Restrictive and Inappropriate: How High-stakes Testing & NCLB Abuse Sped Students

Friends of the the SOS March & National Call to Action blogged all this month about why they were marching in DC July 30th. And, today, we marched! I never wrote a post of my own, but this guest post by Chaya Rubenstein provides at least one reason for why I marched today and why I will continue to fight for real reform: federal education policy under Presidents W. Bush and now Obama such as NCLB and RTTT, and particularly high-stakes testing, are undermining quality public education. The effects of these policies on special education students are especially harmful and the special ed community has been especially under-represented (I, for example, have not blogged much at all about sped issues). 

Chaya is a retired special education teacher, and is a vice president of Professionals in Learning Disabilities & Special Education. In 1985, she was named Blue Island Teacher of the Year and, as such, was nominated for Illinois Teacher of the Year.  In 1999, her principal nominated her for a Golden Apple Award. Chaya is also a friend of the SOS March. Here's her post:

Not so long ago, teacher Paul Karrer's letter to President Obama in Education Week brought me to tears. Now here's another situation that brings me to tears: special education students who are forced to take high-stakes tests.

In Illinois, these tests are known as the ISATs. At the annual dinner for Professionals in Learning Disabilities & Special Ed., a colleague told me about a student in a self-contained classroom who eats paper. During the high-stakes testing of this past March, this student ate his test. In my experience, students hid under their desks, shaking, refusing to take the test. One student threw his three pointy and perfectly sharpened #3 pencils into the ceiling while loudly proclaiming, "Not taking this, not taking this, not taking this. . ." thus disrupting the other five students in the room, who then lost their concentration. The principal had to be buzzed to come and remove him, but brought him back to the room ten minutes later, saying he was now ready to test; the student repeated his previous behavior. Yet another student returned home from a vacation at 12:00 AM the morning of the test, not having gone to bed until 1:00 am. Her parents were called and yes, they insisted that she take the test; she fell asleep after the first fifteen minutes and continued to sleep throughout the rest of the testing that morning. Another student used her highlighting pen to fill in the bubbles on the answer sheet (remember, #3 pencils only!). One of MANY students with Attention Hyperactivity Disorder NOT on medication got up and wandered about the room during testing. These are but a few--I can assure you, there is no end to these stories!

The misery caused to many sped students (not to mention the loss of REAL education time spent otherwise on test preparation) aside, because they may comprise a subgroup large enough to be counted in the testing results, an entire school may not make average yearly progress. One of the most exceptional and high-performing schools in the country--New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois—was the subject of a Chicago Tribune editorial, "New Trier Gets an F." Why? New Trier did not make AYP this year because the sped subgroup had only 68% (the Math & Reading averaged together) “meet” or “exceed.” (& that percentage is undoubtedly one of the highest in the country for SpEd.—but not, according to the Feds—high enough.) At the middle school where I taught, our sped subgroup made AYP only one year out of six, but that year the English Language Learners (ELL) subgroup did not make it. The Illinois State Board of Education had been told to come up with a better form of testing within a certain time period, which it did not. Therefore, a month before the ISATs, though the ELL teachers had been given an alternative test—the Logaramos, I think—all of the bi-lingual teachers were told that they had to give their students the ISATs! All of us had been giving these tests for years, and we had begun prepping in September, using books and materials we'd already had. We, as Resource Teachers, scrambled, trying to help the teachers prep their students as best they could under the circumstances.

The result? A restructuring of our school, at a great loss to our children--a large number of teachers were sent to other schools, for example: the very dedicated and experienced art teacher (when told she was leaving, the kids asked, "What does art have to do with test scores?"); an extremely talented math teacher who had won a teaching award--sent to the Alternative Learning Center (and his kids had consistently earned the highest ISAT Math scores of the three grade levels!); the sixth grade social studies teacher who was sent to second grade (she tried, but she has been having a very difficult year, as she was a middle school expert and had never taught in the lower grades--now her job is in jeopardy); and, the learning disabilities resource teacher (whose students consistently scored well on the tests) was sent to be a fourth grade teacher. Feeling she could not successfully teach in that capacity, she resigned.

So, I ask: what was the gain here? The students lost many, many experienced, well-liked, respected and highly caring teachers because a small number of students--who shouldn't even be tested on these particular tests in the first place--did not make the grade. Many people do not understand that the alternative assessments are only given to those students who are “developmentally disabled” (the old classification was “mentally retarded”). Therefore, even if students have severe learning disabilities with social/emotional disorders, even if students have Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity (even just Attention Deficit Disorder is debilitating) and are not on medication (tending to be the case in low-income areas, where test scores tend to be lower), if the subgroup is large enough, test scores are counted, and the entire faculty is held accountable for them. (Our wonderful principal lost his position, as well.) Teachers who stayed on at the school do not think that the sped population's test scores improved this past year. (It has been said that the school did not pass this year, as well.) In fact, one of the sped teachers who was hired to replace another was recently fired for continual verbal abuse and for pushing a student. The learning disabilities resource teacher hired to replace another (this teacher not trained in specialized reading programs such as Wilson) is being re-placed into general ed reading and language position for next year.

But here is an even worse scenario: the new measure for determining learning disabilities (and it is supposed to be only for diagnosing learning disabilities, not for other learning problems) is now something called Response to Intervention (RTI), an agonizingly slow and often questionable (districts all over the country are utilizing/interpreting it in may different ways, with various, lengthy timetables) method. RTI is being used as an excuse to keep students from receiving sped services, thus accomplishing two things often beneficial to a school district, but not to the children: 1) the sped subgroup can be kept under the number that would make it eligible to be counted in the test results, and 2) school districts save money by not having to service these students.

Besides Mr. Karrer’s letter, Arne Duncan's recent dialogue in April with the Council for Exceptional Children, prompted me to write this. In it, Secretary Duncan acknowledges that sped students are testing behind the general population, and yet, even though the kids are not reading/working at grade level, they still need to be involved in this testing and must be tested at grade level in order to “raise the bar” and have high expectations set for them, so that they will be able go to college! Having been a sped teacher for thirty-five years, every dedicated teacher I know has the highest expectations for his/her students. I, for one, expected that ALL my students could succeed in college (I taught LD resource) and always told these middle school students--as well as their parents--to start researching colleges.

Yet, I ask, what does that have to do with this ludicrous testing program?! How does this help them go to college? A highly touted school here in Chicago, Urban Prep, had 100% of its students accepted to college; however, the school's test scores have been poor: the school has not made A.Y.P. It serves as proof that students can and will do well in their studies, even if they don't necessarily test well.

Finally, some time ago, I had read in the National Education Association Advocate about a group of special education teachers who did not administer state tests to their students as it was believed (as per school board policy &/or by union contract) that parents could refuse to have their children tested. As the teachers were charged to do so, they asked all the parents if they wanted their children tested. The parents said no, and the testing day(s) came and went with the teachers actually teaching and not testing their classes. Subsequently, the teachers were reprimanded for this, having letters placed into their files, along with other sanctions.

In conclusion, it is my hope and the hope of my colleagues that the mandated testing of all sped students will stop this year. Some sped students should be tested, of course, but that needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis (to be written into the I.E.P.) by teachers and parents. This is but part of a greater solution to repair our federal government’s damaging, restrictive, and inappropriate education policies, but it will help enormously. Our students deserve no less.

A View from the Right in a Left-Leaning Tower

What follows is a GUEST POST by University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Robert Kelchen. I have had the privilege of working with Robert since 2008; we have co-authored two articles, including this one on the effects of financial aid. Upon reading John Tierney's take on the dominance of liberals in academe, I asked Robert for his thoughts-- and here they are. SGR

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My name is Robert Kelchen, but many students and faculty who know me at the University of Wisconsin-Madison often introduce me as "the conservative guy" or "my Republican friend." I am used to this sort of introduction after being in Madison for four years; after all, I can count the number of conservative or libertarian doctoral students who I know on two hands. I have been told several times in the past by fellow students that I am the first right-leaning person with whom they have ever interacted on a regular basis. Prior to the passage of Act 10 (the law that restricted collective bargaining), I was one of the few students at the university to request a refund of the portion of the Teaching Assistants' Association dues that went toward political or ideological activities. This also meant that I had to give up my right to vote on issues germane to collective bargaining (the primary purpose of the union), but it was a sacrifice that I was willing to make. During the protests at the Capitol throughout the spring semester, I did my best to stay out of the fray and keep very quiet about my personal opinions.

Sara asked me for my thoughts on the recent New York Times article about why there are so few conservative students in graduate school. I had to consider the offer for a while, as making this post would make my political leanings more publicly known and could potentially affect my chances of getting a job in two years. However, I just could not pass up the opportunity to comment on this article in the newspaper of record for American liberals--and the same paper that ran a front-page article about Sara being one of a new generation of less politically-oriented professors.

My initial reaction to the article was to try to think of a conservative or libertarian professor in the School of Education at UW-Madison. To the best of my knowledge, there are no professors in the entire school, let alone my home department (Educational Policy Studies) who publicly identify as being right of center. However, this does not mean that there are no conservative faculty. A likely explanation is that faculty (and students) who do not identify with the liberal majority stay quiet about their political beliefs. The reaction of the majority of the faculty and graduate students during recent political events makes speaking out as a conservative a lonely proposition. It also means that there must exist other "elite" institutions that have a higher proportion of conservative faculty.

I do not put any stock in the Gross et al experiment mentioned in the article, which sent out letters asking for information about top graduate schools and included whether a fictional student worked for the Obama or McCain campaigns. Working on a presidential campaign does tell something about a student's political beliefs, but a student's GRE score and college performance (in addition to ability to pay) matter much more than that information. Additionally, the study only used male "prospective" applicants, a potentially serious limitation. (Not to mention that John McCain is a fairly liberal Republican who partnered with ex-Senator--and Madison hero--Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform. He is much more palatable to the left than someone like Michelle Bachmann.)

This leaves several possible explanations for why conservative students are less likely to go to graduate school and stay in academia later in life than liberals. A potential explanation mentioned in the article (and is echoed by several of the comments on the article) is that conservatives do not have the mental abilities to go to graduate school. That is entirely bogus, as noted in the article. I do not put much stock into the hypothesis that conservatives are less likely to be in academia due to discrimination on the acceptance (graduate students) or hiring (faculty) side, although this very well may be true in isolated institutions and departments.

The argument of self-selection, in which conservatives choose not to pursue a career in higher education, is the likely culprit for why I know only one other conservative graduate student in the entire School of Education. Much self-selection occurs because of how attending graduate school delays one's ability to make a reasonable salary. In "red" states, adults are more likely to get married at a younger age than those in "blue" states; the need to support a family can detract both women and men from spending an additional six or more years in school. The claim made by Peter Wood from the conservative National Association of Scholars, that conservatives choose not to pursue a graduate degree because of the perception of liberal bias, is likely responsible for part of the attendance gap. I would say that, holding all other factors constant, it is easier to be a majority liberal than a minority conservative. However, the common perception that conservatives know all other Republicans in the area or that we're always expected to engage in political discussions at the drop of a hat (or that we agree with everything that Sarah Palin says) probably do not cause many students to shun away from graduate school. The perception of liberal bias likely drives away many more students than the actual amount of liberal bias.

In closing, I would like to thank Sara again for the opportunity to post my thoughts. Next time you talk with a conservative, please realize that we are not bad people because we have different political viewpoints. Most of us, regardless of ideology or partisan affiliation, believe in the importance of public education even though we disagree on the best ways to improve the current system.

Robert

Marathon Work Time

I'm not sure how it happened, but today was on and off rainy and my girls spent 5 total hours working.  FIVE!  They have been working for up to three straight hours, but today blew my socks off.  I hung close by, reading quietly and helping when needed, but they were pretty independent.  They stopped for snacks, which they got for themselves, and came right back to work.  They worked together so well, and even made new activities with paints and sandpaper letters.  They used finger paints to cover a page, then used a finger to draw letters and numbers.  Bean spent a lot of time showing them just how, and the twins followed blindly.  It was really sweet.  I only took one photo, but we were busy with sandpaper letters, the sand tray, knobless cylinders, spindle boxes, initial sound objects,  practical life/physical skills, and movable alphabet for pink series words.  I overheard Bean say to Pumpkin and Peanut, "This is preschool AND kindergarten work, so we need each other."  Awww, sigh...

How To Spot A Great Children's Book

Click Here: How to Spot A Great Children's Book

Hey Accountability Hawks, Put Down Your Pitchforks!

I had a jumbled draft of a post written out on the Atlanta cheating scandal, but then this piece in Slate by Dana Goldstein laid out much better most of what I had been thinking. Additionally, Yong Zhao wrote a very comprehensive and thoughtful series of posts on the same topic which is worth a read. 

I already expressed the crux of my opposition to high stakes testing here, though lest some accountability hawk call me a “test hater” (though I do hate taking standardized tests), I do recognize that standardized tests can be valuable diagnostic tools as well as give valuable information. Furthermore, assessment generally, including yes, tests, is a key part of the teaching and learning process.

I also begrudgingly acknowledge that the high-stakes accountability movement and NCLB did get some kind of ball rolling. As an ESOL teacher, I appreciated that schools could no longer send English Language Learners off to the basement to be taught by the PE teacher with an extra planning period or tell them to stay home the day of the tests. I remember patiently explaining to the 6^th grade science teacher in the rural Central Virginia middle school where I was teaching that my job was not, in fact, to chaperone his nature walks, but to support him in delivering linguistically appropriate science content to our shared ESOL students.

But whereas pre-accountability, some public school kids were fed nothing and some were fed junk and some were fed a balanced but utilitarian meal, some were fed a gourmet feast, and some … you get the point, the policies of NCLB and now RTTT seem to be ensuring that most kids are fed Mc Donald’s. As Justin Baeder explains here, accountability has gone way too far. Insufficient and unhelpful teacher evaluations and seemingly no accountability in the past was no good, but unhelpful and inaccurate teacher evaluations and accountability that encourages bad practice is also no good. As my father constantly reminded me growing up, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Responding to the cheating scandal in Atlanta, various edu-leaders and pundits have declared that test-based accountability is not at fault, that instead, we must dig ourselves deeper into the high-stakes testing accountability hole, clamp down on testing security, and hunt down the cheaters. These people are constantly calling for “innovation” in education, but there’s nothing innovative about an arms race. In response to crises, this is what the invariably impetuous American political elite do: declare war on abstract concepts. The most destructive examples I can think of are: Prohibition (The War on Alcohol), The Cold War, The War on Drugs, and The War on Terror. There is arguably a War on Bad Teachers right now. It looks like we have a War on Bad Parenting brewing (I have a post on this bad idea in the works), and if these law and order and data obsessed folks have their way, we’ll have a War on Cheating.

As all these “wars” do, a War on Cheating will divert even more of our limited resources from proactive and positive forces to destructive and negative forces. In this case, from teaching and learning to test-prep and testing. There will be an even more reactive and draconian approach to struggling schools and learners than NCLB already takes. Part 4 of Yong Zhao's series of posts describes in chilling detail the testing security measures taken in China. Is this what we have to look forward to? Is this how we're going to Win the Future By militarizing K-12 assessment? If what the Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General did to this family is any indication of what cracking down on cheating will look like, it won’t be pretty.

A law and order solution to what happened in Atlanta (and New York and in Philadelphia and in DC and in New Jersey and in Florida and in. . . .) will do nothing to improve the quality of teaching and learning in our schools, nor will it stop the cheating. Rather than doubling down on what’s an already bad policy and adopting a wrathful response (speaking of which, are the accountability hawks prepared to punish those members of the Atlanta business community who were complicit?), I call for a truth and reconciliation process. Let’s examine what happened and find out what went wrong. Let’s learn from our mistakes and let's fix our broken education policies. And then let’s recognize that the best way to gather useful information from tests is to stop misusing them and remove their punitive stakes.

And then, please, let’s get back to thinking about how to best educate our children.

Caring for the Me Generation

During the past semester, a time where I constantly felt split between my academic life and my civic life, I became acutely aware of an attitude among undergraduates that perplexed me. I tried writing about it , describing what readers pointed out (in a far more articulate manner than I'd managed) was a notable lack of empathy among some students.

Since I've spent the last 10 years trying to make convince higher education institutions to prioritize their students' needs and desires, these realizations about who some of the students seemed to be and especially what they seemed to believe, made me pretty depressed. Don't get me wrong: it's not that I expect students to speak and act in one voice--far from it, given how much I value the democratic process. I don't want them to share my opinions or perspectives, but rather simply want them to formulate opinions and perspectives after asking good questions and gathering and evaluating information. But what I hope for, most of all, is their recognition that they are part of a worldwide community of students, and their strength lies in that community. I hope that such a larger sense of the world will guide them to think of more than themselves, and to act for the greater good.

Of course, what I learned from social media engagement this spring is what the Me Generation is really all about. "Me."

As it turns out, this is not at all a Wisconsin phenomenon. There's rigorous research from the University of Michigan demonstrating a sharp decline in empathy among undergraduates, based on data from 14,000 students over 30 years. Compared to students who attended college 20-30 years ago, undergraduates in the first decade of the new millenium scored 40% lower in empathy. Said one of the study's authors, this group is among the "most self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic in recent history."

The authors speculate as to the root causes, citing among other things the influence of media and social media in particular. But those are worldwide phenomena, and this is a U.S. study (I strongly suspect such trends aren't felt in many other countries). Instead, I'm betting that we have Ronald Reagan to thank. The undergraduates of the 1970s and 1980s were raised by parents who came of age under the New Deal, during times when social justice and civil rights for all were demanded and (to some degree) received. They were more often raised to appreciate the luck and good fortune that gave opportunities to them, and worked to share those opportunities with others. Not so for the undergraduates of the 2000s, whose parents came into adulthood under the Gipper, a period in which inequality blossomed, and consumption was conspicuous. They've never known a time when college wasn't insanely expensive, always assumed that the American Dream was only about individual effort, and they were listening as even the Democrats placed all of the blame for poverty at the feet of the poor (yes, I'm looking at you Bill Clinton).

Reversing this trend is absolutely necessary for ensuring the well-being of people everywhere. As the Michigan researchers noted, what accompanies an exclusive emphasis on oneself is a "corresponding devaluation of others." Such a condition tears at the web of our social life and creates conditions of anomie that increase the spread of poverty and perpetuate hatred and fear like that evidenced in recent events in Norway.

So, start now. Take this quiz created by the Michigan researchers and see how YOU compare to those undergrads they surveyed. Then decide what to do with your results.


ps. In case you are curious, I scored a 59/70, meaning more empathetic than 80% of the study's participants. Thanks Poppa.

Kids Craft, for the new cousin!

The girls fingers painted outside today, and then we cut out big capital letters to spell her name. They are so excited to meet their new cousin Lena! I'm a fan of IKEAs plastic frames, shatter proof and wonderful for kid's rooms!

iPad Lesson: Painting a Sentence and Image Inspired Writing

This is a great lesson written by Lisa Johnson @ComputerExplore. It is interesting how she always gets her students to use a series of apps and that the apps are always just the tools and not the reason for the lesson. This is a good example of how a teacher uses the appropriate technology to get their students to delve into their own learning often using tasks that reference Bloom's Taxonomy as the basis for a deeper understanding. 

Read full lesson:
http://tw.neisd.net/webpages/ljohns22/files/ela_photo%20friday.pdf

This lesson would be just as effective in an Art class where instead of writing the students were asked to create a drawing, painting or mixed media work with the same prompts. It could be used in a History class or even a Social Studies class with images from a historical event or different cultures you are studying. This really is a versatile concept from Lisa.

Anger Management

I am appalled by this malicious attack on teachers and teachers' unions by Jay Greene. He claims that teachers are engaging in mob-like behavior, are seething anger and are intimidating politicians. The irony is that I've met few teachers who are nearly as angry as Jay himself comes across.

But when the public face of the teacher unions is the Army of Angry Teachers, they no longer seem like Mary Poppins and begin to look a lot more like longshoremen beating their opponents with metal pipes.

Giant mobs of yelling protesters and blogs filled with tirades may increase the intimidation politicians feel, but it seriously undermines the image of teachers as an extension of our family.

Jay's "mob" is my "democratic gathering". Here in Wisconsin (the featured photo on Jay's blog post) there was an organic outpouring of disgust and determination as a result of Governor Scott Walker's attacks on collective bargaining and public employee and teachers unions -- and his decisions to balance the state budget on the backs of public workers and by gutting public education while steering tax breaks to corporations and providing massive funding increases to voucher schools.

Jay is mad that teachers are mad, but they have every right to be, especially in a state like Wisconsin. Have you visited Wisconsin in the past six months, Mr. Greene? Have you actually talked to teachers here? Have you seen and heard the thousands and thousands of protesters that have no vested or financial interest that nonetheless turned out en masse to speak out on behalf of others? (Clearly, these are rhetorical questions.)

This *is* what democracy looks like. The allowance of such an outpouring of opposition is why our nation was founded. Apparently, Jay's preferred answer to the Palin-esque question of "How's that redress of grievances thing workin' out for ya?" would be "It should not be allowed."

Wisconsin teachers have not and should not lie down and take the beating they've received here. Their right to bargain has been stripped. They've seen massive cuts to their pay and benefits. They're now working in public school systems that have had resources sucked out of them. They're standing up for their rights and for a far different state of Wisconsin than has emerged under the leadership of Governor Walker and his legislative Rubber Stamps.

Have teachers and their unions always advocated for and prioritized the best educational policies? Sure they haven't. Has any one education group or interest? (Greene's free market approach to education certainly doesn't represent sound policy.) Reforms can only succeed when teachers are full partners in their creation and implementation. And I will fight for the right of their voices to be heard in policy debates, in schools, and, yes, at the bargaining table.

It seems that Mr. Greene would prefer that teachers simply shut up.

Strawberry Themed Party for our FIVE Year Old!

Bean, age 5.  This year we had a tiny family party with 5 of her little friends.  We had a blast!!

Party Table, full of desserts representing the Strawberry Shortcake Characters...Strawberry Shortcake, Blueberry Muffin, Lemon Meringue, and Rainbow Sherbet!

Strawberry Pedicure

Strawberry Birthday Cake

Little guests and little sisters enjoying the treats

Decorations for the party, made by Bean.

 

Kid-Made:  Party favors for her 5 guests!

Ready for the Rainbow Relay!  It's a fun party/group game where each child gets a color, and has to paint onto the right spot to cover that stripe in the rainbow.  Then, the next person can go.  The first team to finish the entire rainbow wins!  The guests decided to go at the same time, so no one really won.  How sweet!

Rainbow Relay excitement

 

Finished Rainbow Relay, with decorative embellishments!

We HAD to paint the boulder with the extra paints...

The New Normal

Too many Americans appear willing to accept the hand they're dealt. Most shockingly, many of our political, educational and civic leaders seem to have fallen into the same trap. "The New Normal," they call it. Like Death and Taxes. Etched in stone. Undefined, yet not re-definable. Inevitable.

Fortunately, there are those among us willing to demand a new deck of cards -- and a new dealer!

We've seen the rise of the Forces For Fairness in states like Wisconsin where there is no disguising the unsubtle, in-your-face, anti-democratic, vitriolic, bought-and-paid-for policies of Governor Scott Walker, the Brothers Fitzgerald, ALEC, the Koch Brothers and their yes men and women (even the few remaining Republican moderates - if they still can be called such - who should know better). In the Badger State, tens of thousands took to the streets of Madison and are now actively participating in recall efforts to change the equation and prevent Wisconsin from being turned into a place totally unrecognizable.

Nationally, I see a rising consciousness and an emerging consensus that congressional Republicans have one-upped their Gingrichian colleagues from the 1990s in overreaching on fiscal matters. Voters do not like the draconian cuts being pushed through by House Republicans, the intransigence and obstructionism practiced as a religion by Senate Republicans, the GOP's willingness to hold America's bond rating and our economic recovery hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and an adherence to a baseless and extremist anti-tax philosophy. In a recent CBS News poll, 71 percent of Americans are opposed to the way the Republicans are approaching the debt limit debate. As well they should be.

Americans are NOT opposed to raising taxes on the wealthy to address our national debt. A recent Reuters poll found that 52 percent of Americans believed that "a combination of spending cuts and tax increases was the best strategy to reduce deficits." Republicans are so constrained by anti-tax pledges that they even believe a repeal of ANY tax cut or the closing of ANY tax loophole (even those for corporate jet owners!) would result in Grover Norquist gagging them with a mouthful of tea bags and ordering them to a permanent political purgatory.

If more Democrats had shown the courage to stand up sooner and establish the terms of the debate, this emerging consensus could have been precipitated. The likes of Vermont's Bernie Sanders have had it right for some time in the call for "shared sacrifice." Others, including President Obama, appear to be catching up to the reality that was evident to Sanders and other Progressives: Congressional Republicans are economic extremists willing to drive the American economy into the ground in order to assuage the Anti-Tax God (don't let it go to your head, Mr. Norquist).

"The Rock and the Hard Place on the Deficit", an op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times, written by Christina Romer, is one of the best articles I've read that puts the substance of this issue into context. For the benefit of you non-Times subscribers, here are some key highlights:

The economic evidence doesn’t support the anti-tax view. Both tax increases and spending cuts will tend to slow the recovery in the near term, but spending cuts will likely slow it more. Over the longer term, sensible tax increases will probably do less damage to economic growth and productivity than cuts in government investment.
...

There is a basic reason why government spending changes probably have a larger short-term impact than tax changes. When a household’s tax bill rises by, say, $100, that household typically pays for part of that increase by reducing its savings. Its spending tends to fall by less than $100. But when the government cuts spending by $100, overall demand goes down by that full amount.

Wealthier households typically pay for more of a tax increase out of savings, and so they reduce their spending less than ordinary households. This implies that tax increases on wealthy households probably have less effect on the economy than those on the poor or the middle class.

All of this argues against any form of fiscal austerity just now. Even some deficit hawks warn that immediate tax increases or spending cuts could push the economy back into recession. Far better to pass a plan that phases in spending cuts or tax increases over time.

But if federal policy makers do decide to reduce the deficit immediately, reducing spending alone would probably be the most damaging to the recovery. Raising taxes for the wealthy would be least likely to reduce overall demand and raise unemployment.

The politics behind this issue is another matter. But it has huge implications for issues like education. Too many educational advocates, policy types, and yes, even elected leaders seem all too willing to accept "The New Normal" -- and even pontificate about it -- as opposed to fight for a new deal and attempt to redefine the debate. President Obama too often appears to allow congressional Republicans to define the terms of the conversation, such as tying long-term deficit reduction to the debt ceiling, as Robert Reich noted over Twitter yesterday.

There's a time and a place for acknowledging political realities and accepting half a loaf. The problem is we've entered the second coming of the Robber Barons where the rich are hoarding their loaves of bread and too many Americans aren't getting a chance to get their hands in the dough at all. Until we address the historic economic inequality in this country and put spending power back in the pockets of working families, there is a tremendous likelihood that the economy will never fully recover. Never. That requires us -- and our elected leaders -- to speak out and act.

The time is now. Reality is what we make it. More of us have got to be willing to step up and say, "Enough!" I've witnessed Democrats and independents get energized in Wisconsin. We need a similar dynamic to take hold nationally. My guess is that it will build in time. But will it be enough to change the equation?

The forces of fiscal lunacy had better listen to the American people now or my guess is that they'll be hearing from the silent majority of sensible Americans at the ballot boxes in 2012 -- and even sooner in states like Wisconsin. If the "Republican Revolution" in the 1990s is any signal, past is prologue.

Twin Toddler Room, Updated for Preschool!

Levern and Shirley Style Montessori Floorbeds....They are big enough for box springs now.  I got two fleece blankets and did 'hospital corners' on the box springs to cover them up and make them look a little more like a big kid bed.  A big step, they are now 20" from the floor.  They are growing up!!!  Above their beds, outside this photo, are their names painted in cursive.  The bedding I made from one twin-sized comforter, cut in half.  It fits just right one them, so they don't struggle with the sheets.  Next to the bed is their bins for their sleep stuffed animals and baby dolls.

A close up view of the floor bed, update for preschoolers!

Their toys are in this dollhouse shelf, positioned as a T at the end of their back to back IKEA bin clothing drawers.  Now they have their own clothing space, whereas they were sharing just a few weeks ago.  It's all hers and hers today!!

Their tiny table, and their tiny art :)

Grace & Courtesy with Gifts

Click here: Crace and Courtesy Lesson: Gift Receiving

Hidden Control Panel accessed from your Screen

This is a quick and easy how-to from the guys over at How to Geek. It is a basic one but useful in its simplicity. Your students may not be aware of this feature. Enjoy!!!

If you upgraded to the latest iOS release on your iPad, only to figure out that the screen orientation lock doesn’t work anymore, here’s how to lock the screen using the new, annoying method.

We’re definitely irritated with Apple for making this change—the hardware screen lock was one of the best features of the iPad, and now it’s gone. At least you can still lock it.

Locking the Screen Orientation

Start by holding the iPad in the direction you’d like to lock it, and then press the Home button twice quickly, like a double-click.

The new task switcher will show up at the bottom of the screen, and then you’ll want to slide your finger over to the right to access the new screen hidden on the left.

Once you can see the new screen, click the button on the bottom left-hand side of the screen, and it will lock.

If you wanted to lock the iPad in landscape mode, you’d have to hold it in landscape mode before going through all of this.

Once in this Control Panel you also have access to your Screen Brightness, Volume Control and Play, Rewind and Skip buttons for your Music.

http://www.howtogeek.com/how-to-lock-the-screen-orientation-on-your-ipad/

Reading in an iPad Transmedia Universe: Five Real-World Issues

This is a comprehensive and thorough analysis of the issues with students using the iPad as a reader. It is written by Annette Lamb an educational consultant who has taught both at a K/12 and at a University level. There are some interesting points here that I had not considered prior to reading this article. It is one of the first academic referenced articles that I have come across that so clearly and concisely highlights the use of interactive books on the ipad in education.

Annette discusses the five main issues with students using the iPad as a reader. These include;

• Ease of use of the Devices
• A listing of Resources available
• Educational benefits
• Motivation
• Approaches to using Tablets.

This would be a must read article for anyone writing a proposal/grant submission for utilising iPads in the classroom or someone trying to convince their administrators of the educational benefits of using iPads in the classroom. We thank Annette for sharing this with us. Be sure to visit her site. It makes for interesting reading.

READING IN IPAD TRANSMEDIA UNIVERSE: FIVE REAL-WORLD ISSUES

Technology in the classroom is changing how children learn and how we teach. While some children are reading books about castles, others are using the DK Eyewitness App to explore castles.

In her article Digital Literacies, Lotta Larson (2009, p.255) points out the today's readers are "immersed in multimodal experiences and, consequently, have a keen awareness of the possibility of combining modes and media to receive and communicate messages. This awareness results in an urgent need for teachers and researchers to address the discrepancy between the types of literacy experiences students encounter at school (paper, pencil, and print texts), and those they practice in their daily lives outside the school environment (Web 2.0). One way to bridge such incongruity is to expand the types of texts students are exposed to and engaged with at school by turning attention to electronic books, or e-books".

Let's explore five real-world issues.

1 - THE DEVICES

The classroom of the future will be filled with devices that serve different purposes. There isn't one answer. Instead, there are many to fit different needs.

• Kindles. A group of advanced readers are reading novels independently.
• iPads. A reading group reads independently while the teacher works with another group.
• iPod Touch. Students refer to a dictionary, vocabulary game, encyclopedia while working on a project.
• Laptop. Students conducting research create a Glogster, interactive poster.
• Desktop. A group sits together at one computer with a large monitor working on a video production.

There are lots of ways to share Apps and e-books with the entire class.

You can hook up your device to the data projector. There are many foreign language books that are available as e-books. If you have the book on Kindle, use the Mac or Windows software to display on the big screen.

Barack Obama's Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters is available in the Kindle book format. For more examples, go to Amazon's Children's eBooks section. This book can be read on a Kindle, however it can also be read on an iPad or computer desktop. If you connect your computer or iPad to your data projector you can see the book in color.

If you have a book like Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed on your iPad, simply point your document camera at the screen of an iPhone or iPad.

Portability. I take my ibird books with when I go bird watching. With my tracks app, I can easily identify animals. Larson (2010) noted that in early studies of e-books read on larger computers, participants often complained of discomfort. However no complains were logged with the new, smaller e-book readers.

Goldsborough (2010 , p.11) pointed out the new digital readers combine the portability of books with the "search and storage capabilities" of computers.

Read the full article:
http://eduscapes.com/fluid/3f.html

Annette Lamb's Website:
http://eduscapes.com/

Affordability and Attainment in Wisconsin Public Higher Education

As I noted in a prior post, last week the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study (which I co-direct) hosted a statewide conference on the issues of affordability and attainment in Wisconsin Public Higher Education.

The research released became part of this morning's UW Regents discussion (start around 1:03).

In case you missed the event, which was attended by more than 150 leaders from all over Wisconsin, you can watch most of it on Wisconsin Eye. The main presentation of findings is here (see part1).

We will also be posting conference materials on the WSLS website soon.

Petrilli on Educating Poor Kids is Problematic

One of the few conservative edu-pundits I follow is Michael Petrilli. I disagree with him that high-stakes testing, rigid accountability schemes, disempowerment of teachers unions, and a focus on hiring and firing policies will lead us down the path towards better education. And he seems entirely too focused on specific outcomes, compared to improving the overall quality of teaching and learning. But he has some ideas worth considering and has great insights into the political process. Plus, he is reasonable, thoughtful, and open to respectful debate.

This recent post of his (and he wrote a similar one a while back) explored two questions:

"First, whether affluent parents should be satisfied with the public schools to which they send their own children. And second, whether those same parents can be energized to fight on behalf of school reform for the poor." 

Given the positive things I say above, I had to read the post several times before I figured out why it bothered me so much. 


First:

"The No Child Left Behind backlash in the suburbs isn’t due to concerns that the law isn’t working to fix urban education. Plenty of evidence shows that it’s helped. The anger comes from a feeling that the federal law is starting to make middle-class public schools worse–or at least worse in the eyes of their customers."

I agree that NCLB is harming the quality of education in middle-class and more affluent schools alike--I've not heard or read otherwise from those parents. But I vehemently disagree that NCLB "is working to fix urban education." Where's this "plenty of evidence"? Juked testing stats? I would argue, in fact, that the poorer the population of any school (which often means the lower the test scores), the more draconian and harmful the interference of NCLB. I am NOT saying that it's worthless to invest in quality education of poor kids until we fix poverty--far from it. I am saying that NCLB is interfering with quality pedagogy and curriculum in ALL schools, especially in poorer ones. 

Next:

"The second question, it seems to me, will soon be answered by Michelle Rhee’s new endeavor, Students First. Rhee’s potential donors and supporters surely include many well-educated, well-to-do parents; she is encouraging them to contribute money and time in order to fix the schools of other people’s children, not their own. (Teach For America alumni–sensitized to the plight of inner-city education–will play a key role, I would bet.) The gambit is whether a “social justice” pitch to fix urban education can resonate–and be sustained–with people with the resources to engage politically, but without a personal stake in the fight. Time will tell whether Rhee can pull it off."

So affluent people's dedication to improving education for poor children is measured by the amount of money they fork over to people like Michelle Rhee and organizations like Students First? Really? First of all, where's the evidence that Michelle Rhee is "fixing the schools" of anybody's children? And wasn't it the affluent DC residents who overwhelmingly supported her while the ones who didn't were the poorer people whose schools she was supposedly fixing? I have no tolerance, either, for Richard Whitmire's cringe-worthy thesis that the poorer, black people in DC were too ignorant and full of race pride to realize that Rhee-form was good for them.

Lobbying groups like Stand For Children and Students First give money to politicians, many of whom these days advocate for policies that are harmful to the poorer people they profess to want to help, not to schools or to classrooms. Does Petrilli actually believe the only way to help poor children is via expanding our dysfunctional, lobbyist-run political system and buying politicians? How does that help improve the quality of education for poor kids? "Fixing the schools" is actually long-term and painstakingly difficult work that requires collaboration with educators and local communities. Rhee turned her back on many of the community-based groups working for school reform in DC and many lost funding as affluent and influential citizens decided, as Petrilli seems to, that all would be will since Michelle Rhee was there to "fix the schools." A more proper measure of their dedication would be the extent to which more affluent people a) support SES-integrated schools, b) support the poorer populations and schools in their own district, and c) support grassroots and community groups that work directly with poorer families. See here, for example.

Finally,

"The best schools for children of poverty focus on all aspects of their students’ development. At the same time, they look a lot different than the schools affluent families send their kids to. They are more focused on making sure their charges have mastered the basics; they spend a lot of effort inculturating their kids in middle-class mores; they give regular assessments to diagnose progress." (Emphasis mine.)

Neo-liberals like Mike Petrilli, Matt Yglesias, and David Brooks can cite research showing that some schools (translation: KIPP) are very good at boosting some poor kids' performance. But these schools differ from traditional public schools on several dimensions: massive resources, often high attrition, longer school days, more books, longer school years, a richer and more varied curriculum, and sometimes yes, "a different school culture." I have no problem with more emphasis on basics for those who need more basics (as long as that doesn't mean reading strategies or test prep), but I have a huge problem with the idea that "inculturating their kids in middle-class mores" helps kids to succeed academically. The assumption there is that the reason these kids are poor students is due to their parents' values or morals rather than due to the lack of privilege they were born into. (And please don't tell me that when Petrilli, Yglesias, Brooks, and their conservative brethren say "mores," "moral culture," or "bourgeois norms" in this context that they mean good study habits. These men are educated and write for a living. If they meant "habits of a good student," then that's precisely what they would say.)


Petrilli's desire to help poor children and to improve the quality of our education system is genuine. Since I find it valuable to hear the ideas of those with different views, I will continue to listen to what he has to say. Unfortunately, this and other posts show that many of his solutions to the achievement gap are superficial and ideological, failing to address the roots of the opportunity gap: gross societal inequities. Furthermore, like Brooks and Yglesias, his assumptions about human behavior and the causes of poverty are based on assumptions and a philosophy which is, thus far, irreconcilable with my own.