Fwd: report on Miller in Vallejo and an action to take

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

From an activist parent in Marin County.  Her parents' group has 
been opting their kids out of testing for several years in their 
small school district.  Below she sends the URL for posting comments 
about the proposed reauthorization of NCLB.

Some comments:

Miller's passing the blame to the states is a cheap way to allow the 
corporate power brokers (Business Roundtable, Gates, etc) to continue 
dictating and micromanaging public ed policy.  It's unlikely that 
many states will invest in authentic assessments, portfolios, on the 
ground evaluations, and other multiple measures without massive grass 
roots pressure.  Miller is playing the role of Pontius Pilate.

The growth model is another term for "value added"  Since it will be 
tied to the current use of a single standardized test score, it will 
focus even more attention and blame on individual teachers for not 
getting their students' scores up in one year.  Under the guise of 
"fairness" and "more accuracy," it will intensify the teaching to the 
test.  As the union (CTA) fears, this will open the door further for 
merit pay for teachers.

Professional development:  Whether he knows it or not, Miller's 
babbling about "more training" for teachers evades the fact that 
almost all of the approved such training these days is  limited to 
scripted behaviorist methods, witness the recent experience with 
Reading First.  That is the corporate plan, especially for low income 
Black and brown children in order to maintain social control.  With 
the proposed reauthorization, we can expect to see more of this, 
rather than "more flexibility," because it is at the heart of NCLB 
and state accountability regimes

Pete Farruggio


> From: amylvalens@comcast.net
>
>
> Hello all:
>
> This evening Sandy Dorward and I attended the the meeting with 
> George Miller at the Vallejo Unified School District's offices on 
> Mare Island.  There were about 100 people there I would guess, many 
> school board members from distircts that Miller represents, a good 
> number of CTA folks, including a rep from San Francisco, and a 
> variety of school administrators from Vallejo and beyond.  Miller 
> was late because he had been called for jury duty, but when he got 
> there he got right into it.  He said how proud he was to be the 
> author of this legislation, spoke about how the nation had started 
> taking education reform seriously because of it, patted himself on 
> the back for a while longer, then aknowleged some of the 
> shortcomings--including many that we have brought up.  He thinks he 
> has created answers to all of them..  He talked about how much more 
> flexible the new law would be, how much better funded, and how it 
> would have a 'growth model".
>
>
> A good part of the audience was there because CTA is concerned about 
> what is being called "pay for performance".  The way Miller would 
> like you to see it, this is simply creating ways to reward teachers 
> who take further training, mentor other teachers, or are 
> mentored..at  least it could be the way the money is spent, 
> depending on what unions negotiate with their school boards.  There 
> was much skepticism about that, and he was pretty brutal in his 
> counter attacks when teachers questioned him.
>
> His standard answer to many of the questions that were put to him 
> was that it was the State or the district that made the poor 
> decisions, not the feds.  They just outlined a Great Idea, and it 
> was the states who chose poor tests, or the local boards who went 
> for drill and kill when there were sterling examples of schools in 
> Chicago that had actually improved their teaching methods and 
> deepened their curriculum because of this golden opportunity that 
> they took advantage of.  He waxes particularly  eloquent when he 
> talks about the low expectations that the country had for minority 
> children and how NCLB is what has turned that around.  It was a 
> show.  At several points I wanted to shout out: "would you stop 
> grandstanding and just listen!!"   sigh.
>
> But there is some good news too.  There may actually be more 
> flexibility in assessment possible in the new bill.  He talked about 
> protfolios and multiple measures, but it was hard to say for whom, 
> and who would get to choose--the state or districts.   And there 
> will certainly be more money for some things--hard to say if any of 
> them will be of real benefit.
>
>
> The most important thing that came out of being there was finding 
> out that there is a draft of the actual reauthorization bill on this website:
>
> http://edworkforce.house.gov/micro/nclb.shtml
>
> warning: it is over 400 pages long.  There is also a summary that is 
> 11 pages long.  And they want comments and have a way for you to 
> make them on the website.  It behooves us to comment, even if 
> Miller's behavior indicates on many issues his mind is made 
> up.  Only caviat is they are planning to vote on the final version 
> by the end of the month of September.  Well, the highways were going 
> to be awful anyway, why not spend the weekend at home with a long read?
>
> best wishes
> Amy Valens