going forward! To read the full complaint, please see below:
Okay Delaware parents! This is it. It’s October and the DOE is very occupied with this priority school takeover. That’s a good thing. Cause every single parent in the state who has a child in a public school needs to go to their district’s school board meeting this month and do one easy thing. And trust me when I tell you some of them WANT you to do this! But first, here is a schedule of each district’s board meetings:
October 7th, Tuesday: Charter School of Wilmington
October 8th, Wednesday: Delaware Academy of Public Safety & Security, Odyssey
October 9th, Thursday: Lake Forest
October 14th, Tuesday: Appoquinimink, Christina, Colonial, Polytech
October 15th, Wednesday: Capital, Laurel, Red Clay Consolidated, Smyrna, Woodbridge, Positive Outcomes, Sussex Academy
October 20th, Monday: Seaford, Delaware College Prep, Delaware Military Academy, Sussex Tech, Thomas Edison
October 21st, Tuesday : Delmar, Family Foundations, Gateway, Newark Charter School, Prestige Academy
October 22nd, Wednesday: Campus Community, East Side Charter, MOT, Reach Academy,
October 23rd, Thursday: Cape Henlopen, Aspiras Academy
October 27th, Monday: Brandywine, Indian River, Milford, New Castle County Vo-Tech, Providence Creek
October 28th, Tuesday: Caesar Rodney, Moyer
*No definitive meeting time posted for Academy of Dover and Kuumba Academy
Now that you know when to go to the board meetings for your child’s school, this is what you need to do. Write a letter indicating you want to opt out your child from the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Make sure the letter has your child’s name, your name, what grade they are in, what school it is, and the date. It doesn’t matter what your reason is for the opt out, because it is your right as a parent. Bring the letter with you to the board meeting and sign up for public comment. Indicate on the public comment list that you will only speak for about 20 seconds. When it is your turn to speak, announce your name, where you live, and where your child goes to school. Then just say these very easy words “My son/daughter ________ will not take the Smarter Balanced Assessment. I am opting them out. Thank you.” And then hand the board president your letter.
So now that you know what this is for, DOOM stands for Delaware Opt Out Month.
Charter and vocational schools, this includes you as well. We haven’t heard too much from parents at the charters about these tests, but then again we don’t know how much you may or may not know about this test. We know teachers at charter schools aren’t really digging the Common Core standards, but they won’t speak of it. If anyone is praising it to the high heavens they are either a) part of some education group sponsored by the DOE or state government, or b) has received some type of great praise or bonus money. It’s very dangerous for your children. Secretary of Education Mark Murphy expects 70% of children to fail the test. How would he know that? Because he has seen how bad students did on the field test last Spring. The Delaware Department of Education hasn’t released those scores or findings yet because they know the backlash will be incredible.
I wouldn’t rely on your PTO or PTA to do anything either. They will have to rely on their state or national organization, and those entities are sitting on the fence, either waiting to vote on it or trying to find out parent’s stance on the matter. It isn’t up to them for you to opt your child out of high-stakes testing. Sure, it adds additional support. The school boards don’t necessarily have to decide either. The teachers can’t publicly speak out about it for fear of losing their jobs. They have the most to lose as their annual review will be tied to this test, which is taken once a year. This is a parent thing. It is your fundamental right to do this. If enough parents do this, the funding threat won’t matter, because the state is not going to cut funding on all schools. Their would be a revolution, especially since they never fully restored funding cuts to education during the recession.
The Delaware DOE received over $100 million in Race To The Top funding. Instead of using those funds to restore that funding (Race To The Top amounted to a very small part of the state budget for education), they spent the money on beefing up the DOE, hiring data coaches, teacher effectiveness groups, and a iot of other wasteful spending. This has been a mess since it began, and your children will suffer from this test. How many times have you looked at their homework and said “What the hell is this?” How many times have you seen them reading a book that you thought was completely inappropriate for their age? Have you noticed more behavior problems with your child? This is because the teachers have so much pressure to drill the daily lesson plan for Common Core so they don’t get behind. The students also have a ridiculous amount of pressure to keep up. The teachers are speeding through material so fast they don’t have a lot of time for proper review of the material. A good deal of the material is beyond the child’s capability of understanding as well. Don’t believe Common Core is meant for catching up with China and other Asian countries. Don’t believe it is there to make your child ready for college and not have to take remedial classes. If you are a parent of a special needs child, the writing is already on the wall for the toll this is having on our most vulnerable of children
After the Delaware DOE’s diabolical agenda with the priority schools, and using test scores that are no longer valid (DCAS) to pump up charter schools, it is obvious the DOE is going to manipulate any scores for their own twisted agendas. So don’t let them do it.
This is a bold, risky endeavor. But it needs to happen. Parents need to take back education. You will get resistance, and you will be told this can’t happen. It doesn’t matter. Because it is YOUR decision. Not the school, not the government, and not Governor Markell. Certain school boards have already reached this decision. You may start to see some of them voting on this already. But your child’s fate rests in your hands. Do the right thing!
Parents have already done it, written a letter to their child’s school stating their child will not be taking the standardized test this school year. Many are contemplating it. Some don’t think it matters. What do you think? Please take this poll. If you are a special needs parent, please check the appropriate box.
I would say based on feedback through this blog, Facebook, and Twitter, 90% of parents of special needs loathe and despise Common Core. The other 10%, they love it. I have to wonder why they stick up for it like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I debated back and forth with one mother on Facebook last week for a long time about the subject. She claimed that Common Core is so much better than what they had before in California. She is also a public school teacher. When I brought up the matter of the standardized tests, she was for them. But she admitted that her children hated them and found them to be very difficult due to so many essays on the test. And she didn’t like the curriculum being forced to adhere to the way the state wanted it. But she felt the theory behind it was good.
Then there was the father from Maryland, also a public school teacher, who thought it was excellent. He felt it helps the kids to improve and do better. He also said that allegations that resistance to common core is “political motivated fear mongering” and that I was “seeing conspiracies where there are none.” I guess half the population must be crazy and we are all seeing things. His child attends a charter school in Maryland that has revitalized the community around it. Glad one of them can do that.
These were both parents with children with special needs. But like I’ve said, they were by far the minority of how parents feel about this federal intrusion into the rights and laws that were created for our children. This debate will go on for a long time until it’s gone. Hopefully, that will be soon if what I’m hearing is correct. But if not, the debate continues.
I have to say, I’ve heard the word “rigor” used more this summer than I have in my entire life. There’s a reason for that parents. School is about to get a lot harder for many kids, and special needs kids will bear the brunt of that. We need to speak up before it’s too late. If you don’t agree with me, talk to me in nine months.
A new study published by Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis shows that doubling up on math courses in one year, has negative impact… Rigor causes people to forget what they would have retained otherwise…
In other words when it comes to learning. Rigor actually MAKES us stupid….
The test was ingenious… Two groups of students in the same school; all with math scores within 5 points apart… Half were above the arbitrarial line of cut off; half were below… Those below were required to take a remedial class along with the next level of math. Those above, just took the one math class their grade required…
The difference between the two could be classified as rigor… Those below got a hearty dose of RIGOR… Those above didn’t, and yet except for an arbitrarily drawn line in the sand, all were of equal intelligence…
Here…
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The Season Of Myths 