On February 12th, the Alabama House (HB254) and Senate (SB190) Republicans introduced a bill that would repeal the Common Core State Standards Initiative by prohibiting the Alabama State Department of Education from adopting the Common Core and end the collection and sharing of data on students and teachers except in specific circumstances. On February 21st, Dr. Wardynski said that this bill (which no one “consulted” with him on, poor little guy) would make “everything we’re doing illegal.” He was complaining that the district’s curriculum would have to change (which he said costs $40 million dollars over the past two year), and perhaps most importantly that the bill would require them to no longer “collect and retain longitudinal data on students” meaning that they would have to stop using the STAR Enterprise test to track student growth.

Wow. That just sound terrible, doesn’t it?

HB254/SB190

Let’s take a quick look at the bill. (At present the two bills are identical. That may change as the House and Senate begin to make modifications.) You may download copies of the bills to read for yourself (HB254 and SP190). The synopsis of the proposed bill is as follows:

Under existing law, the State Board of Education is directed to establish a core curriculum for every student in grades kindergarten through twelve in the state’s public schools.

This bill would prohibit the State Board of Education from adopting and the Department of Education from implementing the Common Core State Standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

This bill would prohibit the State Board of Education, the Department of Education, and other state bodies from compiling or sharing data about students or teachers, except under limited circumstances.

This bill would prohibit the State Board of Education from entering into an agreement or joining a consortium that would cede any control to an entity outside the state.

This bill would also require notice and public hearings before the State Board of Education adopts or implements any statewide standards.

Wardynski Responds

In response to this, Dr. Wardynski had the following to say on Thursday night:

If you prefer, here’s a transcript of what Dr. Wardynski had to say:

Uh, today, just before our meeting with the folks from the arsenal over at Columbia High School, I did a quick press conference on an item that I think’s vital to, uh, parents’ attention. It’s Senate Bill 190, and Rena knows, wherever you are Rena, what’s the name of the House Bill? 254? HB254?

Uh, it’s a very short bill recommend folks take a good look at it. Um, it has two parts. One pertains to, uh, standards, and the other pertains to data.

Uh, and so what that would mean for our schools system is essentially, we’ve made about a $40 million dollar investment in our curriculum in the last two years, and that would all be for naught. We would have to undo everything we did because we would not be allowed to have materials that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards. So 47 states have agreed [the actual number is 45 + Washington DC. Texas, Alaska, Virginia and Nebraska have not adopted the standards.] on a set of standards which were reached by business leaders and leaders in higher education as to what our K-12 students need to know by the time they leave uh senior year of high school. And those standards are vital because we need to be pointing at something.

Imagine an organization with no objective. That would be us. And, uh, we need very high level objectives because our kids are competing with folks from Korea, China and Germany, and they’re serious about education. And we have any number of firms, I participate with the chamber of commerce, and the city in making proposals all the time for businesses to come here and set up shop. And, way up the list is always K-12 education, and then community colleges and higher ed sorta fall in line. And they’re very interested in what are our standards. The arsenal’s very interested in what are our standards. Kids are, military kids are moving all over the world, all over the country, and you know, quite frankly, they want to know when they’re coming to Alabama, what are the standards? And when we say they’re common core, uh, that settles them right down.

Now the ACT, the ACT Quality Core Exams we’re going to be administering in May and April, uh STAR assessments, we administer every nine weeks, uh, components of the IB program, uh, and many other things are all aligned with the common core standards. So, everything we’re doing would become illegal the day this law passes. And it, if it passes, it’ll pass in the next several weeks, so in the middle of the semester, in the middle of the academic year, everything we’re doing will be illegal. And we’ll have to stop.

No, there’s no um, I’m not looking for interruptions. (A woman in the audience tried to ask a question at this point. In typical fashion, Dr. Wardynski overruled her.)

Um, and um, so that would be the end of that. And uh, the digital curriculum we’re in, part of the advantage of that is, if someone makes an improvement in Massachusetts to a component of digital learning that’s aligned with a set of standards, we don’t have to pay for that again. It comes here, and it’s already been bought and paid for in Massachusetts. If we want to become and island in education all onto our own, we will have to pay for everything that’s created. The texts, the curriculum, the digital components, the tests, the formative assessments, everything.

Uh, that’s just not the way to use our money wisely.

Part two is, we would no longer be able to collect and retain longitudinal data on students. Longitudinal data means we’re looking at your student over time. So we’re very interested in their growth. We would now have no idea what their growth is.

Um, iNow collects longitudinal data, so the data you find in the student information system we have, that you have passwords for, called iNow would become illegal. We would not be able to put any money into maintaining that or operating it.

Renaissance Learning [STAR Testing] which has longitudinal data on your student’s progress in reading and math, we would have to stop funding that, and stop using that data.

I don’t see how we could participate in ACT testing. So I don’t know how your children will get in college. Because that retains longitudinal data and is also aligned with the common core. SAT, AP, IB, you name it, it’ll be done.

This bill, uh, nobody consulted this superintendent from this area about whether this was a good idea. Uh, I don’t know of anybody in my staff that was consulted. Um, so I’m thinking this is about as bad as you can do for education. Just about as bad a deal as we can do for our kids. So I recommend, just quickly, go and google these things, uh, SB190 and uh, HB254. Quick reads. We had our attorney interpret it. I read it and said, “Does it really mean this?” And our attorney said, “Yes, it does.”

And so, I’m going down on Tuesday to meet with folks and see, you know, if there’s anything we can do about it. I know our state superintendent is working on it. The other superintendents I talked to today, David Copeland and Dee Fowler, we’re gonna go to work on this thing. But uh, we just don’t need this. The Calendar Bill is nothing compared to this.

Huntsville Council of PTAs Chimes In

In addition, yesterday just a few hours after the Superintendent offered his opinion, at least one person representing the Huntsville Council of PTAs (how exactly does the council go about deciding which bills it endorses in this manner? Was there a vote?) had this to say about the Common Core Bill:

Common Core Standards were adopted by the Alabama Legislature last year. Alabama was one of 45 states, along with District of Columbia and 4 U.S. Territories, to adopt the standards. Core classes are defined as Math, Science, English and History. The Common Core Standards only pertain to Math and English Core classes.

The Common Core standards are not a federal mandate, they were written by the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Representatives from the National PTA office also participated in the crafting of Common Core standards. National PTA supports the continued implementation of Comon (sic) Core Standards in every state.

So what exactly is Common Core. In a nutshell, the standards create grade level curriculum consistency across the country. The common core standards have more rigor than previous curriculum; giving our students the skills they need for college, and for a future career. Students were leaving high school unprepared for college, and would have to take remedial classes or additional classes, adding extra semesters and extra cost. The business community was concerned about how unprepared students were for the workforce. The common core is one way to begin to repair those problems.

House Bill 254 and the Senate Bill 190 seek to revoke the common core standards in Alabama. The bills go further to state it will be against the law for the State Board of Education or an local school system to continue to use the common core standards. The bill also makes it illegal to keep cumulative data on students. Our AR testing, Star Testing, and college entrance exams, the ACT and the SAT, all keep cumulative data. Should this bill pass, all those tests, by definition, would be illegal in our state. There would be no way to measure student progress.

The Huntsville Council of PTAs supports student enrichment and parental engagement. As such, the HCPTA supports the continued implementation of the Common Core standards in Alabama. In a military town like Huntsville, it is important for our military families, and other families transferring in, to have continuity in their education. It is also important for all students to be challenged and have rigor in their curriculum. Please read the bills referenced below, and let your representative and senator know your opinions on the bill and how, as your representative, you would like them to vote. The House bill is in the Education Policy committee and the Senate Bill is in the Education Committee.

[As an aside, isn't it interesting how the Huntsville Council of PTAs always supports Dr. Wardynski's legislative agenda? So much so that they even pick up many of the same talking points as they did when they suggested that Common Core is crucial to our military families? It's almost as if the State Legislative Updates of the Huntsville Council of PTAs were being written by someone in Dr. Wardynski's office. When was the last time that the HCPTA actually opposed anything the superintendent wanted?]

So there you have it, the common core bill, Dr. Wardynski’s “the sky is falling” response and the Huntsville Council of PTAs hyperbolic claim that if this bill passes, “there would be no way to measure student progress.”

Let’s see if we can unpack this mess a bit.

What is Common Core?

Common core is a set of national standards that is being adopted by most of the states as appropriate grade level curriculum. In other words, if a student should move from Alabama to Maine in the third grade, that student will still be covering similar curriculum regardless of which state she lives in.

This seems, on the surface, like a good thing, doesn’t it? It solves all sorts of problems, right? Without it, who knows what material these students who move all over the country will face.

Except, common core standards are attempting to fix a problem that doesn’t really exist.

You see, the curriculum across grade level is fairly uniform across the United States already. And it has been for a long time. Try this test: find a friend who grew up in another state and ask them when they started learning, say, long division? If you are about the same age and about the same educational achievement, more than likely you will have both started long division in about the same grade.

This has been so for a long, long time thanks primarily to a consolidation of textbook publishers. If you go shopping for a 4th grade math book, you’ll find, even before Common Core came on the scene, that they all covered the same basic material.

So what problem does Common Core solve? Well, having all the states adopt the same standards makes life easier for those textbook publishers, like Pearson. No longer do they have to adapt a text to a certain state. The states are now required by law to adapt to the publisher.

This makes life easier for publishers, and the other cornucopia of Educational Specialists who have popped up overnight ready to help your district succeed. At a price, of course.

Who Developed the Common Core State Standards?

While the common core site claims that “teachers, parents and community leaders have all weighed in to help create the Common Core State Standards,” on this point, Dr. Wardynski is actually being a bit more honest. He’s right when he claims that they are “a set of standards which were reached by business leaders and leaders in higher education as to what our K-12 students need to know.”

He’s right, these standards were developed by business leaders–who were funded by Bill Gates, and leaders in higher education–who were funded by Bill Gates. As Susan Ohanian says in “Whoo-Hoo! Occupy the Schools“:

The Common Core State (sic) Standards are the result of hundreds of millions of dollars disbursed in carefully distributed grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation accompanied by the threat from U. S. Secretary Arne Duncan to withhold federal funds if individual states did not sign on the dotted line.

These aren’t grassroots standards that the federal government has adopted. They are, instead, standards that were developed by the Gates Foundation and forced on the rest of us. Diane Ravitch makes it even clearer when she writes in The Death and Life of the Great American School System, “Gates funded the groups that wrote the Common Core standards, the groups that evaluated them, and the groups that advocated for them.”

According to Ohanian again, Gates gave money to support Common Core to just about everyone who was supporting it (including, by the way, the PTA). She looked at two months of press citations praising Common Core from August and September 2012 and compared that to Gates Foundation records given to those who praised Common Core. She writes:

The list ranges from the American Federation of Teachers ($1,000,000) to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction ($823,637), from the neo-liberal Center for American Progress ($2,998,809) to the neo-conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute ($5,711,462). The PTA got money ($2,005,000); so did the National Writing Project ($2,645,593). And so on and so on. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and with money in their pockets, many are eager to sing the Common Core song and eat the funeral meats.

Wardynski makes the truth even clearer when he says:

And we have any number of firms, I participate with the chamber of commerce, and the city in making proposals all the time for businesses to come here and set up shop. And, way up the list is always K-12 education, and then community colleges and higher ed sorta fall in line. And they’re very interested in what are our standards. The arsenal’s very interested in what are our standards. Kids are, military kids are moving all over the world, all over the country, and you know, quite frankly, they want to know when they’re coming to Alabama, what are the standards? And when we say they’re common core, uh, that settles them right down. [Emphasis Added]

You see, this isn’t about what’s best for the student. It’s about what’s best for business and industry, and the chamber of commerce.

Why Business Cares?

Why does business and industry care about anything? Why does the chamber care about anything? Because there is money to be made.

This is why Gates has pushed for Common Core; this is why Pearson, Broad, Microsoft, HP, and just about every other contractor the Huntsville City Schools Board of Education has hired over the past two years pushes for Common Core: there’s money to be made. According to Dr. Wardynski’s own statement in Huntsville alone, this has amounted to a $40 million dollar investment in two years time.

Now multiply that figure by every district in all 46 of the states across the nation and what do you find? That “investment in our curriculum” grows to the billions quite fast.

Now we’re getting into numbers that even Bill Gates cares about, aren’t we?

See now why Common Core is such an important issue?

Why Are Alabama Republicans opposed to Common Core Standards?

It’s hard to say, but I suspect that they oppose these standards being forced on the state by the federal government. Somehow I doubt that they would oppose them if, say, a republican President were pushing for them, but you know what they say, Politics makes strange bed-fellows.

Corporate education reform doesn’t break along party lines. Both the democrats and the republicans have been pushing for this new model for years. (Diane Ravitch traces it back to at least Clinton’s push for a national graduation test.) But since a democrat is currently pushing for it, the Alabama Republicans are opposed.

However, everyone who cares more about their child’s education than they do national politics should rejoice and call their Alabama representatives and tell them to support this bill.

You see, the idea behind Common Core isn’t the worst idea in the world, but the way it is being implemented here in Huntsville is. Here in Huntsville, Common Core means exactly one thing: The right to administer standardized testing until the district dies. This is why both Wardynski and the Huntsville Council of PTAs spent so much time discussing the “longitudinal data” component of the bill.

High Stakes Testing and Common Core

I suppose that it’s possible that the Common Core Standards are being applied somewhere in the 45 states they’ve been adopted without extensive, high-stakes testing rolling right along with it, but I doubt it. Common Core and High Stakes Testing (like our beloved STAR test) go hand in hand. One does not exist without the other. Either way, it’s really difficult to know if they could exist independently of each other because you see these “standards” are being implemented without any trial of any kind.

That’s right. Bill Gates, the federal government, and countless corporate education reformers are putting into place a program that will cost between $8 and $16 Billion dollars, without doing any form of trial run first.

I wonder, Rocket City, how would such a proposal go over if, lets say, NASA wanted to send Rover to Mars (for a mere $2.5 billion) without any form of trial run?

Would anyone think it a wise decision?

So why is it okay to turn the entire nation’s (minus four states) education system over to an untested, unproven theory? As Diane Ravitch asks, “how can I possibly pass judgement until I find out how the standards work in real classrooms with real children and real teachers?”

None of these theories have been tested yet. And the limited, transitional implementation that has been started here in Huntsville has resulted in 158 people retiring or immediately resigning since September 4, 2012. Or as Wardynski himself proudly proclaimed in December, 246 teachers have retired or resigned since he arrived. That number is climbing and will skyrocket at the end of this year.

Clearly, the limited test of the common core implementation has been a huge success for those who believe that an inexperienced teacher is better than an experienced one.

And that’s the real issue here. Common Core isn’t designed to improve education. If the standards do indeed raise “rigor” as the #CorpEdReformers like to claim, they do so because they have good teachers examining and implementing the curriculum changes in a specific way to meet the specific needs of her students. This cannot happen without experienced teachers leading the way. And if Common Core has proven good at anything it is at driving teachers out of the profession.

Simply claiming something adds “rigor” to a curriculum is like claiming that I’m 500% better looking today than I was yesterday.

“Rigor” is a meaningless buzzword being used by Wardynski and others to make something sound better than it is. Don’t be fooled by it.

Alabama Leads by Repealing Common Core

If you believe that what Wardynski is doing in this city is good for education and good for students, then by all means, call your legislators and tell them to vote against repealing the Common Core Standards Initiative HB254/SB190. Dr. Wardynski, the Huntsville Council of PTAs and Bill Gates will, I am sure, thank you for your support. Heck, Bill Gates might even send you a check. He’s certainly bought off everyone else who supports this untested venture.

If, on the other hand, you think that the changes Wardynski has wrought are dangerous, risky, untested, and harmful to our kids; if you believe that endless pointless testing kills education rather than enhances it; if you believe that children are individuals and should be evaluated as individual; if you believe that testing a child may tell you how that child is doing, but not how the teacher is teaching, then I ask you to contact your legislators and ask them to support repealing the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Don’t believe the superintendent when he tells you the sky is falling. Don’t believe the Huntsville Council of PTAs when they claim that there will be “no way to measure student progress.” Common Core didn’t exist in this state prior to 2010. I’m pretty sure that Huntsville students were well represented at colleges and universities all around the world before we bent over backwards to make life easier for textbook publishers. Believe me, they will be again.

Repealing the Common Core State Standards Initiative will be good for Alabama. And other states are starting to see it that way, too. This is Alabama’s chance to lead the way to a new educational benchmark rather than follow the lemmings over the hill.

The post Alabama Leads by Repealing Common Core (HB254/SB190) appeared first on Geek Palaver.

When the superintendent wishes to throw himself a party, he tends to do it right. Last Thursday during the Board’s Work Session meeting (which they call “work sessions” so they can exclude public comments at the end), the Superintendent had Alabama Representatives singing his praises for his PTA Superintendent of the Year award last year, had board members singing his praises for winning yet another “major award” from eSchoolNews for being a “tech-savvy” superintendent of the year, and got to sing his own praises by telling the district just how amazing the school turnaround at Westlawn Middle is going. There was precious few non-scripted moments during the school board meeting this past Thursday, which is exactly what the superintendent wants: control.

(About the only non-scripted moment must have really chapped Dr. Wardynski’s backside as it ruined his plan to leverage local support for overturning the School Calendar “Opt-Out” bill into support for the Local Control School Flexibility Act. After Wardynski and Robinson made their claims that if you like having local control over the school calendar, then you should support the Flexibility Act, Senator Holtzclaw stood to point out that the Calendar “Opt-Out” bill and the School Flexibility Act are two separate bills. You could see Dr. Robinson’s face fall when he said this as she had been doing her best–as was Dr. Wardynski–to claim that the two bills were one. Thanks to Sen. Holtzclaw for stopping this farce. If only either of them bothered to read the local paper from time to time, they would have known that there were in fact two separate bills. I guess it’s too much to ask that our superintendent and school board actually read.)

For those who don’t know, a “turnaround” school is what happens to schools when they fail to achieve their AYP goals under Obama’s Race to the Top grant programs. Basically, a turnaround school loses all of its existing administration and the overwhelming majority of its teachers. In turn, the district receives a little over $1.5 million dollars for use at that school for personnel, extended learning time and “incentives” (bonuses paid to teachers for good results on the STAR test–yes, some teachers, not all, get a bonus if your child does better on a test).

The turnaround model isn’t beloved by everyone. Many low-income, minority communities across the nation are balking at the loss of local control and lack of parental involvement and input. And it seems that the data, and you know we’re all about DATA here in Huntsville, doesn’t support the claim that removing everyone from a school actually improves student performance.

But that was exactly what Dr. Wardynski was claiming on Thursday night. Here’s the video of Ms. Lynette Alexander walking the board and the enthusiastic faculty of Westlawn through the all important data that shows that the turnaround model is working. (If you would like to download the PowerPoint that Ms. Alexander was using, you may get a copy from here.)

STAR testing is AMAZING isn’t it? As are all the changes that Wardynski has made at Westlawn, including bringing in Teach for America (who made the first part of the presentation that night), and of course our beloved technology. These components led Cathy McNeal so aptly say, “I’ve never seen growth like this. It’s phenomenal.”

It’s Phenomenal

Now that we’re beyond the passion of the moment and we can think rationally about this report, let’s consider what we’ve heard.

Suddenly, because of just a few minor changes, miracles are occurring that lead a 40 year educational veteran to claim that she’s never seen growth like this.

Someone needs to let MsDr. McNeal know that when things look too good to be true . . . well, you know the cliché, don’t you?

There are a lot of interesting claims being made in this presentation. First, we start with Wardynski’s beloved STAR Enterprises Test that he brought to the district last year. This is a test that is administered across the district basically whenever the superintendent decides that he wants more data to play with. Officially it was supposed to be administered three times during the year: September, January, and March. However, the test has already been administered three times in September, October and January. It will likely be administered at least twice more in March and at the end of the year when our elementary students will sit for at least three consecutive weeks of testing with STAR, ARMT+ and the new ACT test.

District Testing

Setting aside for a moment the questions and doubts that any parent has with a district that is evaluating teachers on student test scores (remember when tests were used to evaluate students?), the district in its infinite wisdom has scheduled some form of testing every single month students are in school. Here’s a list:

• STAR Enterprise Benchmark l, Grades K-2 September 10 – 14, 2012
• STAR Enterprise Benchmark l, Grades 3-12 September 12 – 14, 2012
• DIBELS Next (K-1) and DIBELS Grade 2 Sept 17-21, 2012
• Alabama High School Graduation Exam (AHSGE) September 17-21
  • Mathematics Monday, 9/17/12
  • Reading Tuesday, 9/18/12
  • Language Wednesday, 9/19/12
  • Social Studies Thursday, 9/20/12
  • Science/Biology (both tests) Friday, 9/21/12
• PSAT October 17, 2012
• EXPLORE Grade 8 & PLAN Grade 10 – Career Inventory Section October 18, 2012
• EXPLORE Test, Grade 8 Academic Section October 23, 2012
• PLAN, Grade 10 Academic Section October 23, 2012
• EXPLORE & PLAN Make-Up Day October 24, 2012
• Alabama High School Graduation Exam (AHSGE) December 3-7, 2012
  • Science/Biology (both tests) Monday, 12/3/12
  • Mathematics Tuesday, 12/4/12
  • Reading Wednesday, 12/5/12
  • Language Thursday, 12/6/12
  • Social Studies Friday, 12/7/12
• DIBELS Next (K-1) and DIBELS Grade 2 January 3 – 11, 2013
• STAR Enterprise Benchmark ll, Grades K-12 January 14-18, 2013
• Alabama High School Graduation Exam (AHSGE) March 18-22, 2013
  • Science/Biology (both tests) Monday, 3/18/13
  • Mathematics Tuesday, 3/19/13
  • Reading Wednesday, 3/20/13
  • Social Studies Thursday, 3/21/13
  • Language Friday, 3/22/13
• STAR Assessment Grades K-8 ONLY March 18-22, 2013
• ACCESS for ELLs March 25 – May 3, 2013
• Alternate ACCESS for ELLS March 25 – May 3, 2013
• Alabama Alternate Assessment (AAA) April 15 – May 3, 2013
• DIBELS Next (K-1) and DIBELS Grade 2 April 15 – 24, 2013
• HCS ACT QualityCore End-of Course Assessments 2 – 45 minute tests – April 29 – May 2, 2013
  • English 11 (HCS Wavier Assessment) To be Announced
  • English 12 To be Announced
  • Algebra II (HCS Wavier Assessment) To be Announced
  • Pre Calculus To be Announced Chemistry To be Announced
  • Physics To be Announced US History (HCS Waiver Assessment) To be Announced
• MANDATED ACT End-of-Course tests (1 day each) SDE will announce dates To be Announced
  • English 9 To be Announced
  • English 10 To be Announced
  • Algebra I To be Announced
  • Geometry To be Announced
  • Biology (HCS Waiver Assessment) To be Announced
  • International Baccalaureate (IB) Provisional April 30-May 22, 2013
• STAR Assessment Grades K-12 April 29 – May 3, 2013
• STAR Early Literacy April 29 – May 3, 2013
• AP Exam May 6 – 17, 2013
• Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test+ (ARMT+) Gr 3-8 May 6-14, 2013
  • ARMT+ Reading May 6, 2013
  • ARMT+ Reading May 7, 2013
  • ARMT+ Math May 8, 2013
  • ARMT+ Math May 9, 2013
  • ARMT+ Make Up May 10, 2013
  • ARMT+ Science (Grades 5 & 7) May 13, 2013
  • ARMT+ Make Up May 14, 2013

This is the official list, but it doesn’t include everything like the additional STAR Assessment that was administered in October. If you total the days by age group, you’ll find the following:

• K-2: 43 of 180 days
• 3rd-8th: 42 of 180 days
• 9th-12th: 59 of 180 days.

This is what the district was “celebrating” last Thursday.

And if you think that’s bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Race to the Bottom

Remember when Ms. Alexander was talking about the “phenomenal” growth? I wonder how such growth could be achieved?

Well, it happens because every student who doesn’t benchmark on the first STAR test in September (or presumably October) has the benefit of taking a STAR practice test every single week of the year.

That’s right. Our lowest performing students are taking the STAR test every single week until they begin to “grow” in their performance. The STAR test evaluates two subjects: reading and mathematics. It doesn’t evaluate science, technology, history, biology, physics, social studies, civics, or even a skill as basic as writing. We are testing students from kindergarten through twelfth grade (yes, some 12th graders are being evaluated regular on their ability to read).

You know the educational reformers, like Wardynski, used to claim that their reforms would make our schools the envy of the world. I wonder how many other nations in the world are envious of twelfth graders who can read? Race to the Bottom would be far more appropriate and honest, don’t you think?

But wait, it gets far, far worse.

“Phenomenal” Growth Explained

Remember that growth that was too good to be true. Well, once you realize that these students are practicing this test every week, it becomes a bit easier to understand.

But even growth at that level isn’t sufficient to gain Wardynski’s praise. It has to be higher. And so, we add to this mixture “incentives” for teachers to increase their growth. At Westlawn alone, as a part of the “turnaround,” teachers are receiving financial incentives to improve their students’ grades. So far the district has distributed $80,000.00 of a budgeted $355,392.00 to incentivize teachers to help their students grow.

Westlawn has 43 “teaching staff.” If half of them have received an incentive to improve test scores, we’re taking about a $4,000 bonus for half a year’s work with an additional $275,392 remaining to be spent during the second half of the year.

Imagine how much of an incentive it would be to someone making $36,144 a year to be offered a $4,000 bonus. That’s an 11% raise. And that’s assuming that half of the teachers are receiving this bonus. There’s no way the number is that high.

But wait again, there’s still more.

In addition to being “incentivized,” some teachers at some schools are being allowed (or are breaking the rules and doing it anyway) to give the actual STAR test to their students multiple times. When a student takes the test multiple times, even if the test is randomized, they’re going to show growth.

This is the environment that Wardynski has instituted in our district. It’s an environment where school is pitted against school. (You’re only “successful” if your scores are higher than other schools.) It’s an environment where teacher is pitted against teacher. (You’re only successful if you’re better than your peers. That’s why some teachers names appear on the STAR data report while most don’t. Only the best are worth acknowledging.)

It’s an environment where teachers have a significant financial incentive to produce “growth” as measured by a flawed tool. It’s an environment where teachers jobs are being threatened if they don’t produce “phenomenal” growth. It’s an environment where a tool that was designed to evaluate students is instead being used as the primary evaluation tool for teachers. (Can some of our world famous engineers please explain to Wardynski–who likes to claim that he is one–the fallacy of using a tool designed to evaluate students being used to evaluate teachers?)

Testing To Death

This will result in the death of education in our district.

1. Education is only concerned with passing the test in Huntsville City Schools. We test constantly leaving no time for anything else. Forget about art, music, or dance, there isn’t time for social studies, history, or science. That’s right, Rocket City doesn’t have time for science anymore.
2. Testing isn’t focused on evaluating students anymore but rather teachers.
3. Teachers are being placed in a position where cheating to improve test scores will be seen as a necessary survival tool. And we know from our neighbors in Atlanta just how that will turn out.

The district knows that these are issues, but they continue to head down a path towards destruction simply because our “Strong Leader” wishes it. No one is willing to stand up to him and tell him that his policies are killing our schools.

Opt-Out

So what can we do?

1. It’s time to organize and boycott the test. The STAR test, no matter how wonderfully your child is doing, is not being used to evaluate your child. It’s being used to evaluate your child’s teacher. In other words, your child is being used as a tool to abuse the very people who are trying to help them. It’s time to say that you opt-out of this abusive system.
2. It’s time that teachers, like their brothers and sisters in Seattle, Chicago, and New York band together and opt out as well.
3. It’s far past time for organizations that claim to support teachers like the Huntsville Education Association and the Alabama Education Association to quit making it easy for Dr. Wardynski to use our children to abuse our teachers. Twice last Thursday, Dr. Wardynski praised Rex Cheatham, HEA Uniserve Director, and Shirley Wellington, President of HEA, for their cooperation and support as they move the district toward a model that bases evaluations of teachers on student test scores. Who exactly are AEA and HEA working for here?

We can still save our schools, but we have to work together. Parents have to realize that having a child score on a 10th grade reading level and an 9th grade math level in the 4th grade doesn’t mean anything at all except that your child can take a standardized test. It doesn’t mean that they’re 5 or 6 grade levels ahead.

You’re being lied to. What it means is that the district is not teaching them science, history, social studies, art, music or even writing.

We can still save our schools if teachers realize that they do have power to fight this abuse.

We can still save our schools if organizations designed to stand for teachers actually begin doing so.

We can still save our schools if we care more about education than we do turning a profit for business and industry, which is all that Wardynski and the Board of Education are concerned about.

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I’m well aware by the questions I’m asked that my readers are among the most educated people in Huntsville, so I need your help with a central question that is at the heart of every single posting I’ve written over the past year.

It’s a question that I cannot, and should not, attempt to answer on my own. Any individual’s answer is insufficient. This is a question that must be answered by a community, by a neighborhood, if you will.

And so, I ask you, my neighbors, what does it mean to you to be a well-educated person?

Please feel free to be as descriptive and detailed as possible. And as I tell my students every day, specific examples are always welcomed.

For example, when I think of a well-educated person, I don’t think of qualities or traits. I think of a specific individual. (Well, I think of many individuals.) Some of these individuals are as degreed as is possible like many of my college professors. Some of them have a high school diploma.

So help me to develop a collection of traits and qualities that we as a community value and think that our schools, colleges, and universities should help to provide.

Perhaps you could imagine that you are developing a curriculum for your own child. What ideas, concepts and traits would you consider to be important as they develop their education?

So, what does it mean to be a well-educated person?

The post What Does It Mean to be a Well-Educated Person? appeared first on Geek Palaver.

Yesterday I argued that Dr. Wardynski was hoping to divide the city of Huntsville over the issue of Special Education funding. He seems to be hoping that he could silence me and others of his critics by showing that special education costs more than regular education.

As I have seen with the special education community, I am hopeful that the general community will not succumb to his appeal to fear of the unknown, uncertainty about the true nature of the disabled, and doubt that something like autism is an actual illness warranting additional expenditures. But fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) are powerful weapons in the hands of a politician skilled in handling them.

And Dr. Wardynski is skillful indeed.

He’s benefited from the FUD that Dr. Richardson created when he endorsed a laughably pathetic demographer’s report that recommended the closing of nine schools in the system. Now many of those schools are afraid to ask questions about future plans of the superintendent for fear that “the state will close us down.”

He’s benefited from the FUD that he created when he immediately moved to fire teachers and principals, move principals around, or simply close schools on his own.

He’s used FUD as cover to hide his true plans as when he removed the letters from Lee High School the day before the board meeting in which the board voted to spend at least $1.7 million dollars to hire teachers who aren’t qualified to teach.

And he’s used it to attempt to divide the community over the issue of special education funding.

So let’s handle the disclaimers right up front. Yes, my son is one of the 2,445 students in Huntsville City Schools with an IEP. Yes, these cuts directly impact the quality of the education my son is receiving, and so I have a vested interest in this issue. I benefit from your interest in this issue. It’s true.

But it’s also true that your child is hurt by the cuts to Special Education as well.

Here are a few reasons why you should care about Special Education funding:

All kids have special needs. No kid is truly non-exceptional. There are areas where some children excel and where other children lag. A good educational system makes every effort to meet the kids where they are and help them get to where they need to be. Wouldn’t it be a better system if Dr. Wardynski looked for ways to meet the needs of the children rather than for ways to divide the community? Wouldn’t your child benefit from a system that sought to meet his or her needs? If it becomes acceptable to refuse to meet the needs of exceptional kids, it will become acceptable to refuse to meet the needs of all kids.

If Wardynski can cut SPED funding by $7 million with all the protections afforded to SPED by federal law, no program is actually safe. What makes you think that he won’t cut funding that directly impacts your child next? Music, art, and laboratories all cost money that could quickly and far more easily be cut than SPED funding. If you believe having a friendly relationship with the man will help, if you think that having a PTA president who meets with him regularly makes a difference, you should reconsider. If the superintendent isn’t concerned about violating state code and federal law, there’s no reason to think that having a friendly relationship will matter to him.

It could happen to you. The third point is a harsh one. You should know that in so far as my wife and I are aware, we did nothing to cause the boy’s autism. The national autism rates are 1 in 110 children. Last year in Huntsville the rate was 1 in 60 and those are just the numbers in Huntsville City Schools. They don’t count the hundreds of SPED parents who have long since given up on the school system actually doing their job of educating all of our children. We have good to great insurance, but autism is not covered in the state of Alabama. For the first two years after the boy’s diagnosis, we spent, on average $23,000 a year on private therapies.

As amazing as the gift of life is, it is also amazingly fragile. All it takes for any one of us to require extensive support and additional services is a single slip, a wrong turn, or standing up too quickly. I hope and pray none of you have to experience something like that, but I am certain that many will. In fact, I find it hard to believe that most of you don’t already know someone with a special needs child. When this happens to you or someone you know, how will you cope? Will having an underfunded special education program make much sense to you then?

Special Education is the last best hope for correcting the pattern of teaching to the test. Many of you may believe that it’s pointless to try and educate a special needs child. You may believe that they cannot be educated. Frankly, I know this isn’t true because I’ve seen the vast leaps my boy has made. But I am convinced that this is what Dr. Wardynski believes. He believes that we are wasting money on educating special needs kids. This is why he submitted a budget that cut $7 million dollars from SPED in a single year.

This is what hiring someone with no educational experience buys you: a leader unconcerned with teaching anyone who needs a little extra help to learn.

Do you think your child might occasionally need a little extra help to learn? In the system that we’re rapidly becoming, you won’t receive that help from Wardynski’s schools. His focus is entirely on testing. It’s on testing because people who don’t understand education assume that passing the test is all that matters. Special Education is the last bastion of education where the process is designed to meet the needs of the child rather than to meet the needs of the test. You should care about this because if Wardynski has his way, our system will be reduced to doing nothing in a classroom that can’t be done by a test proctor. This is his goal.

But finally, if these reasons aren’t persuasive enough, you should care about the cuts to special education funding because it’s the right thing to do. Plain and simple, it’s the right thing to do.

I hope you’ll join me in asking about the special education cuts. I hope you’ll join me is holding the superintendent and the board accountable for the education of all our kids.

The post Why Should You Care About Special Education Funding? appeared first on Geek Palaver.