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Invitation to the Testing Insanity

4/28/2015

 
TN Parents invite all lawmakers, those involved in making public school policy, and all supporters of public education to participate in the TCAP testing season by volunteering as testing proctors at their local schools.

You should participate in the education laws and policies put in place for the public school students in the state of Tennessee. TN Parents feel being in a classroom during testing can help you better understand how testing takes place and how children participate in the process. Come see your laws in action. 
 
Right now your local schools are looking for TCAP proctors. Many parent and community volunteers are needed for our schools during TCAP assessments which will take place this week. During this time proctors are needed to help teachers monitor student test taking during the day. As a TCAP volunteer you will be asked to watch the children while they are being tested. A classroom teacher will also be in the room.

Volunteers will be asked to be available for monitoring over a 2 1/2 hour period which will include a required power point online training prior to the testing. Monitors are asked to be there when the schools open. The opening time for each school varies. Please feel free to volunteer for one day or several days. Your commitment and support is greatly appreciated! This week is what is known as crunch time for teachers and students.  After at least a month of test prep, and an entire school year of practice tests, it is time for students to take the real test.

We would appreciate your participation.


Words from a Metro Nashville School Mom who volunteers in her children's schools:
I just proctored an English-Language Arts TCAP test for some special education, middle school students. A teacher read the test to the children. The test was almost 3 1/2 hours long--with a short 10 minute break. I saw children who were panicked, confused, detached, exhausted, and disheartened. I can guarantee that these children were not able to demonstrate their knowledge on this test. Those who support the use of TCAP to assess student learning and teacher effectiveness are either unaware or lacking in human emotion. There is nothing I can do to change those who lack empathy. But I can work on changing the opinions of those who are naive. I am Facebook friends with several elected officials. I want to ask each of you to go to one of your neighborhood schools tomorrow or Thursday and proctor the TCAP for special education or EL students. Please take a bit of your time to witness what our state is inflicting on our most vulnerable children.

Actual image from TCAP proctor training:
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One teacher, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect her job, wrote this on a state survey and posted it to a closed website of teachers.  With her permission, we are sharing it with our readers because this message needs to be heard:
Standardized testing prep has monopolized the majority of my classroom instructional time.This has not just been in the past couple of months. This is since August. Whether it be Discovery Assessments or state end of the year testing, we are constantly looking at some sort of test data, preparing for the next test, or actually taking the test. The students are over tested and by the time the "real" state test comes they are simply too tired, they don't care anymore, or they're too terrified to perform.

We as educators are cramming information into our students' little heads because test scores are our livelihood and now will be our PAYCHECK. Teachers are beginning not to care whether or not the children retain the information, as long as they know it for the test. This is not what school is. This is not what learning is supposed to be. We have lost our way in education and we are not performing with the rest of the world. However, if you look at the rest of the world in comparison with what we are doing; they are POLAR OPPOSITE. The over-testing has got to stop.

Come to a school and ask students the last time they had recess, painted a picture, made a sculpture, created a diorama, did a silly dance, or giggled with their friends while socializing in the cafeteria. Our children are growing up to become violent criminals who don't care about society or its consequences. Perhaps if we transform school back to what it used to be (a caring, loving environment that encourages students to dream and think and love school), these kids will think before they act. They will have learned something from their teachers other than how to bubble in an answer choice and use process of elimination. Please, help! It's not too late to fix this. Thank you.

Why TN Parents think it is important that you Proctor:

Desperate for higher scores, some schools are offering bribes for students to do well on the TCAP...  The top scoring students can win bicycles, DVD players, ipods, ice cream, and fast food lunches.  At least one school in TN is giving away $200 cash to the top score in the school.  A  charter school in the state even shames students by making them wear different colored shirts based on their test scores.

This is sad.  This is wrong.  Please, stop this testing insanity!

UPDATE: Creating a law for only a few hundred students

4/22/2015

 
Unfortunately, the limited IEP voucher bill (HB 138) passed in the House today, squeaking by with 52 votes (50 were needed to pass).

During deliberation on the House floor, Representative Deborah Moody (who was carrying this bill for Senator Gresham) insisted several times that this bill is NOT a voucher bill.  She said it is simply a way to give money for education to parents to provide an alternate education for their children.  Call us crazy parents, but if it looks like a voucher, smells like a voucher, and quacks like a voucher...  people are going call it a voucher.


Two different times, Representative Moody was questioned about where eligible parents could spend this voucher spending account.  She could not provide answers until the bill had passed, which caused one Representative to remark that it reminded him of someone in Washington DC that said a similar statement about passing a bill to find out what is inside.  One Representative even wondered if the money could be spent on lottery tickets, Slim Jims, and beer?  There was laughter, but still no clear answer.

Representative Matthew Hill made some insightful calculations that this would provide about $550 per month for a disabled child's education, which is not nearly enough to educate a child with special needs.  In addition, these voucher spending accounts open the door to predatory companies and organizations that may prey upon parents.  Other Representatives brought up valid points about the importance of SPED students being included in the mainstream with peers in public schools, and the fact that these dollars have no accountability attached to them.  

Representative Hulsey applauded the teachers and schools in his district, and said that teachers were offended by this bill.  It said that teachers have jumped through state-mandated hoops for years, but this bill says that people can leave to escape to a system without mandates. He brought up an excellent point that, "if the private school sector can offer that which the public school sector can not, perhaps we should take our foot off the public sector and allow them to do the same!"

Representative Forgety had some excellent points, too.  He had obviously done his homework!  (Maybe he even read our previous email?)  He brought up, in a very southern genteel manner, the fact that under this similar program in Florida, the McKay Scholarship Program, that nearly "50% of youngsters had no data" and there was virtually no "a-count-a-bill-ity." 


Furthermore, to accept this voucher money, parents must agree to waive their rights to FAPE, a Free Appropriate Public Education for Students with Disabilities.  This was designed to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal funds.

Is it even legal to require parents to waive their child's legal rights for FAPE in exchange for money?


It is interesting to note that Speaker Beth Harwell voted for this voucher bill.

There is talk of petitioning Governor Haslam to veto it, but it is doubtful he will listen to real parents or real educators.  He is most eager to privatize our public schools, even if it is a little voucher duck squeaking by in order to open the door for the elephant vouchers to barge through next year.


Don't be fooled, this is a bill to say that Tennessee has vouchers.  This BRAND NEW Government Department of the TN Department of Education and coordinating with the Department of Health will require your tax dollars to operate and oversee.  The public will simply use blind trust that it will operate without fraud or legislative oversight.  Congratulations, Tennessee, unfortunately, you now have vouchers!

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Creating a law for only a few hundred students?

4/22/2015

 
After a brutally long meeting yesterday for the House Finance Committee, a limited voucher bill was wearily passed on to the TN House in time to be voted on today.  If it passes, after years of vouchers being voted down time and time again, it will open the door to vouchers in TN.  

To get this bill through, legislators had whittled it down to only include students with certain specific disabilities.  There are only 18,000 children in TN that would be eligible.  The state estimates that only 1-2% of eligible students will even use these vouchers.

This is passing a law to create a program for only 180-360 children.

This program will require an expensive, dedicated NEW department and staff at the Tennessee Department of Education to manage it.  

Nobody can name a single decent private school that will accept these students for the voucher amount.

The only SPED services in rural areas typically reside within the public school system.  Rural students taking advantage of vouchers may have to drive long distances to replace what their district provides.

SPED law allows the state to pay for outside services if the child's needs are not being met at the school level. So why do we need vouchers when parents can already pursue added services outside the public school system if needed?

If the state is truly worried about the oversight of public school spending, then why try to oversee individual voucher spending?  What happens if voucher money is misused?  Those children are still entitled to a free education in their district's public school, even if their voucher funds are gone.  


It is important to know that this is how vouchers got their foot in the door in other states, too. "Similar programs in both Florida and Arizona started small and expanded - Florida's now costs more than $150 million annually. And the Florida program has been plagued with fraud and abuse," wrote Andy Spears, an expert on education issues in TN.  

Don't be fooled, this is a bill to say that Tennessee has vouchers.

Desperate attempt for vouchers

4/22/2015

 
"I resent that these men are tearing down their community’s public schools. They claim they want to “save poor kids from failing schools,” but the schools aren’t failing: the politicians are failing the schools. Poor kids can’t learn when they don’t have access to decent medical care, when they don’t have enough to eat, when they are deprived of necessities that advantaged families take for granted. Poor kids will learn better if they have smaller class sizes, experienced teachers, and a full curriculum instead of incessant testing. By cutting funding and sending it to religious schools, the Texas legislators will guarantee larger classes and a stripped-down curriculum.Furthermore, while they won’t pay for what kids need, they have set aside millions for the inexperienced temps called Teach for America, most of whom will disappear after two years." 

"I am proud to be a native Texan, but I am not proud of the men who are destroying the public schools that educated me and my family and made it possible for me to go to a good college."


"If I were in Austin, I would say to State Senator Larry Taylor and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick that vouchers and tax credits (backdoor vouchers) hurt the great majority of children who attend public schools. I would say to them that they should take a trip to Milwaukee, which has had vouchers for 25 years, and is one of the lowest scoring cities on the NAEP federal tests. I would tell them that poor black children in Milwaukee are doing worse in voucher schools than they were in public schools. I would tell them they are cheating the children of Texas, to placate their ideology and their pals in the corporate world."
 - the wise words of Dr. Diane Ravitch [emphasis added] 

Last week, an important study by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability was released regarding vouchers.  After researching the data from the voucher systems in Indiana, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington D.C., the researchers concluded that there was NO statistical evidence that students who use vouchers perform better than their public school peers. 

The report concludes, "All three core components of the Indiana Choice Legislation are designed to funnel taxpayer money to private schools, with little evidence that demonstrates improved academic achievement for students who are most at-risk. The metric in question should be and must be student achievement... It follows then that Indianashould invest its scarce public education dollars in those schools where taxpayers can expect to receive the best educational bang for their buck—that is schools that have been proven, when compared to other types of schools, to educate the most children to the highest levels. Those schools are, unequivocally, K-12 public schools."

Tennessee should learn from other states' mistakes.

How much to they earn?

4/7/2015

 
Did you know??? 

...Chris Barbic makes a larger salary than Candice McQueen?


...Chris Barbic makes a higher salary than Governor Haslam?

...Candice McQueen makes less salary than former Commissioner of Education, Kevin Huffman made? 
SALARIES:

  • Chris Barbic 
    (Superintendent TN ASD) = 
    $215,000
  • Candice McQueen (current TN Commissioner of Education) = $200,004
  • Kevin Huffman (former TN Commissioner of Education) = $208,280
  • Bill Haslam (Governor of TN) = $184,632 + money through his family's business
  • Jamie Woodson (CEO of SCORE) = $329,156
  • Average salary of a teacher in TN = $45,891
  • Salaries of government employees can be found HERE.  Nonprofit organizations' 990 tax records are public and can be found through many online sites including Guidestar.org.

As you consider merit pay for "effective" employees and the very lucrative privatization of public education, we'll just let the above salary numbers sink in...

Experimenting on poor kids

4/1/2015

 
A "Petri Dish."  That is what Chris Barbic, Superintendent of the TN Achievement School District, compared the Achievement School District to during an interview with Nashville Public Radio where he pleaded for more time. He said,

"There's [sic] 22 bills that have been filed right now to either try to kill this thing or pull it apart, and this thing hasn't even gotten out of the Petri dish."
Picture
Just last week, the YES Prep Charter Chain abandoned the TN ASDbecause things weren't looking as profitable as they'd planned.  YES Prep (which is a charter chain conceived and birthed by Chris Barbic himself in Texas), at the last minute, pulled out of the Memphis ASD, leaving the local school district scrambling to accommodate students.

YES Prep was quoted as saying to the Commercial Appeal,


“We are not going to experiment at the risk of Memphis students. That is not fair to them,” said Bill Durbin, superintendent of Yes Prep Memphis. After hiring staff for the coming year and spending the better part of two years laying groundwork in Memphis, Yes Prep is leaving. It has no intention of returning."

Even more interesting was Chris Barbic's response to YES Prep abandoning the ASD, 

 "ASD Supt. Chris Barbic minced few words in reaction to the charter firm’s decision, saying Yes Prep apparently was not serious about the difficulty of the work in Memphis and that it was a significant hardship to deal with a pullout this late in the game.  "This is the big leagues. If you want to play in the big leagues, the work is difficult, in the public and there is lots of scrutiny and pressure. Some organizations will hear that and say, ‘We want to step up to that challenge and make it happen.’ If you want to play single- and double-league ball, maybe Memphis is not for you,” he said.

So this is a GAME???  


The University of Memphis has plans to "experiment" and profit from poor kids, too.  Rich white philanthropists like Pitt Hyde gave a whole lot of money to start the RELAY program at the University of Memphis.  This will create a supply of fast-tracked, temporary teachers for the ASD and charter schools in the poorest areas of Memphis.  They claim it is to fill the teacher shortage, but the truth is there is no teacher shortage.  In fact, hundreds of excellent teachers last year were "excessed" in that district.  (Excessed means "not rehired.")  

The leaders and philanthropists naively think that these young, fast-tracked RELAY teachers will increase test scores of students.  In truth, these temps will lower costs of labor and replace experienced, lifelong educators like Meghan Vaziri, who was a level 5 teacher in a school that the ASD took over. (Level 5 is the top score you can get as a teacher in Tennessee). According to the former Memphis City Schools, level 5 is considered an "irreplaceable" teacher, yet Vaziri has been replaced by a temporary Teach For America teacher who only had 5 weeks of training over the summer.  Meghan Vaziri is now self-employed as a freelance artist and web developer, but she would love to teach in public schools again.  Since witnessing firsthand the ASD's failure with the students and the school she once worked in, she has been an advocate fighting against the ASD's future takeover of public schools.  She attends every public meeting she can, and she bravely speaks up.  She knows that the ASD is not working, that the average test scores of the ASD after 2 years are still not as high as they were when the schools were public schools.  About losing her job, she says she is okay, that "really the only people who were truly hurt were the children who already have too much chaos in their lives to have lost their long time teachers."  

When asked for proof that this new RELAY program would work, President Rudd of the University of Memphis could give no proof and honestly admitted in a public meeting this RELAY program is "an experiment."  The faculty at University of Memphis is outraged that this Relay program arrangement was brought to their public University in secret, and is proceeding despite their arguments and logic, despite the fact that the University of Memphis already has an outstanding teacher training college that this RELAY program will undoubtedly harm, and despite the fact that President Rudd keeps cancelling public meetings and rescheduling them at inconvenient times for people to attend.  President Rudd has now formed a "task force," to "study" the issue, but we've heard his wife has been appointed to serve on it.  Everyone knows what the "task force" is intended to do.  They are not dumb.  

Why don't these leaders and philanthropists "experiment" on their own children in private schools?  African American leaders and parents should be outraged, especially the pastors in their communities who one would think would be fighting for justice and equality for the children in their neighborhoods... but, oddly, many are not.  Why is this?  African American pastors are targeted by reformers and hailed as "visionaries" to promote vouchers for the children in their communities.  Don't be surprised when branches of private schools suddenly find building space in those African American pastor's churches and provide a lucrative rent income to their struggling congregations with your public tax dollars.  Money speaks. Like charter schools, the private schools are not equipped to handle students with special needs, disabilities, or handicaps.  They are not prepared to handle the needs of high-poverty students.  Schools will be segregated even more with vouchers.  This has happened in other states, and Tennessee will be no exception.

Tennessee Parents have an important message that needs to be heard:

Poor children are NOT an experiment.  
Poor children are NOT a game.
Poor children are NOT a petri dish.
They deserve quality public schools in their communities.  
Stop screwing around with their education!
Stop listening to overpriced consultants!
Stop listening to overpaid lobbyists!
Stop giving away our public education dollars to private entities to profit from!


Lest you think, "well, those schools deserve to be taken over by the state because they were in the bottom 5%,"  think about this: There will ALWAYS be a bottom 5%.  Even if every student in the state bubbles every single question on the TCAPs correctly this spring, there will still be a bottom 5% of schools.  Cut scores on high-stakes tests are intentionally set to have a failing percentage of students.  Middle and upper class students have a clear advantage when it comes to testing.  Tennessee Education Report rightly calls TCAP the "Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment of Poverty," for that is the data that TCAP truly shows.  This system is rigged!

Can public schools do better?  Absolutely, with support they need, they certainly can!  Have they been starved of funding and resources?  Yes!!!  The BEP has not been fully funded by the State in our children's lifetimes, so local school boards have struggled for yearswith inadequate funding to pay for never-ending mandates from the state such as expensive testing, computer requirements, and RTI2.  Across the state, and especially in poorer areas, class sizes have increased, extra-curricular programs have been slashed, and corners have been cut to make dollars stretch.  

Schools in the bottom 5% especially need additional support that they aren't getting.  They take children where they are, and they do their best to make them better.  Give them smaller class sizes and guidance counselors and watch the children flourish!  Make sure that every student's face and name is known and cherished by a staff member in their school building.  Don't let those children slip through the cracks!  Yes, this takes an investment of money.  But we can either pay for it now when the children are young and it will make a positive difference in their lives, or we will be forced to pay doubly for it in the future if those children enter the school to prison pipeline and taxpayers are forced to fund the high cost of incarceration.

Rich people and politicians often say that we "shouldn't keep throwing money at schools" and that "local districts need to better manage their money."  Ironically, their own children are in private schools with millions of dollars in endowments where they pay $30,000+ per year tuition without blinking.  Our districts in TN are educating children with a third of that or less, while PTAs and PTOs diligently try to fill in the difference through bake sales and car washes.  Before those rich people and politicians cast a stone and dismiss public education as wasteful, they should take a look at the boulder in their own eye.  What is good for their own precious upper class children is no less than what middle-class and poor children also need...  small class sizes, enrichment through the Arts and sports, safe school facilities, no common core, and no excessive standardized testing.

Show us a failing school in a middle or upper class neighborhood.  You can't.  They don't exist.  They are all in the poorest neighborhoods in the state.  Poverty is the common factor in failing schools.  Fix it, and the precious test scores will rise in Tennessee.  Treat children with respect, and not as a commodities.  Children need stability and real teachers, not charter vultures, not more testing, not common core, not temporary untrained teachers, and certainly not vouchers to mediocre private schools.  

Tennessee, we can do this!!!  

    Authors:
    real parents & real teachers
    from TN

    They are afraid to speak up and risk their jobs... They want to protect their children... This blog is for them:  Their voices need to be heard.

    These blogs are emailed to these TN officials:  
    the TN Board of Education, 
    the TN Commissioner of Education,
    the 99 TN House Representatives,

    the 33 TN Senators,
    the Governor of TN,
    every Superintendent in TN,
    hundreds of locally elected school board members across TN,
    and parents... lots and lots of parents.

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