diane ravitch

Open Letter To Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Others on The Idea of Assessment

by Jose Vilson on November 28, 2012

Chancellor Dennis Walcott Visits School of the Future

To Chancellor Dennis Walcott, David Coleman, Merryl Tisch, and McGraw-Hill Publishers:

First, I’ll mention that, since the discussions of the Common Core Learning Standards came to the fore, I’ve had a plethora of chances to immerse myself in the new vision for a quasi-nationalized education paradigm. In NYC, as usual, education policy makers feel the need to set the standard for the nation, from Bloomberg’s mayoral control dictates to the plethora of interim, field-testing, and high-stakes standardized assessments from third grade onwards. On the surface, one might think I’m at the forefront of the work done around the Common Core.

Yet, my earlier concern about the chaotic approach to transforming education via the Common Core concerns me still.

We can obviously start with Dr. Diane Ravitch’s contention that we haven’t actually field-tested whether the standards would actually get our students “college and career ready.” From a teacher’s perspective, I’d like to get more focused, coherent, and yes, rigorous about my argument.

We can talk all day about these standards and the three tenets of focus, coherence, and rigor, but without the means to make pedagogy more viable and focused on the whole child, we miss out on yet another opportunity to do something important: growing better people.

For instance, yesterday and today, New York City elementary and middle school children had to take an English-Language Arts and Math test (respectively) as part of the NYC Benchmark Assessments, with the assumption that these tests will give stakeholders a chance to see how much students learned in the past few months.

After a careful glance of the material along with conversations with students and teachers, these assessments seem to do more to assess what students don’t know than anything else.

If the intent is to help teachers, principals, and others get a feel for the tests in April / May, then why not let these parties into the assessment process rather than excluding them? If the intent is to show growth from today to the tests, then why give a test where you know the majority of students haven’t even covered all of this material? If the intent is to signal to everyone that they must raise their expectations, then why must we let them down so frequently with our lack of clarity?

From people I’ve spoken to throughout the city, we’ve had almost three re-arrangement in priorities in the last five months. At first, people thought we would have to address both New York State and Common Core Standards, specifically because the Common Core in New York State’s eyes was a draft. Then, people thought we would teach according to the first testing schedule given sometime in late August / early September.

For eight grade teachers, that meant we would teach exponents first. Sometime last week, however, the state sends out a document shifting priorities on topics again, giving some topics greater emphasis over others after almost three months of teaching.

We’re almost begging for schools to fail.

Even when schools had a clear roadmap like in the state of Kentucky, schools still dipped by as much as 35% in scores, and for good reason. Anyone familiar with the standards already sees the forestand the trees.

But we continue to perpetuate the myth that higher accountability will improve schools, no matter what the cost. After today’s interim assessment, I am convinced that, if we cannot make our school system more focused on children and their communities’ needs, we will continue to fail them, with or without a state test.

We can do better.

I’m not angry; I’m simply seeking answers. While I don’t speak for all teachers, I do speak because of them, and a plethora of other concerned citizens. Hope to hear from you soon.

Best,

Jose Vilson

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The New York Times and Why Adding More Educators To Your Panel Matters

by Jose Vilson on August 21, 2012

Last year around this time, I criticized the New York Times for not having many K-12 educators on their panel. Excuse me, for having maybe three current teachers and another handful of former teachers out of a possible 70 panelists. I laughed at the prospect of a public education system without any educators, and my own suspicions about the composition of last year’s panel made me laugh harder. It felt like the schools of the future would just have a suite of products thrown at kids with maybe a couple of people overseeing these third-party modules, collecting data on iPads while Joel Klein sits in a hub like the architect.

It feels like someone down at the New York Times heard this and the ensuing chorus of complaints (thanks in no small part to all of you who decided to retweet, big and small), so a couple of my colleagues got into the conference as panelists and audience members and reported back about the events. I nodded in approval.

This year, in an act of good faith, I decided to check the early list of panelists, and I gotta say, I’m happier with the list (notice the modifier). Since I’ve already undertaken the role of unofficial education panel ombudsman, I looked at the list and noticed a couple of improvements. First, they added a teacher and made that a prominent part of the program. They’ve also added Linda Darling-Hammond and Pedro Noguera, two of the Save Our Schools rally speakers from 2011. More importantly, there seem to be a few more school-based people on the list. Not that I agree with all their points of view either, but at least I feel like the organizers concentrated more on people within education and not simply wizards and gadget-wielders.

Frankly, I would hope a panel like a New York Times panel would have all sides of an issue represented, but that’s often not what happens. What we often see is a cavalcade of right-to-center “heroes” and AFT President Randi Weingarten, or 20 corporate deformers and NYU scholar Diane Ravitch. You rarely see a balance of all the voices that matter. Come to think of it, that includes students, parents, guidance counselors, and social workers as well.

Alas, I won’t demean progress.  I also have to admit that, percentage-wise, not many of us who teach K-12 put ourselves out there as viable candidates for panels like these. I leave that for another post.

In the interim, I’ll just say that we as teachers have a long way to go before all these major conferences recognize teachers as a critical part of the conversation, not just as participants in the conferences but as the sages on the stage. We’ve already come a long way in redefining teacher voice; now we have to activate it. I remain critical until this is so.

Jose, who will take questions now from the audience.

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A Letter About My View on the Common Core Learning Standards [Because "Shut Up" Isn't Clear Enough]

by Jose Vilson on July 23, 2012

Dear Reader,

Frankly, this post shouldn’t matter.

I’m a classroom teacher first and foremost, and am often in situations where I can readily embody what most of my colleagues believe about education and the teachers’ role in education reform. It’s a privilege at times to rub elbows with union leaders, well-known activists, and other thought leaders and sharpen those elbows when their ideas go astray from my personal beliefs. I have enough integrity that I can sit in the same room with someone with an opposing view without jumping across the table and threatening to choke the other person out. Or at least threatening to occupy their spaces on first breath.

All this to say that I don’t actually have an opinion on the Common Core Learning Standards, yet.

A year or two ago, I posted a couple of crosswalk documents from the New York State Math Standards to the Common Core Learning Standards (prematurely since I understand lots more about it now than I did back then). For the last couple of years, I’ve also attended a couple of conferences concerning the dissemination and execution of the CCLS as well. In New York City, the discussion has come to a point where, if you’re not using the words “Common Core” in a PD session or a faculty meeting, the moderator might get a frown stamp from our central offices.

On the same end, my friend JD and I had a conversation about the CC and realized that the assessment will make the standards whatever they are. The assessment will decide whether the “cool” pieces will matter. Who cares if we have less standards from K – 8 if students still get tested to death? Who cares if we have more coherent, fluid sequences for what students learn if 20-40 days out of the year get dedicated to interim and state tests for various subjects? Who cares if we as teachers have to think harder about the sorts of questions they ask of students if we constantly have to consider whether the material we teach has a high probability of ending up on the test?

Thus, I concluded with my own intuition (thinking for myself matters) that it doesn’t matter what standards lay in front of me. Pedagogy matters. Curriculum matters. Questioning matters. Coalition and collaboration matter, too. For the average teacher, these things should matter, if they don’t already. When I lay out the 180 days I have to teach, I get a good sense of the curriculum maps and pacing calendars we’ve created, and think about how I’ll deliver the lesson. I’m not thinking about Jason Zimba or David Coleman reminding me about the three shifts in their vision. I’m thinking about where my kids are in their learning, where they need to go, and how I’m going to get them there.

Yet, if you ask some people who vocalize their disagreements with the Common Core, you wonder if they’ve actually taught for more than a couple of years. Their answers sound foreign, but catchy because of its pseudo-populist tones. “I’m against the Common Core!” Great. So the average person not into education would ask: what does that mean? Now we’re getting somewhere. You’re pro-whole child education? Me too. You would like to dwindle our dependence on standardized testing and focus instead on more well-rounded assessments? I’m on that team. You’re for better integration of science, technology, engineering, and math with the arts and humanities? Awesome, because I am too.

You won’t hear that, though. You’ll harp instead on Randi Weingarten and the AFT’s (cautious) support of the Common Core. You’ll hang on Diane Ravitch’s non-vote on the Core as a clear sign you’re on the right track. You’ll follow some random tweeter capitalizing every other words in their tweets or interrupting your online conversations with a standard “Common Core will do that because it’s bad.” You’re well within your rights to do so. If you’re going to disagree with me, you can, too.

I’m just saying we can do better.

Whether or not you believe it, we do need a better curriculum, a better pedagogy, a better way to address education in this country, and it’s not going to come from whatever we believe about any policy or papers that come across our desks. It will come from the day-to-day interactions we have with our students, our schools, and our colleagues, professionally and politically.

If the Common Core doesn’t support the things I believe about good schools, then indeed I am not for the Common Core. Punto.

Jose

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Why The New York Times Is Asking Me To Validate Myself

by Jose Vilson on February 23, 2012

[dropcap color="666666"]N[/dropcap]ot sure if you’ve heard, but, against their own wishes -ahem-, the NYC Department of Education is releasing their infamous Teacher Data Reports, a set of papers ostensibly compiling a teacher’s student scores on English and Math scores from 3rd to 8th grade to determine their effectiveness, normalizing scores for effects like poverty and growth. For anyone that finds this as absurd as I do, you’ll know that not only is there a huge margin of error on using such a report to determine teacher effectiveness, it’s so narrow and limited that parents probably won’t get much information about the teacher they seek. If anything, it might obfuscate the debates that happen in principal offices and households when kids vouch for their teacher, but adults with no understanding of pedagogy point to the scales and rebuke opponents.

I said it. Twice. Diane Ravitch said it. Bill Gates said it. Yet, they’re being released in papers large and small.

Almost every outlet has salivated at the chance to put these reports out (except for Gotham Schools). At first, I thought we would just see the yellow rags like the New York Post and Daily News post these, as they proliferate the bad teacher framework. I’m sure the other media outlets like the Village Voice or Manhattan Times has some intention to do something with these reports, but by the time they do, the bomb will have already dropped on our industry.

However, the one rag that considers itself the vanguard for objective journalism is the New York Times. While I’ve shared my disappointment with one of their events in the past, I still understood their role in pushing forth the news of the day and the voices they’ve highlighted from Bob Herbert and Charles Blow to the inimitable ones, Stephen Lazar and Arthur Goldstein. I still read the Times a fair amount, and even when I disagree, I also get that they often set the table for certain discussions.

Thus, believe me when I say how disappointed I am in the fact that they’re asking teachers to justify their reports to them. From their website:

With SchoolBook’s partners at WNYC, The Times has developed a sophisticated tool to display the ratings in their proper context, a hallmark of our journalism.

But we want to take that a step further, by inviting any teacher who was rated to provide her or his response or explanation. We are seeking those responses now, so they can be published at the same time as the data reports.

If there were special circumstances that compromise the credibility of the numbers in particular cases, we want to know.

We plan to include those responses alongside the ratings themselves, so readers can consider them together.

No. I don’t want to justify or get validation for whatever the reports say about me. With this huge body of evidence and the growing backlash against such reports, why would any respectable publication diminish their own journalistic credibility by publishing them and systematizing them in their website? I have serious doubts about the validity of doing this insofar as asking teachers to contribute to the further deprofessionalization of teaching.

The logic is simple: if we give in to telling the New York Times about our data reports, then we’re actually responding, and by responding in the manner they’ve chosen, they’re actually telling us to defend ourselves in the court of public opinion.

I get that it’s the New York Times. I also get that the UFT chapter leader Michael Mulgrew encouraged us to give in to the process, probably as a form of protest. I respect that this is an opportunity to talk to the establishments that need our assistance in this matter. However, I just don’t think this is the right way to go about it.

All these intangibles I can’t quite calculate, and all these numbers I’d rather not validate.

Jose, who just won’t accept it …

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My Very Real Takeaways About the SOS March

August 2, 2011 Jose

Allow me to keep it real with you all. Not that I need to ask permission: 1. First, I’d like to thank those of you with encouraging words about my recent speech / poem at the Save Our Schools March in Washington, DC. It’ll certainly be a moment I’ll never forget. For those of you [...]

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On Malcolm X And The Importance of Public Opinion

May 22, 2011 Jose

For the last few days, some of my fellow math teachers and I have been grading the NYS math test in an elementary school in Harlem. It’s been great because I get to wake up at 7 instead of 6 and still get to “work” on time. Yet, the warmer weather and my natural inquisitiveness [...]

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The Education Grassroots Ascends (#EduSolidarity, Great American Teach-In, and Save Our Schools)

March 21, 2011 Jose

I have the privilege of being a part of a triumvirate of grassroots educational movements that I hope will change the landscape of the local and national discussions around education. Passionate. Provocative. Inspiring. Participatory. First is #EDUsolidarity, an effort born from the mind of Steven Lazar, union leader and acclaimed social studies teacher in the [...]

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An After-Thought on My Teacher Pay Article On Huffington Post

January 9, 2011 Jose

First, I’d like to say that writing for Huffington Post has been a mixed bag of treats. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed writing unique, policy-driven perspectives there alongside the likes of Mike Klonsky, Kenneth Bernstein, and Diane Ravitch. For the most part, the comments have leaned towards rational and focused on the topic at [...]

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Education Nation: So Let Me Get This Right The First Time

September 26, 2010 Jose

Let me get this straight: If I put a cabal of pseudo-educational leaders together in one small panel and parade them around different shows and news outlets, start up conversation pages but prevent all voices to participate, rile up a fringe group of educators who laud the likes of Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson, and [...]

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