Legislature and lawsuit help public education go in exactly the wrong direction. Again.

By Laurie H. Rogers

I was asked recently to articulate to a legislator my thoughts and concerns about public education funding and accountability. Ah, so much to say ... about funding; accountability, the Common Core initiatives, and the McCleary Decision on education funding.

Legislators love to give more of our tax dollars to K-12 education, but they aren’t good at pursuing accountability or transparency from administrators and school boards. That’s partly because they listen too much to the Edu Mob, and not enough to We, the People.

What legislators hear from the Edu Mob is usually contrary to what actually needs to be done for the children, so we advocates have little hope of ever nailing down solutions. After six+ years of advocacy, I’m profoundly tired of hearing legislators state, year after year, “Education needs more money!”

FUNDING:

Question #1: What basis do legislators have for saying that K-12 education is underfunded, or that funding has been cut, or that more money will produce a better education system?

Does anyone in the legislature know how much money is spent on K-12 education, including the school districts, the Educational Service Districts (ESDs), and the state education agency (OSPI)? Does anyone know how much is spent on capital costs and technology? Can anyone provide a comparison of how much was spent for all of K-12 education in 2002 vs. 2012? No? Then why are legislators so sure that districts need more money?

When we ask OSPI for the total costs of K-12 education in Washington State, the numbers we get likely won’t include capital costs or the costs to run OSPI. We might have to ask a few times for a total cost, and even then, we’ll probably have to dig out the truth ourselves. It's a pile of money, even accounting for inflation, and 40-50% of it does not go to the classroom.

Question #2: Does anyone in the legislature intend to find out where the money is going?

Do legislators plan to hold administrators accountable for expenditures, seek transparency for outcomes, or ensure that those who lied to the people about expenditures or outcomes are forced out, and that those who violated open-government laws (i.e. regarding public meetings, campaigning, and public records) are held legally accountable? I ask because I see very little legislative interest in any of this.

Question #3: Does anyone in the legislature care that the recent “McCleary Decision” on school funding was based on an undefined word?

The McCleary Decision resulted from a lawsuit filed against the State, which argued that the State is failing to live up to its obligation for “ample” funding of K-12 education. Driving this lawsuit was an organization called NEWS (Network for Excellence in Washington Schools). NEWS says it represents “students, parents, teachers, administrators and other citizens who are united in advocacy for public school funding.” (Obviously, the folks behind NEWS believe that increased public school funding will bring excellence in the schools.)

NEWS is largely made up of school districts and their unions (which would be happy financial beneficiaries of any decision for the plaintiffs). The president and former president of NEWS are, respectively, school superintendents Nick Brossoit, Edmonds; and Mike Blair, Chimacum.

In 2010, a Superior Court judge ruled for the plaintiffs, and in January 2012, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the decision. In an unusual move, the Supreme Court also retained jurisdiction over the case as a way to ensure that legislators would cough up the money.

The argument behind the lawsuit doesn’t paint an accurate picture of the funding situation, however. What does “ample” mean? School districts across the state have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on layers of administration, academically useless “professional development,” never-ending purchases of unproved or deeply flawed instructional materials and supplementary materials, techno toys, contracts, legal advice, food for adults, travel, consultants, new systems and programs, new assessments, administrative raises, and a plethora of other things that don’t help academic learning one bit. And when we try to find out exactly where the money went, some of them don't want to tell us.

Just one legal firm, for example, has received millions of taxpayer dollars from Spokane Public Schools, and this district uses several legal firms. Those legal expenses aren't itemized in the publicly released budget. School districts also are allowed to report expenditures within the intended program, not as a line-item expense, so they can throw all sorts of things into program categories, and they do. Expenditures for "instruction," therefore, include non-instruction items such as professional development, administrator salaries, travel and food. I requested a list of expenditures by line item, and I was told they “don’t break it down that way.”

There is a huge amount of waste in public education, much of it hidden from the public.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

Question #4: Has anyone in the legislature attempted to hold education administrators accountable for their decades-long failure to produce well-educated students?

In education, failure begets more money. Administrators therefore have a perverse incentive to not succeed. I'm not saying they deliberately try to fail, yet there are few consequences for failure, and there are huge financial gains resulting from failure, so they have little motivation to weed out incompetent administration, eliminate bad programs and curricula, or install products, people and programs that are PROVED to succeed. They don't have to police themselves, and there is no way for the public to police them. They seem to feel no sense of urgency to get it right. They just keep failing our children, patting themselves on the back for their "hard work," while fueled by an increasing number of taxpayer dollars.

Question #5: Are any legislators well versed on what a successful academic program looks like? Or, are they all taking as gospel what they're told by administrators, unions, policy makers, pro-money groups and the federal government?

Do legislators listen to parents? Do they listen to math advocates? Do they not realize that children are NOT coming out of the K-12 system well educated, despite all of the fake numbers produced by officials every spring and fall? Do they not see the physical and emotional toll on the children from not having enough academics to progress, graduate, go to college, get a job, join the military, or even fill out a job application? Do legislators not feel a sense of urgency to fix this problem now? If they feel the same urgency I feel, they certainly don't show it.

Question #6: Does anyone in the legislature care about district accuracy in reporting, with consequences for those who don't engage in it?

In 2012, local administrators told the public (while promoting their upcoming levy) that their operating budget had been cut over 10 years by just more than $45 million, while the truth -- easily located on the OSPI Web site -- is that the operating budget had grown by about $80 million over that decade. The difference is massive. How do they get away with it?

It's hard for citizens to know where public dollars go, when expenditures are allowed to be shoved into dark recesses of the budget or hidden in the category of "instruction," and when so much money every year is hidden, not reported or misspent.

As for academics, state and local reporting on student academic outcomes is annually preposterous. Happy numbers are reported with breathless, self-congratulatory enthusiasm each year, always on the rise, always worth celebrating -- and awards are handed out for amazing improvements -- yet little of it bears any resemblance to what we see in the children’s actual levels of academic capability.

The overall deceit is so huge, most people refuse to believe it.

THE COMMON CORE INITIATIVES:

Question #7: Has anyone in the legislature initiated opposition to the prospect of spending at least a billion taxpayer dollars on the Common Core initiatives -- an arguably illegal takeover of public education by the federal government?

The Common Core initiatives are unproved. There are no student data behind them to support them; they are national pilots of unknown and politically biased products. They were adopted in Washington State under a shady process, and they will cost Washington taxpayers at least a billion dollars and the nation at least a trillion dollars. They’ve already removed much local decision-making power, pushing parents farther out of the process, while promoting a biased political agenda and still not providing students with sufficient academics. They’re already leading many districts back to more math programs that lack direct instruction or standard algorithms, and to more English programs that lack sufficient grammar or classic literature.

As everyone complains about money, why are legislators spending a billion taxpayer dollars on unproved, unnecessary and politically biased products? Sorry to be blunt, but this is not bipartisan leadership; it’s bipartisan foolishness. No successful business would operate like this.

And by the way, the coming charter schools in Washington State will be using Common Core products. How does that represent academic “choice” for parents and students?

THE MCCLEARY DECISION ON EDUCATION FUNDING:

Question #8: Do legislators realize that no one involved with the McCleary lawsuit had to explain where the previous money went, or why it failed to produce well-educated students?

I can efficiently teach my daughter algebra at the kitchen table with a used textbook, a piece of paper and a pencil. Why can’t schools do the same with $12,000 per student? No one involved in the lawsuit had to itemize district, ESD and OSPI expenditures, or explain the academic failures.

No one is to be accountable for how the new money will be spent, either, or for any new failures in academic outcomes. Instead, the McCleary Decision means many of these failed administrators will get a financial windfall. Some are already counting it, preparing to spend money on things that have little or nothing to do with the classroom.

Question #9: Did anyone in the legislature question why the Supreme Court retained jurisdiction over the funding of education, essentially replacing the role of the legislature?

Legislators now must answer to the Supreme Court on funding, and they must do what the Supreme Court has decided, rather than answer to the people and do what the people have decided. As NEWS puts it, the Supreme Court ordered the State to “make annual progress reports to the court” and allowed “NEWS to respond to each of the State’s reports to inform the Court of the accuracy of the State’s claims.”

The fox now guards the henhouse – NEWS officials advised the Supreme Court on how much more money they want. You won’t be surprised to know that – on behalf of school districts and unions – NEWS decided that education requires billions more dollars, increasing each year. Legislators were ordered to pay up.

Thomas Ahearne, a lawyer for NEWS, reportedly suggested that the Court could punish legislators for not coming up with the money, by “imposing fines, cutting utility service to the legislative building or docking the pay” of legislators. What’s next? Cement shoes? An “offer they can’t refuse?” Meanwhile, We the People don’t count at all. We have nowhere to go for help or recourse.

This Supreme Court decision to retain jurisdiction over funding is a bad precedent, a vast overreach, and it must be appealed. Legislators must not allow it to stand. In Tunstall v. Bergeson (2000), the Supreme Court itself expressly warned against judicial overreach into education decision-making.

Does this country still have a Constitution and a governing system of checks and balances, or doesn’t it?

Question #10: Does anyone in the legislature know that the lawsuit resulting in the McCleary Decision was funded in part by district dollars – by taxpayer dollars?

When school districts wish to become a NEWS member, NEWS asks them to "make a public statement of support by passing a resolution" and by providing "a financial contribution to NEWS." NEWS helpfully "invoices" school districts for this "contribution."

Taxpayers therefore unknowingly helped pay for a lawsuit against the state – which is publicly funded – resulting in forcing more taxpayer dollars from taxpayers. How much money did this lawsuit cost taxpayers, not including the McCleary Decision itself? Where in district budgets are these costs? That’s a true pile-on – public agencies, their unions, their money advocates, their lawyers, and their multitude of quasi-public associations ... And now the Court... Who was there to speak up for the taxpayer?

Citizens in other states have attempted to get legislation written to outlaw being able to lobby like this with taxpayer dollars. This should happen in Washington State.

Much of the leadership in K-12 public education has repeatedly proved itself to be self-serving, unsuccessful, certain it’s brilliant, mostly deaf to the public, overpaid, overfunded, not transparent and not publicly accountable. When will the legislature stop chasing after failure, wasting gobs of taxpayer dollars on those who care mostly about money, ego and power – and who don’t even produce well-educated graduates?

This is the end of my rant. Public education, structured as it is, will never result in well-educated students. The Edu Mob’s list of priorities begins and ends with money and power, and the legislature has tended to cater to those priorities every legislative session. Things will continue this way until enough of us have a) left the broken system, and b) voted for legislators who care more about student academics and district accountability than about getting more votes and donations from the Edu Mob.



Please note: The information in this post is copyrighted. The proper citation is:
Rogers, L. (May 2013). "Legislature and lawsuit help public education go in exactly the wsrong direction. Again." Retrieved (date) from the Betrayed Web site: http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com

This article also was published May 10 at Education News at this address: http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/laurie-rogers-ten-hard-pressing-questions-for-public-education/

High school math teacher exposes the high-stakes testing myth

By Bob Dean


The belief that high-stakes testing will bring any improvement to our public schools is built on an ounce of wishful thinking, a pound of good intentions and a ton of ignorance.

Consider the recent history of high-stakes testing in the State of Washington. We spent more than a decade and a billion dollars on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) only to find that the test was deeply flawed. The WASL didn’t align with college or career readiness, and it basically tried to measure student achievement of standards that were so poorly written they were impossible to measure by any kind of assessment.

Despite these major flaws, legislators, the public, business leaders and most of the media ignorantly assumed that something meaningful was happening by requiring students to pass this bogus exam. Unfortunately, the only meaningful thing that was happening was teachers throughout our state were forced to try and teach to this test despite the fact that it didn’t align to anything that was important for students to know. The WASL was a test built around standards that de-emphasized student content knowledge and supposedly would teach students to think more deeply and become expert problem solvers. In the end, the main problem that many students now have to solve is how to go through life being mathematically illiterate.

Teachers were forced to follow this WASL nonsense even though it was against their better judgment. Even worse, despite the misgivings and resistance by many, it is the teachers who were left holding the bag when students didn’t perform well on the WASL exam. Despite the money spent by the state on this test, no more than 50% of the students ever passed the math portion, and the scores went down each year during the last few years the exam was given.

What unmasked the deep flaws of the WASL? The first year that the new End of Course (EOC) assessment was given, the state saw a 50% jump in the student scores across the state. This jump couldn’t be attributed to any improvement in what was happening in classrooms; it simply came because the EOC exams aligned more closely to what was actually being taught and the test was based on new standards which were clearer and far better defined than the old WASL standards.

So again, the legislature, the public, business leaders and most of the media hailed the passing of the EOC’s as a standard that would drive improvement in our schools and would finally hold teachers accountable to do a job they surely were not doing. Can we consider that passing the math EOC ensures that students are learning something meaningful and will be prepared to enter college or the work world? Only if you are ignorant of what is on the exams. Unfortunately that ignorance would describe the legislature, most of the public, and those in the business world and media who by “blind faith” continue to exalt these exams as the “savior” of our educational system.

The facts are that the EOC 1 doesn’t align to college readiness, and it contains numerous irrelevant topics like “box and whisker plots” and “recursive arithmetic sequences” which have no place in Algebra 1 -- while it leaves out numerous traditional topics like “simple rational expressions” and “quadratic equations” that are necessary for moving on in Algebra. The EOC 2 is even worse because the nonsensical narrow standards it measures are in a portion of Geometry that was created by unintended legislative consequences, not by any thoughtful analysis of what students should know after two years of mathematics. Despite these flaws, the passing of these exams is being used as the measure of a quality education system…….Not!

But no worries, government has come to the rescue again. The governor and the legislature decided without one shred of empirical evidence that we should discard our newly written state math standards (rated as some of the best in the nation and which cost $100 million to develop and implement) and adopt the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS), along with the much hailed national assessments that would follow. Again, they made this decision based on “blind faith” because neither the standards nor the assessments were even written when this decision was made. But don’t worry; the new assessments that Washington students will take starting next year are being created under the direction of some of the same important people who gave us the WASL.

It is ironic that all of these exams are purported to increase the depth of student thinking and problem solving even while they have been implemented, designed and sold to the public with some of the shallowest logic that is possible to imagine. It is this same shallow logic that believes that holding teachers accountable based on the student scores of these flawed examinations will have any positive impact on student learning.

It’s not that I am against accountability or having to meet a standard. It’s just that, thus far, I have not seen any evidence that the current education leadership is capable of designing an assessment system that will bring any improvement to our schools. Instead of sound education principles, these tests are being used to push agendas from both the left and the right. The truth is that as long as we try to force every kid through a one-size-fits-all system, we will never see improvement. No other country in the world is running an education system on the pretense that all students are the same, and as long as we pursue that folly, we will continue to waste precious resources and fall farther behind our competitors.


Bob Dean is a high-school math teacher in Vancouver, WA. He has served as math department chairman of Evergreen High School, as a State Board of Education Math Advisory Panel Member, as a member of the OSPI Standards Revision Team, and as a member of the Where's the Math Executive Committee. This article was previously published on Bob Dean's blog.
Comment from Laurie Rogers: If you would like to submit a guest column on public education, please write to me at wlroge@comcast.net . Please limit columns to about 1,000 words, give or take a few. Columns might be edited for length, content or grammar. You may remain anonymous to the public, however I must know who you are. All decisions on guest columns are the sole right and responsibility of Laurie Rogers.

Are grading trends hurting socially awkward children?

By Katharine Beals

[This article was originally posted on The Atlantic. It is reprinted here with permission from the author.]

Eccentric children -- including those on the autism spectrum -- often have unique academic abilities. But today's teaching philosophies are making it hard for them to shine.

Children have long been graded not just for academics, but also for elements of "character" -- particularly behavior and emotional maturity. However, in the last few decades, socially eccentric children have seen their awkwardness or aloofness factored into their grades in math, language arts, and social studies. Ironically, this trend has coincided with a rise in diagnoses of autistic spectrum disorders.

For children on the autism spectrum, new social studies curricula pose a particular challenge. Once restricted to readings, worksheets, and essays on history, government, and politics, the subject increasingly requires students to reflect on their connections within their local communities. They are asked to present projects to their classmates (even in primary school), spend much of class time working in groups, and evaluate scenarios such as this one, from a worksheet for 3rd graders:

Fulfilling this assignment means reading the characters' faces, deducing the social dynamics, and assuming multiple perspectives -- tasks that amount to an informal screening test for the core social deficit of autistic spectrum disorders. Fail this assignment, and chances are you're somewhere on the spectrum.

Language arts classes, meanwhile, tend to favor books by authors like Judy Blume and Jerry Spinelli: realistic fiction starring recognizable school-aged peers in social settings. To the socially adept, these books are highly accessible. But the socially oblivious might find themselves unable to answer the reading comprehension questions, many of which require social inferences similar to those in the social studies sheet.

In writing assignments as well, today's language arts classes favor realistic fiction (often explicitly disallowing fantasy) along with personal accounts of everyday life. For the autistic child, written expression might already be difficult; assignments that presuppose an ability to articulate personal feelings or create psychologically realistic characters, dialogue, and social interactions, can be tremendously bewildering and frustrating.

Some of these writing challenges extend to today's math classes. To earn full credit on math problems, students often must verbally explain the thought processes behind their mathematical solutions. But one common characteristic among people on the autism spectrum is a nonverbal approach to mathematics, Many autistic children have mathematical skills that far exceed their verbal skills. But even when their verbal skills are on par with their math skills, they tend to solve problems nonverbally, performing much of the work rapidly and automatically in their heads. When they're asked to explain their answers, they not only might struggle to put their thoughts into words, they might have actually bypassed the thought processes that could be verbalized by their peers.

For the same reason, autistic children struggle with the kind of group work required at many schools, particularly those with smaller classrooms, better-behaved students, and better reputations. As in other subjects, math teachers assess students, in part, on their ability to cooperate with their peers. But working in math groups is challenging for autistic children, not only because of their deficient social skills, but because they can often do the math tasks entirely on their own -- and faster than their group mates can. When they're expected to help their peers, or at least to wait for them to finish, they might become impatient and irritable, or bored and tuned out. Either way, they will lose points for cooperation.

Meanwhile, the kind of challenging solo work in which mildly autistic students have excelled is becoming less and less common. Across the curriculum, the traditional essay or problem set has been upstaged by group projects and multimedia presentations. Consider, for example, how many points in this popular science evaluation rubric come from skills in oral presentation:

One might argue that the new emphasis on sociability is precisely what autistic spectrum students require. Don't they, more than anyone else, need to develop their communication and collaborative skills? And in our increasingly social 21st century, aren't these skills more important than ever before -- both for life in general, and for jobs in particular?

The problem is that the kinds of jobs that autistic students aspire to -- for example, computer programming, engineering, writing, and the visual arts -- tend not to involve the sorts of group dynamics that occur in K-12 classrooms. And the social skills training that they do indeed require are best left to trained professionals. Well-run social skills groups for children on the autism spectrum are out there -- just not in most K-12 schools.

By traditional academic standards, children with the mild form of autism currently known as Asperger's syndrome are often exceptionally gifted. They tend to have unusual numerical and spatial reasoning skills that lead to superior achievement in math and science. Many also have large vocabularies, encyclopedic knowledge, and strong analytical abilities, making them exceptional writers of social studies essays. Some have imaginations that lead to unusual creativity in fantasy or science fiction writing.

A generation ago, before current trends in K-12 education took hold, many Asperger's children would have sailed through school without being downgraded for their social deficiencies. Nowadays, even in subjects where they used to excel, their grades are declining. And so are their prospects for appropriately challenging and rewarding education -- and careers -- in the future.

Thanks to the official Asperger's diagnosis, some parents of these students have managed to secure accommodations that exempted them from many of these new requirements. But in May, when the 5th edition of America's official manual of the psychiatric disorders comes out, the syndrome won't be there. Instead of receiving an Asperger's diagnosis, those with milder symptoms will simply be classified as having an autism spectrum disorder. Some studies have suggested that under the new system, the milder cases may go unidentified -- a result that could further impede those students' ability to thrive in today's classrooms.

Either way, brightening the prospects of our official or unofficial "Aspies" isn't difficult. It means restoring traditional, academic pathways through school, and allowing them, wherever possible, to work independently. And it means leaving the social skills training -- along with the autistic spectrum screening tests -- to the professionals.


Katharine Beals is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and an adjunct professor at the Drexel University School of Education. She is the author of Raising a Left-Brain Child in a Right-Brain World: Strategies for Helping Bright, Quirky, Socially Awkward Children to Thrive at Home and at School.


Comment from Laurie Rogers: If you would like to submit a guest column on public education, please write to me at wlroge@comcast.net . Please limit columns to about 1,000 words, give or take a few. Columns might be edited for length, content or grammar. You may remain anonymous to the public, however I must know who you are. All decisions on guest columns are the sole right and responsibility of Laurie Rogers.

Public Records Act: Speak up for your rights now, before they're gone

By Laurie H. Rogers

“The school board made us many promises, more than I can remember. They only kept one.

They promised they would take away our right to know what they’re doing. And they did.”

-- (A rephrase of a famous comment from Sioux Chief Red Cloud)

The Washington State Public Records Act allows citizens to obtain records from government agencies. It’s a critical aspect of open and transparent government.

House Bill 1128, however, would gut the Public Records Act, making it ineffective and useless. HB 1128 is currently before the House Rules Committee in Olympia. It's supported by a glut of public officials and ten associations for public officials. It’s also supported by legislators from both parties, in what amounts to a bipartisan shellacking of citizens.

Government officials are telling legislators that records requesters are being abusive, making excessive requests and diverting valuable resources away from the agencies’ primary purpose. Unreasonable requests are costing countless dollars, they claim, and something must be done to stem the tide.

But while some individuals do make abusive requests, HB 1128 punishes everyone – similar to restricting cars because a few drivers crash, or restricting swimming pools because a few swimmers drown. Part of what agencies are there to do is provide records to the public when asked. And almost all of the problems cited in testimony to legislators refer to former employees, not to the public at large.

A more productive, cost-effective, cooperative solution would be to expand the authority of the open-government ombudsman, or some other independent authority, to review requests and provide objective guidance to agencies and citizens. Such a solution was proposed by the Attorney General in 2011. But promoters of HB 1128 instead want authority to rest with public agencies and the courts.

HB 1128 would: Allow agencies to decide unilaterally if requests are burdensome; allow agencies to file for injunctions against the requests; eliminate penalties to agencies for operating in bad faith; and force requesters to argue their case in court (thus identifying themselves) or hire a lawyer to do it for them. It also can eliminate a citizen's right to future requests from a particular agency.

Even if a citizen has the money, time and willingness to battle a government agency and its army of publicly funded lawyers, it’s already difficult to find a lawyer who knows the Public Records Act (PRA), who doesn’t work for the agency in question, and who’s willing to take on such a case. HB 1128 would make finding that lawyer next to impossible. These concerns and others have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Supporters of HB 1128 say they won’t use the bill to obstruct or intimidate requesters, and that they will release records to “well-intentioned” citizens. But HB 1128 allows agencies to delay and obstruct requests and to withhold records from “well-intentioned” citizens. It allows agencies to intimidate citizen requesters through legal action. This makes assurances from supporters, such as the Washington State Association of Counties, specious and illogical.

HB 1128 is a very bad bill. It’s designed to protect the government from citizens, while doing nothing to protect citizens from the government. Worse, it allows agencies to use public dollars to stymie full disclosure to the public.

Here is just one example of why the Public Records Act is critically important to citizens, and why it must be retained for all the people of Washington State.

Board directors of Spokane Public Schools have been trying for more than a year to undermine the Public Records Act – first with their 2012 Legislative Priorities, and then with their 2013 Legislative Priorities. They’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to modify the PRA, when their real mission is to oversee the education of 27,000+ children.

In December 2012, I asked the directors to explain their latest attack on the PRA. Four refused to answer my questions, deferring to the board president, who said he would answer for all. Bob Douthitt’s response suggests that no board director showed the slightest interest in obtaining citizens’ perspective on the matter before they all charged ahead with undermining the PRA for all of us.

Last week, I did a little more research.

The Spokane school board passed their 2013 Legislative Priorities unanimously on October 24, 2012. But that isn’t when their latest attack on the PRA began.

Early in 2012, the board had failed in its first effort to undermine the PRA, with Senator Lisa Brown’s SB 6576. Brown’s legislative aide, Marcus Riccelli, told board directors to start earlier in the year if they wanted to get a bill passed. Directors indicated in a board meeting that they would.

On April 25, two weeks after the legislative session ended, board director Jeff Bierman asked other directors for ideas for new legislative proposals. Just 28 days later, their 2013 Priorities were finished and unanimously adopted (with one director absent). The Priorities were steered to completion by Bierman, co-legislative liaison Deana Brower, and the superintendent and her cabinet. They include:

• eliminating the right of records requesters to remain anonymous
• forcing an “in-house” appeals process on records requesters (thus forcing requesters to appeal to employees of the same agency that refused to provide records)
• double-charging taxpayers for certain salaries associated with records requests.

This board wanted to adopt their 2013 Priorities early so they could push them with legislators over the summer. They also wanted time to persuade the Washington State School Directors Association (WSSDA) to make the Priorities part of WSSDA’s platform. WSSDA agreed, making undermining the Public Records Act a priority for all school boards that acquiesce to WSSDA.

Spokane Public Schools’ board president now is on WSSDA’s “legislative team.” WSSDA now is an official supporter of the execrable HB 1128.

Why would these five school board directors fight so hard to undermine the Public Records Act? They’ve had a huge head start, campaigning hard for the Priorities the moment the ink was dry. Board directors claim they don’t intend to undermine the PRA, but that assertion isn’t believable, considering their Priorities and the way they’ve gone about pushing them. Why are they so intent on limiting public access to public records? I don’t know, but I can guess. Read on.

Open public meetings:

Under Washington State law, government agencies must make decisions in public and after public notice. This is known as the Open Public Meetings Act. But these directors didn’t put their 2012 Priorities or their 2013 Priorities before the public. They didn’t place them on the district Web site until after I asked about them. At no point was there a discussion with any records requester, no discussion with the people about their determination to help rip a people’s law from the people’s hands.

Douthitt said the board “discussed and approved” the 2013 Priorities “at a board business meeting,” but I looked in vain for a pre-adoption discussion in all of their 2012 minutes. I see brief procedural comments, but no discussion or airing in public about the specific Legislative Priorities that were being considered. When and where were the discussions held?

Some records show board directors communicating by email about the PRA to all other board directors – so, in a quorum. Records show other topics being discussed by email between all members of the board. By law, discussions constituting a board quorum are supposed to be held in public.

PDC Complaint:

According to Washington’s Public Disclosure law, public officials are not allowed to use public resources to promote ballot propositions or elective campaigns. In 2011, based on the results of two records requests, I filed a complaint with the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) regarding Spokane Public Schools’ 2009-2011 election activity. The PDC elected to formally investigate, and that investigation is ongoing.

• Part of the PDC complaint has to do with board and district activity regarding the district’s promotion of its levy and bond in 2008/2009. Associate Superintendent Mark Anderson and Superintendent Nancy Stowell ran that campaign and figure prominently in the complaint.
• Part of the PDC complaint has to do with Director Deana Brower, who in 2011 was a board candidate, and who now is the board’s legislative co-liaison. She campaigned for the seat on district property and was touted as the preferred board candidate in materials that were distributed throughout the district using public resources.
• Part of the complaint has to do with the district’s close relationship with Citizens for Spokane Schools, which works to secure “yes” votes on district levies and bonds.
• Records show that Stowell and Anderson worked with CFSS to “promote” the bond and levy.
• Brower was a member of CFSS, and records show her meeting with Stowell and Anderson to discuss an upcoming levy campaign.
• After I repeatedly asked Brower in September 2011 about the relationship between her and the school district, Brower said she had resigned her seat with CFSS and refused to answer further.

Almost immediately after Brower took a seat on the board in 2011, after the PDC complaint was filed, and after the PDC announced its investigation – the first board attack on the Public Records Act began.

Lawsuit:

Mark Anderson, who handles the district’s records requests, has delayed providing records to certain requesters, refused to provide certain records, and refused to fulfill certain requests. (See this article for a list of various district responses to certain requests.) He did not provide all of the responsive records for a request of mine from January 2011, and a lawsuit was filed early in 2012 to obtain the missing records. After this lawsuit was filed – the outcome of which is not yet resolved – the district released to my attorney and me thousands more records and several indexes of exemptions and redactions.

Anonymous Requests:

The PRA does not prohibit the filing of anonymous requests. However, Anderson refused to provide records for two anonymous requests from last June. The requests pertain to these board directors – to a) their first attempt to undermine the PRA and b) their communications while they ran for the school board. Despite directions from the new superintendent to fulfill the requests, they remain outstanding.

Another requester was accused last year of using a pseudonym and was told to provide proof of identity before records would be released. That records request, regarding the school board’s performance assessment of Superintendent Nancy Stowell, was ultimately denied.

The school board now is attempting to eliminate the public’s right to file anonymous requests, claiming that communicating with anonymous requesters is difficult. Email records I’ve been sent don’t indicate that. However, emails between requesters and Anderson do suggest that communicating with Anderson can be difficult. Some requesters have been repeatedly criticized in the community and the press.

In-House Appeals Process:

The school board’s 2013 Priority of forcing requesters to go through an “in-house” appeals process means requesters would have to appeal to employees of the same agency that refused to provide records. Who would speak up in that “appeal” for the requester? A lawyer? And who pays for that lawyer?

This “in-house” appeals process could easily be used to intimidate requesters, to financially punish requesters, to force requesters to identify themselves, to delay the production of records, and to put off the application of fees and penalties for a district’s failure or refusal to produce records.

Similar kinds of behavior would be allowed – perhaps even encouraged – by the passage of HB 1128.   On Jan. 25, one of the public officials speaking for HB 1128 was Spokane County Commissioner Todd Mielke, president of the Washington State Association of Counties (WSAC). WSAC is a vocal supporter of HB 1128. At about 56:10 in this TVW video of that hearing, Mielke responds to a legislator’s question about how HB 1128 might affect the media: I will tell you that, it’s not just me as an elected official, but every one of us, who, like you, are hypersensitive to the press. We know that they can kill us, frankly, if they want to, and we’re going to do everything we can not to be on their bad side and to accommodate. We have a rapport. …As an elected official, my advice is always, ‘Don’t pick a fight with the media.’… And (HB 1128) would actually give us more time to respond to (media requests) and be sensitive to those needs because of the public’s need to know.Gag. (Mielke omitted the fact that in March 2012, Spokane County settled a public records lawsuit for about $400,000 because the County didn’t provide certain records to the Neighborhood Alliance.)

Another WSAC official immediately followed Mielke by saying WSAC would consider incorporating an exemption for the media. And they did. HB 1128 now contains an exemption for the media – a blatant attempt to mute dissent from who they see as their biggest opposition.

Now we see their Priorities. Not you. Not your children. Not tax savings. Not open government. With HB 1128, these officials are not operating in the public’s best interests.

How do ordinary citizens fight off these attacks on the Public Records Act from self-centered officials, myriad associations that lobby for government interests, hundreds of publicly funded agencies, and all of their publicly funded lawyers?  This effort to undermine open government in Washington State must be stopped. Please call legislators today and tell them to vote NO on HB 1128.

Please also forward this article to other like-minded citizens and ask them to do the same.

Please note: The information in this post is copyrighted. The proper citation is:
Rogers, L. (February 2013). "Public Records Act: Speak up for your rights now, before they're gone." Retrieved (date) from the Betrayed Web site: http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com  

Common Core leading districts to adopt unproved math programs and failed approaches

By Laurie H. Rogers

Many of America’s public schools have incorporated “student-centered learning” models into their math programs. An adoption committee in Spokane appears poised to recommend the adoption of yet another version of a “student-centered” program for Grades 3-8 mathematics.

It’s critically important that American citizens know what that term means. Aspects of the Common Core State Standards initiatives are leading many districts to adopt new curricular materials that have “student-centered learning” as a centerpiece.

In Spokane Public Schools, student-centered learning (also known as “inquiry-based” learning or “discovery-based” learning or “standards-based” learning) has been the driver of curriculum adoptions for nearly 20 years. This approach has not produced graduates with strong skills in mathematics. Spokane now suffers from a dearth of math skills in most of its younger citizens.

Nor is Spokane alone with this problem. Student-centered learning has largely replaced direct instruction in the public-school classroom. It was pushed on the country beginning in the 1980s by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the federal government, colleges of education, and various corporations and foundations. Despite its abject failure to produce well-educated students, student-centered learning is coming back around, again pushed by the NCTM, colleges of education, the federal government and various corporations and foundations.

Despite the lack of supporting research for the approach, trillions of taxpayer dollars were spent on implementing it across the nation. Despite its grim results, trillions more will be spent on it via the Common Core initiatives. But what is student-centered learning, and why do people in public education still love it?

Student-centered learning is designed to “engage” students in discussion, debate, critical thinking, exploration and group work, all supposedly to gain “deeper conceptual understanding” and the ability to apply concepts to “real world” situations. New teachers receive instruction in student-centered learning in colleges of education, and their instruction in the approach (i.e. their indoctrination) continues non-stop at state and district levels.

The popularity of student-centered learning in the education community rests on: a) constant indoctrination, b) ego, c) money, and d) the ability to hide weak outcomes from the public.

Ask yourself this: How does one actually quantify “exploration,” “deeper conceptual understanding” and “application to real world situations”? How do we test for that? We can’t, really, which helps explain why math test scores can soar even as actual math skills deteriorate.

With student-centered learning, teachers are not to be a “sage on the stage” – they are to be a “guide on the side.” Students are to innovate and create, come up with their own methods, develop their own understanding, work in groups, talk problems out, teach each other, and depend on their classmates for help before asking the teacher. Student-centered learning is supposed to be a challenge for teachers, whereas direct instruction is considered to be too easy (basically handing information over to students on a silver platter).

Ask yourself this: How much learning can be done in a class with 28 students of different abilities and backgrounds, all talking; a teacher who guides but doesn’t teach; and classmates who must teach each other things they don’t understand? How do students get help with this approach at home? What happens to students who don't have a textbook, don't have proper guidance, and don't have any help at home? Direct instruction does make learning easier; that’s a positive for it, not a negative. Learning can be efficient and easy. How is it better to purposefully make children struggle, fail and doubt themselves?

But adult egos can be stroked by the enormous challenge of making student-centered learning work, even as it utterly fails the children.

In student-centered learning, student discussion and debate precedes (and often replaces) teacher instruction. “Deeper conceptual understanding” is supposed to precede the learning of skills. But placing application before the learning puts the “why” before the “how,” thus asking students to apply something they don’t know how to do. How does that make sense?

In student-centered learning, it’s thought to be bad practice to instruct, answer student questions, provide a template for the students, teach efficient processes, insist on proper structure or correct answers, or have students practice a skill to mastery. It’s OK for a class to take all day “exploring” because exploration supposedly promotes learning, whereas efficient instruction is supposedly counterproductive. Children are supposed to “muddle” along, get it wrong and depend on classmates for advice and guidance. Struggling is seen as critical to learning. Getting correct answers in an efficient manner is seen as unhelpful.

Ask yourself this: How can “efficient” instruction be counterproductive? Math is a tool, used to get a job done. Correct answers are critical, and efficiency is prized in the workforce. Quick, correct solutions reflect a depth of understanding that slow, incorrect solutions do not. Students do not enjoy struggling and getting things wrong. For children, struggle and failure are motivation killers.

The focus of a student-centered classroom is on supposed “real-world application.” (My experience with “real-world application” is that it’s typically a very adult world rather than a child world, and that now, it’s also a political world with a heavily partisan focus.)

Ask yourself this: How does it help children to be enmeshed in an adult world of worries, prevented from learning enough academics, and basted in a politically partisan outlook? (It doesn’t help them, but it suits adults who want a certain kind of voter when the students turn 18.)

All of this is at the expense of learning sufficient skills in mathematics.

Here is one example of an adult perspective of student-centered learning. We can only guess whether students would enjoy this lesson or learn from it. The article is called “Messy monk mathematics: An NCTM-standards-inspired class session.” It’s dedicated to Stephen I. Brown, who is said to be “an inspiration for inquiry-based teaching and learning.” The author, Larry Copes, has a doctorate in mathematics education (not in mathematics). His doctoral work was on the ways math instruction can “encourage intellectual, ethical, and identity development.”

After reading Copes’ article, did you say: “Wow! I love the method! The students were so engaged!” Or, did you say: “What a waste of time! The ‘lesson’ was obviously designed to stroke the teacher’s ego and not to provide students with the math concept.”

I see the teacher in that anecdote as egotistic, holding knowledge over the students’ head, refusing to give it to them, making them jump for it over and over. It seems selfish. The students didn’t appear to ever understand the concept. What’s the point of tossing in the name of a Theorem (the Intermediate Value Theorem) without ever explaining it? Although the students wrote down the name, they didn’t pursue it, and the anecdote ended without a resolution or proof that they learned anything. I wonder if the teacher cared whether they learned the Theorem, or if his little game and his complete focus on himself were what mattered to him.

My daughter read Copes’ article, and she wrote (as if the author were speaking): “I am an individual afflicted with an extraordinary amount of hubris, which has affected my research.”

My daughter is funny, but it does seem impossible to bridge these gaps in perception:

• Proponents of the “student-centered” approach see themselves as hard workers, suffering with opponents who are stuck in the 18th century. The “deeper conceptual understanding” that they believe they foster in students seems more important to them than building math skills that consistently lead to correct answers.
• Proponents of direct instruction see the students’ weakening self-image and poor skills, and we view the student-centered approach as limiting and even unkind. Math skills and correct answers are the point of math instruction, and we don’t believe students can have “deeper conceptual understanding” if they lack procedural skills.

Proponents of student-centered learning like to call their approach “best practices,” “research-based,” “evidence-based,” and so on, but no one has ever provided verifiable, replicable proof that student-centered learning works better than direct instruction as a method for teaching math. There is actually a wealth of solid evidence to indicate the contrary.

Unfortunately, the pushing of the Common Core on states has encouraged many districts to pursue “student-centered learning” models all over again, as if they were required to do so. Some folks are already making pots of money off the Common Core and the new, unproved materials that are supposedly aligned with the Common Core. But student-centered learning hasn’t worked for the children in the last 30 years, and it won’t work in the next 30.

Nevertheless, the stated mission of Spokane’s adoption committee is to “deeply” align to the Common Core. (Not to choose a curriculum that will – oh, I don’t know – lead students to college or career readiness?) In supporting their stated mission, committee members asserted that the Common Core was vetted by “experts,” so they believe the initiatives will produce internationally competitive graduates. They provided no data, no proof, no solid research or studies for their belief. And they can’t because there aren’t any. The Common Core initiatives are an obscenely expensive, nation-wide pilot of unproved products.

Welcome to public education: Another day, another experiment on our children, except that this time, there is strong evidence that this experiment – a rehashing of the last experiment – will again fail. Try telling that to education and political leaders. No one seems to see the evidence. When you tell leaders about it or show it to them, no one seems to care. Meanwhile, many of those leaders get tutoring or outside help for their own children. (FYI: I have never seen a professional tutor use the “student-centered” method to teach math to any child.)

The Spokane adoption committee’s mission of “deep” alignment to the Common Core has caused them to choose to pilot – you guessed it – several sets of new (and unproved) materials that are distinctly more “student-centered” in their approach, heavy on words and discovery, and light on actual math.

Kicked to the bottom of their preferences were proved and rigorous programs favored by homeschooling parents and tutors, including Saxon Mathematics and Singapore Math. Saxon got my own daughter almost all of the way through Algebra II by the end of 8th grade, most of that without a calculator. When I asked my email list and various online contacts for their preferences, the majority picked Saxon over every other math program, and by a wide margin.

But a member of the Spokane adoption committee – a district employee – told me the Saxon representative called Saxon “parochial” and that the publisher initially refused to send Saxon to Spokane because it was unlikely to be adopted. (“Parochial” means provincial, narrow-minded, or “limited in range or scope.”) Do you believe the Saxon rep would call his product narrow-minded and limited in scope? Saxon is efficient, thorough, clear and concise. If there is a stronger K-8 math program out there, I don’t know of it. Naturally, the Spokane adoption committee does not want Saxon.

One of the programs the committee did choose to pilot is Connected Mathematics, a curriculum already being used in Spokane, one of the worst programs on the planet, excoriated for decades by mathematicians from border to border and from coast to coast. The district employee assured me the committee is hiding nothing from the public, but the committee didn’t mention to the public that it is again piloting Connected Mathematics. They don’t seem to see its failure. They love its focus on student-centered learning. The devastation it wreaks on math skills appears to matter naught to them.

There is one more community meeting for this adoption committee, on Tuesday, Jan. 29, at Sacajawea Middle School in Spokane. Whether you can attend or not, please take a moment to fill out the district survey – either the short version or the long version. Tell the Spokane superintendent what you want in a math program. If we want Spokane teachers to ever be allowed to actually teach mathematics to the children, we’re going to have to say so.

I know district administrators and board directors have not been good about listening to community wishes on math, and that it seems pointless to talk to them. But for the good of the children, please try. Perhaps this time, someone will listen.

Please note: The information in this post is copyrighted. The proper citation is:
Rogers, L. (January 2013). "Common Core leading districts to adopt unproved math programs and failed approaches." Retrieved (date) from the Betrayed Web site: http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com 

Fatal flaws in Common Core standards for ELA beg the question: Which way for Indiana and other states?

By Sandra Stotsky

 -- originally posted on the Indiana Policy Review


The defeat of Tony Bennett as Indiana’s State Superintendent of Education was attributed to many factors. Yet, as one post-election analysis indicated, the size of the vote for his rival, Glenda Ritz, suggests that the most likely reason was Mr. Bennett’s support for, and attempt to implement, Common Core’s badly flawed standards.

Common Core’s English language arts standards don’t have just one fatal flaw, i.e., its arbitrary division of reading standards into two groups: 10 standards for “informational” text and nine for “literature” at all grade levels from K to 12. That’s only the most visible; its writing standards turn out to be just as damaging, constituting an intellectual impossibility for the average middle-grade student — and for reasons I hadn’t suspected. The architects of Common Core’s writing standards simply didn’t link them to appropriate reading standards, a symbiotic relationship well-known to reading researchers. Last month I had an opportunity to see the results of teachers’ attempts to address Common Core’s writing standards at an event put on by GothamSchools, a four-year-old news organization trying to provide an independent news service to the New York City schools.

The teachers who had been selected to display their students’ writing (based on an application) provided visible evidence of their efforts to help their students address Common Core’s writing standards — detailed teacher-made or commercial worksheets structuring the composing of an argument. And it was clear that their students had tried to figure out how to make a “claim” and show “evidence” for it. But the problems they were having were not a reflection of their teachers’ skills or their own reading and writing skills. The source of their conceptual problems could be traced to the standards themselves.

At first glance the standards don’t leap out as a problem. Take, for example, Common Core’s first writing standard for grades six, seven and eight (almost identical across grades): “Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.” This goal undoubtedly sounds reasonable to adults, who have a much better idea of what “claims” are, what “relevant evidence” is and even what an academic “argument” is. But most children have a limited understanding of this meta-language for the structure of a composition.

So I explored Common Core’s standards for reading informational text in grades three, four and five (and then in grades six, seven and eight) and discovered nothing on what a claim or an argument is, or on distinguishing relevant from irrelevant evidence. In other words, the grades six, seven and eight writing standards are not coordinated with reading standards in grades three to eight that would require children to read the genre of writing their middle-school teachers are expecting them to compose. Middle-school teachers are being compelled by their grade-level standards to ask their students to do something for which the students will have to use their imaginations.

Do elementary and middle-school teachers need this problem spelled out for them? Yes, I also discovered in talking to several of the teachers at this event. They apparently knew nothing about the research on — and value of — prose models, a well-known body of research just a few decades ago.

This raises a common-sense question: How can middle-grade children be expected to understand how to set forth a “claim” and provide “relevant evidence” to support it if they haven’t been taught (and won’t be taught) how to identify an academic argument, a claim and irrelevant evidence in what they have read? No wonder New York City teachers are spending an enormous amount of time creating worksheets to structure students’ writing, and their students are spending an enormous amount of time filling these worksheets in.

One teacher, for example, admitted spending a lot of time trying to help her students come up with a topic sentence (it is close to a “claim” but is also not mentioned in Common Core’s reading or writing standards). And her worksheets showed the dutiful efforts of a few children to do this. A topic sentence doesn’t come easy to many middle-school students, especially if they haven’t read a lot of well-written articles with topic sentences that the children have been asked to identify until they really know what one is and what one does for the rest of the paragraph.

Two other teachers had first assigned some short stories (maybe to engage their students?) before asking their students to come up with a “thesis” or a “claim” and produce “evidence” for it. Needless to say, the children’s writing didn’t show a “claim.” Not surprising. The only prose models the children had been given were two- to three-page stories.

But some teachers were forging ahead despite the conceptual difficulties their students were encountering. Another teacher, for example, acknowledged the lack of a visible “literary thesis” or “claim” in her middle-school students’ writing (most were not strong students). She was pleased they were learning to cite page numbers for the location of their “evidence,” even though their “thesis” or “claim” had to be “inferred.”

The problem deepened when I examined another writing standard for middle school. Common Core’s architects did suspect that writing was related to reading. They just didn’t know how it was. The ninth writing standard for grades six, seven and eight asks students to apply grades six, seven and eight reading standards as they “draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.”

What are these reading standards? Here are the first two:

1. “Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.”
2. “Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.”

The problem here is that the reading standards are almost identical in grades six, seven and eight for both literature and informational text. It seems that children are also being expected to analyze literary and non-literary texts as if they are both genres of expository prose. No well-trained English teacher would expect children reading a short story or novella in grade six to figure out first its “theme” and then “analyze its development over the course of the text.” That’s something one would do with children with a controlling idea in the introductory paragraph of an informational piece. The architects of these standards don’t seem to have a firm grasp on the differences between literature and informational texts.

Years ago, it was common practice for English teachers to introduce students to the art of the essay in grade nine. Now students in grade six are to attempt composing an essay with a thesis or a claim. One New York City teacher saw this as a healthy “challenge” for her weak students. Others might see this challenge as a Utopian expectation, with teachers the ultimate scapegoat.

Some children, already strong readers, are, of course, going to get it. Their English teachers will eventually figure the problems out, or their parents will. But guess which children are going to be the most confused? Probably the least able readers and writers, the very ones Common Core wants to make “college-ready.”

It’s time for the standards that the National Governors Association and the Council for Chief School State Officers have copyrighted to be drastically revised. The problem here is: Who is to do the revisions? And what should Indiana be doing while the legal issues get sorted out?

Here is my two-cents worth: 1) The Indiana state board of education should re-adopt its own, first-class English Language Arts standards (with perhaps minor changes), as well as its own first-class math standards (which the latest Trends in Mathematics and Science Study results suggest are working well in Indiana); and 2) label them Indiana “college-readiness” standards just as other states have labeled their own standards.

Sandra Stotsky is professor of education reform emerita at the University of Arkansas, where she held the 21st Century Chair in Teacher Quality. She is a well-known evaluator of states’ standards, and she served on the Common Core Validation Committee. She has provided testimony about the Common Core Standards before the Indiana Senate Education Committee. She is an authority on curriculum standards, having helped many states (including Massachusetts and Texas) to write their own. She received her doctoral degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Professor Stotsky wrote this article at the request of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation.

Comment from Laurie Rogers: If you would like to submit a guest column on public education, please write to me at wlroge@comcast.net . Please limit columns to about 1,000 words, give or take a few. Columns might be edited for length, content or grammar. You may remain anonymous to the public, however I must know who you are. All decisions on guest columns are the sole right and responsibility of Laurie Rogers.

Political indoctrination replacing academics as the mission of K-12 public education

By Laurie H. Rogers

What’s the mission of any school district? Most parents seem to agree that it’s academics. Schools should prepare students academically for postsecondary life – whether it’s college, a trade, a career, the military or some other endeavor.

Alas, many public schools don’t focus on college or career readiness, and their mission statements don’t say they have to. Instead, other, more nebulous goals are their stated priorities, such as turning students into global citizens, “challenging” them, helping them develop “supportive relationships,” and having them engage in “relevant, real-life applications.”

“Equity” and “social justice” also are emphasized in many districts. Some districts have created new departments, applied for federal grants or hired $100,000+ personnel – supposedly to foster equity and social justice. But what’s behind the terminology?

Actual equity and social justice entail providing ALL students with the academic skills they need to lead a productive postsecondary life. But in public education, the terms tend to be ambiguous and politically laden, focusing instead on perceived unfairness. In the typical social-justice curriculum, America frequently is portrayed as the bad guy.

At the Fifth Annual Northwest Conference on Teaching for Social Justice, academics were not the theme. Instead, teachers learned how to encourage and train students to become activists. They challenged what they perceive to be America’s history of power, white privilege and oppression; supported myriad alternative lifestyles; discussed issues of race, gender, class and undocumented status; challenged “ableism” (discrimination by the able-bodied and able-minded); and learned how “oppression affects the lives of students marginalized by race, class, language, gender, and sexual orientation.”

There are schools purely devoted to issues of social injustice, such as the Social Justice High School in Chicago: “Project based and problem based learning that addresses real world issues through the lenses of race, gender, culture, economic equity, peace, justice, and the environment will be the catalyst for developing our curriculum.”

There is the White Privilege Conference, an ironic concept considering that many dedicated education advocates are Caucasian. (Actually, what I’ve seen over six years of advocacy looks more like Union-Administrator-Media Privilege. Maybe we could have a conference on that.)

There is Teachers for Social Justice, where teachers learn about “adultism” (i.e. adults who “use their position of power to affect the youth”); about integrating LGBTQ content into the curriculum; and about challenging gender norms with first-graders.

There is Welcoming Schools, “an LGBT-inclusive approach to addressing family diversity, gender stereotyping and bullying and name-calling in K-5 learning environments.” Did you notice that it’s directed at kindergartners?

Look into your district’s sex-ed program. These programs used to focus on preventing teen pregnancy. Now, see what the little ones are learning about sex, abortion, contraception and homosexuality. Students aren’t being taught long division, but they’re learning about alternative lifestyles. Last year, one 4th grader watched a district sex-education video and subsequently made a related joke to a friend – as young boys will do. This boy was disciplined, his parents were notified, a letter was sent home, and the entire class heard about his “bullying.”

Nowhere in this social-justice agenda do I see anyone standing up for the military and veterans, who have suffered much discrimination and prejudice. Or for police. Or for firefighters. Or for anyone who died in service of the country. Or for the four Americans who were murdered on Sept. 11, 2012, in Libya (although I suspect schools are OK with standing up for the Libyans).

The social-justice agenda is not about equity or justice. It’s about complaining, accusing, rebelling, changing society and forcing extreme progressive viewpoints on captive children. And how tolerant is this community to dissenting viewpoints? Not very. It questions traditional American values, faults American history, paints parents as old-school and unknowledgeable and views Americans as prejudiced and selfish. Even young students are fed a diet of progressivism, weighty and depressing socio-political issues, a cynical view of their ancestors, and antagonism toward conservative thought. They’re taught to reform, transform and “fundamentally change” America, with little appreciation for what America does for the world; its role in keeping the world relatively stable; its superlative generosity to other countries; the sacrifices made by its Armed Forces; and how its system of government made it rare and great.

Some programs show students how inequity and social injustice span the globe, with slavery, sex trafficking and brutality. The students – still just children – are to take ownership of this brutal, unfair world and try to change it. (No wonder so many students become anxious or depressed.)

How will districts know when they’ve achieved their social-justice goals? (Never.) When can the programs be disbanded? (Never.) Do the programs result in well-educated students? (Frequently not.) The programs just grow ever larger, sucking up dollars and destroying learning time.

It won’t be long before children will be unable to escape this depressing, politically biased agenda. It drives the Barack Obama/Arne Duncan/United Nations education plan. This plan is ensconced in the Common Core initiatives, now federally mandated (in contravention of the U.S. Code (20 USC 3403).

The social-justice agenda apparently does not demand sufficient student academics. As the Edu Mob hustles after agenda-based grants and programs, I see no urgency regarding student academics or the truth. The Mob seems content to side-step the students’ misery as it accepts promotions, takes home $100,000+ salaries, and trots out fake numbers showing imaginary improvement.

In 2012, for one example, Spokane Public Schools congratulated itself over a near-80% pass rate in math for its 10th graders. This pass rate bears no relation to what our 10th graders actually know in math. Just two years prior, our 10th graders posted a 41.7% pass rate in math on a low-level test that required just 56.9% to pass. There had been no substantial change in the district’s math curriculum except to possibly become worse. Who in Spokane publicly questioned this magical improvement?

Spokane isn’t alone with its implausibly high numbers. College remedial rates (such as these from Spokane) suggest that if Washington’s 10th graders were given an actual “at-grade-level” math test, without calculators and controlled for those who received outside instruction, many district pass rates would be in the teens or lower.

How does one obtain equity or social justice without academic skills? Why do districts expect small children to teach math to themselves? Why do adults ignore poor academic outcomes, desperate parents and anxious students? I’m often asked: Why do schools persist in these failing approaches? Why isn’t there enough math or grammar in our schools? Why do materials contain a political agenda? Why don’t we have textbooks? Why can’t I see my child’s math work? Why can’t I help out with math in the schools? Why do teachers say, “Don’t help your children with math; it will only confuse them”?

Now you know why. An inadequate education system = more issues = more need for help = more need for money = more government intervention = more government intrusion = more government control. Much of public education now focuses on: 1) more tax dollars for the Edu Mob, 2) more pro-Edu Mob voters, 3) less transparency or accountability, 4) more power to squish out dissent, 5) more administrative control, 6) heavy promotion of the socio-political agenda, and 7) maintaining (already failed) teaching approaches and curricular materials.

If you read what I read every day, you’d be deeply alarmed. To have what they want, they must have it all. And they’re getting it. Here’s just a tiny snippet of what I've seen.

• A Spokane teacher advocating in the classroom for revolution.
• Politics permeating the math curriculum.
• A Chicago school telling parents they are not allowed to send lunches with their children.
• A Texas student being browbeaten for refusing to wear a district microchip.

Parents are purposefully kept at arm’s length from the truth – about the schools, budget, curriculum, agenda, and actual outcomes – because No Truth = No Parent Dissent. Those few of us who dare to ask questions are diverted, mollified, ignored or – if we persist – attacked.

A battle is on for our children, and we have nearly lost. Public schools have been “training” people for a while. Students learn to reject their parents’ influence and guidance (especially if the parents prefer less government), to question traditional American values, to fundamentally reform America in a “progressive” image, and to vote progressive. Even Republicans vote progressive on education. Pushing the social-justice agenda is as easy as stealing from a baby.

Where is all of this taking us? The only place it can. Before, parents taught morals and acceptable behavior, and schools taught academics. Now, schools push a progressive view of acceptable behavior, and parents are forced to fill in the academics. But there aren’t enough of us doing that, and we aren’t powerful enough to overcome the social-justice agenda.

See it for yourself. Google “social justice” and “education” together. See how little the Edu Mob cares about academics or the welfare and future of the country (especially as a democratic republic). See how mocking and antagonistic it is toward dissenters. See its determination to push a globalist agenda and an angry, antagonistic, shrill view of America and its founders and defenders. There will come a point at which a conservative-minded person will not be able to win any leadership seat.

America is a “constitution-based federal Republic, with a strong democratic tradition.” It was founded on the idea of checks and balances – that no entity should have excessive power. A one-party system removes our ability to maintain balance. But many in the media, courts and other groups are politically active for the progressive cause. The U.S. Constitution and the law now are flouted regularly and without media pushback or legal consequence.

In 2010, The New York Times published an uncritical piece that advised President Obama to lead by Executive Order. And he is. What is the difference between a president who leads by Executive Order and a dictator? The Times has continued to discuss Obama’s Executive Orders, but minus the outrage one should expect from the media regarding a president who abuses the administrative process. Imagine if a Republican president behaved similarly. There would be passionate editorials, a push for congressional investigations and calls for impeachment. And rightfully so. But for Obama – near silence. A casual discussion. No big deal.

We’re in a dangerous place. The country now is run by government/media/corporate “partnerships” that are neither open nor accountable to the people. Instead of open government and privacy for the people, we now have secretive government and diminishing privacy for citizens. Mainstream media don’t investigate the government; they investigate dissenters. Our citizen rights under the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being eroded. Our right to privacy is being minimized through federal “rule-making,” and our personal information is being shared without our knowledge or permission. The whole package looks disturbingly Orwellian.

And yet, the people are increasingly ignorant of what it all means. Who in the next generation of voters will stand up for privacy, the individual, the Constitution, or the rule of law? Most graduates will lack the academics they need to properly run the country; the knowledge or perspective to critically assess what they’re being told; and enough understanding of the U.S. Constitution to know they must stand up for it. They will have energy and motivation, however, to agitate and rebel against their oppressors. (That’s us, in case you’re wondering.)

Welcome to the new mission of public education: Social upheaval – an American Spring – fomented by the social-justice crew, supported by the Edu Mob, praised by those who would do America harm, and paid for with our children and our tax dollars.

This great Republic is not yet finished, but it’s looking pretty grim out there.



Please note: The information in this post is copyrighted. The proper citation is:
Rogers, L. (November 2012). "Political indoctrination replacing academics as the mission of K-12 public education." Retrieved (date) from the Betrayed Web site: http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com