Education Week - May 22, 2013 - 26

ed

S KEY.
OTE)

1/2 col.

1/2 col. V
26

EDUCATION WEEK

n

MAY 22, 2013

LETTERS to
the EDITOR
Dissenting Voices Shortchanged
In New Orleans Article
To the Editor:
As featured subjects of the article “New
Teachers Search for Place in New Orleans”
(April 24, 2013), we would like to share our
reactions to the story with Education Week
readers.
The article highlights many points that
we were happy to see in print, such as the
high percentage of inexperienced teachers
in post-Katrina New Orleans and the
changed racial makeup of the teaching
force. We found the framing of the article to
be misleading, however.
By quoting numerous spokespeople for
the corporate-reform agenda (Teach For
America, the Recovery School District, and
charter school chains, among others) but
only quoting two of the many dissenting
voices in the city, this article diminishes
the multiracial, intergenerational
movement of locals and transplants,
including parents, students, and educators,
that has been resisting this antidemocratic restructuring of New Orleans
public schools since the start.
A more balanced report would
have included quotes from research
organizations such as Research on Reforms
or the Urban South Grassroots Research
Collective; or parent-advocates like Karran
Harper Royal or Ashana Bigard; or
interviews with high school students Terrell
Major or Meagan McKinnon of United
Students of New Orleans about their
experiences with tfa teachers; or veteran
teacher and United Teachers of New
Orleans Vice President Jim Randels about
the rich history of community-led efforts to
improve schools since long before Hurricane
Katrina.
Ignoring these voices reinforces the false
narrative that black New Orleanians were
not, and are not, engaged in the work of
improving their schools. We hope to see
this community-led movement portrayed
respectfully by Education Week in the
future.
Hannah Sadtler
Derek Roguski

n

WHAT DO YO

www.edweek.org

WHAT
DO YOU
THINK?

I recently came across the following
“assessment prompt” imposed on 8th grade
English teachers in a high-achieving school
system by a common-core “consultant”:
“After researching the people and events
surrounding the Russian Revolution and
reading Animal Farm by George Orwell,
write an informational essay that defines
allegory and explains how three events and/
or characters in the novel are parallel to
events and/or people in Russia during its
revolution and the reign of Joseph Stalin.
Support your explanation with text-based
evidence from Animal Farm and your
research. Be sure to include why this is
relevant in today’s world in your conclusion.”
Raters are to look for “accurate use
of content-specific vocabulary,” such as
“Communism, Socialism, corruption,
Marxism, Bolshevik, propaganda.”
This is a ludicrous assignment at any
educational level. Did no one in the central
office check this consultant’s application
of Mr. Coleman’s educational views to
the curriculum? Didn’t English teachers
complain? Did no 8th grade student
complain to a parent? This is hardly the first
such example to reach the media.
Why haven’t the media asked literary
scholars for their views on what incoming
high school freshmen should have read?
Surely they must want more than 7th grade
reading skills.
Earlier this year, Renaissance Learning
Inc. came out with its latest report on what
American students read, based on a survey
Send to:
conducted in fall 2012 about the preceding
academic year. The average level of what
kids in grades 9-12 read in school year
Letters should be as brief as possible,
2011-12 reached a new low on the readingwithdeveloped by Renaissance,
level scale a maximum length of 300 words.
dropping further below a 7th grade reading
level than had been the case in 2010.
How far must we decline before naive
governors and state legislators realize they
must construct an alternative public school
system?

Write a letter
to the editor!

ewletter@epe.org

1/4 col. v
Sandra Stotsky

Professor Emerita of Education Reform
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, Ark.

WHAT DO
YOU THINK?
Write a letter
to the editor!

New Teachers’ Roundtable
New Orleans, La.

Editor’s Note: Parent-advocates Karran Harper
Royal and Ashana Bigard; high school junior
Terrell Major; United Teachers of New Orleans
staff members; and former New Orleans
public school teacher Damekia Morgan were
interviewed for the article. Although they were
not quoted, the reporter drew on their views in
framing the story.

‘Cold’ Reading, Common Core
Limit Students’ Literacy Gains
To the Editor:
Where is the national conversation on
what should be taught in the secondary
English class and how? How was one
person, David Coleman—known as
the chief architect of the common-core
standards—able to turn the entire school
curriculum upside down, with nothing
to support his bizarre ideas on doing
“cold,” i.e., noncontextual, readings of
historical documents and reducing literary
study to less than 50 percent of reading
instructional time, all in the name of
leveling the playing field?

Send to:

ewletter@epe.org
Letters should be as brief as possible,
with a maximum length of 300 words.

Technology Provides the Means
For Rethinking Use of Testing
To the Editor:
The rifts described in the front-page
article in the May 8 issue are obviously
between adults and have little to do with
children (“Rifts Deepen Over Direction of
Education Policy in U.S.”).
This battle royal about testing, among

other issues, brings to mind how a friend
characterized it: “Traditional testing is
an autopsy.” We are arguing about how
and why, at the end of the school year,
our children are subjected to tests that
are supposed to determine the fate of the
adults who teach them and affect their
own learning experience.
That’s the way we’ve always done it, and
that’s the hallmark of the accountability
movement that was part of the No Child
Left Behind Act—itself an attempt by the
federal government to find out whether its
Title I funds were actually being spent to
help underserved students.
Wake up, people.
Incorporating technology as an integral
part of the curriculum does away with the
need for year-end, high-stakes testing. It
gives students constant feedback, teachers
daily opportunities to work on their
students’ specific needs, and taxpayers a
way not only to track performance but to
help all students achieve their potential.
Instead of the investment of so much
treasure by both sides in this emperor-hasno-clothes argument, America’s children
would be much better served if the adults
realized there is an outside-the-box 21stcentury solution that’s just waiting to be
implemented.

the comprehensive high schools have been
transformed into academies, an ongoing
structure, Alignment Nashville, ensures the
participation of employers, easing the task
of securing and coordinating work-based
learning opportunities.
Alignment of academy pathways with
economic-development needs also avoids
the tracking that the Education Trust is
rightly concerned about, assuring that all
students are prepared for high-wage, highskill careers.
Ilene Kantrov
Director, Pathways to College and Careers
Learning and Teaching Division
Education Development Center Inc.
Waltham, Mass.

Send to: e

Edc is a partner in Ford’s Next Generation
Learning initiative and has collaborated with
pai, casn, and ConnectEd: The California
Center for College and Career, which supports
Linked Learning. Edc is also a member of the
National Career Academy Coalition.

1/5 H

Vendors’ Quality Is Crucial Factor
In Discussion of Privatization

To the Editor:
Your recent Industry & Innovation
Special Report (April 24, 2013) raised a
critical issue about the privatization of
public education.
Improvement needs in states and
districts often exceed the organizational
capacity, and, increasingly, private
organizations—vendors—receive contracts
to design and implement policy-mandated
programs. This form of privatization is
increasingly acknowledged and debated.
However, there is limited discussion
of the quality of services provided or
Letters should
the evidence base underlying them, in
possible, with
spite of expectations of evidence-based
decisionmaking and practice. That
length of 3
discussion should be part of the public
dialogue, as vendors are positioned to have
a significant impact on what happens in
schools.
Quality matters, and attention needs
to be paid to whether the services
implemented are likely to improve
teaching and learning. Delaware, one of
the first of the federal Race to the Top
winners, mandates that proposals from
vendors include discussion of the “evidence
of effectiveness” and the “research base
for your chosen methodology.” Laudably,
this section of the application carries the
greatest weight in the scoring of proposals.
The extent to which education agencies’
approach to the request-for-proposal
process incorporate demands for research
use communicates the value of research,
commitment to evidence-based practice,
and expectations for quality. Services
purchased to support our schools
ought to be grounded in evidence that
implementation will improve teaching and
learning.
In my research, I have found that not
all vendors draw on research or other
evidence, nor do they rely on a common
body of evidence in designing services. This
is a red flag when investing in vendors,
as the likelihood of desired outcomes is
unknown.
As we debate the issue of privatization
in public education, these issues of quality
should be central to the conversation.
Through that dialogue, we can improve
the quality of both the process of acquiring
services and the services themselves.

WHAT DO YOU TH

Gisèle Huff
Executive Director
Jaquelin Hume Foundation
San Francisco, Calif.

The author is also chairman of the board of the
Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive
Innovation, based in San Mateo, Calif.

Alternative-Pathways Story
Omitted Career Academy Model
To the Editor:
The article “States Seek High School
Pathways Weaving Academic, Career
Options” (April 24, 2013) highlights
several promising efforts to address the
need for career pathways modeled on the
European apprenticeship system. The
article doesn’t mention the career academy
model, one particularly successful approach
to preparing young people for a range of
postsecondary and career opportunities tied
to economic-development needs.
Career academies, started in Philadelphia
in 1969 and supported there today by
Philadelphia Academies Inc., or pai, are
backed by research demonstrating their
positive impacts on academic outcomes—
including attendance, grade point averages,
graduation rates, and college-attendance
rates—and labor-market outcomes.
A number of initiatives across the
country promote this movement to
provide industry-themed pathways
that bring together rigorous academic
learning, technical education, and workbased learning to prepare students for
postsecondary education and careers.
In addition to pai, these include Linked
Learning in California; the National
Academy Foundation; the College & Career
Academy Support Network, or casn, at the
University of California, Berkeley; and the
National Career Academy Coalition.
Pai also serves as a hub for the Ford Next
Generation Learning, or ngl, which goes a
step further by engaging all sectors of the
community (employers, civic organizations,
and postsecondary institutions) in aligning
resources to transform secondary schools
and the workforce development system.
Ford ngl’s mobilization of community
resources is particularly effective in
addressing a challenge the article identifies:
providing students with intensive workbased learning experiences. In Nashville,
Tenn., a Ford ngl community where all

Write a
to the e

Send to:

ewletter@

Elizabeth Farley-Ripple
Assistant Professor
School of Education
University of Delaware
Newark, Del.
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - May 22, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 22, 2013
