Arthur Goldstein: Outrage! NY Cuts English Instruction
We need to support English Language Learners as their playground English turns into academic English–not pull the rug out from under them.
Arthur Goldstein teaches English as a second language to high school students in the borough of Queens in Néw York City. He is outraged because the Néw York State Education Department has decided to cut ESL instruction by integrating it into subject matter instruction.
He writes:
“Beginners, since I started in the eighties, have gotten three periods a day of instruction. Intermediate students got two, as did advanced. Proficient students, those who tested out, usually got one period but sometimes got another to help them along. Because placement tests are usually total crap, because they gave the same one for decades, and because some kids guess well for no reason, I’ve often seen kids at high levels come back for help.
“NYSED knows everything, though, and has determined we have to stop coddling these kids. So now, for one period a day previously devoted to English, all ESL students in…
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Detective Gordon, The First Case
Move over Holmes and Watson! Move over Poirot and Hastings! Another Detective duo is in
town: Detective Gordon, the aging police chief toad, and his sidekick Buffy, a very young, energetic mouse. Use Ulf Nilsson’s book, Detective Gordon, The First Case, with readers who are ready for chapter books or to introduce mysteries as a read aloud. The story is a kinder, gentler type of mystery with easily understood messages. It also contains some word fun that students will enjoy exploring and repeating. For those who love drama, the characters are unique and lend themselves to creative expression. The illustrations are sweet, appealing, and as soft as the snow covered landscape of the book’s origins in Sweden.
Will Great Scores on a High Stakes Test Land You a Job at Goodreads?
Goodreads is a website that has created a huge community of readers, and their goal is to hook up readers with books they will love. In browsing today, I came across their Jobs page. I’m not looking to come out of retirement, but I was interested in their values:
- Ownership
- Create Fun
- Be Humble
- Think Big
- Customer Obsession
- Be Passionate
- Help Each Other
- Always Be Learning, Always Be Teaching.
Goodreads says they want people that are creative and care about the customer. Reread their list of values. Are any of those items on a standardized test? Are any of those values part of the Common Core State Standards? Would they be integral to a private school education where neither the CCSS nor standardized testing is required? Then WHY are we not including them in a public school education? All of our kids deserve a first class education.
If you want to see the source, go to:
Interested in World War II ? Dobryd is a good read!
The period known as the Holocaust is a frequent topic of books for both adults and young adults. The book Dobryd is different in that it does not focus on characters who are arrested or imprisoned. In fact most of the story occurs in the years following the war. Told in the first person, this story details the struggles of a five year old girl as she emerges from over two years of hiding in a space too small for a standing adult. Most of her family is dead, but she still has her mother and an aunt. The reader is soon absorbed by their relationships as they begin to integrate into a Poland that is very different from the one they hid from. Their rescuer is Yuri, a Russian soldier who plays a pivotal role in helping young Ann relate to her new world and provides stability for her. Dobryd shows us the best and the worst of people and how they have a long lasting impact on Ann and her family.
Dobryd is classified as an autobiographical novel as the author was very young when the story begins and much is retold from the memories of others. It reads like fiction, but has the authenticity of history. Dobryd would be an excellent addition to a unit on the Holocaust or World War II. It invites comparisons to books such as The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank that are typically enjoyed by students in learning about this period. Dobryd offers opportunities to feel with Ann the discrimination she experienced based on religion and her family’s former social standing. We get to learn of her rapidly disappearing Polish heritage and of the geographical struggles Poland underwent as a nation being divided by its neighbors as one of the spoils of war.
Teacher: We Must Do What is Right No Matter What They Tell Us
A teacher left this comment on the blog:
G. K. Chesterton said, ““The Madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” Those that champion ed-reform are basically those that have lost everything but their reason, they reduce education, as they reduce most everything else, to what can be benchmarked and quantified, in a data driven environment everything is “rational” and “reasonable” but little else. There is no room for whimsy, there is no room for beauty, there is no room for sanity.
But as long as the classroom teacher is sane, does see the importance of whimsy, beauty, the individual and the discovery of the individual that lives beneath the surface of every student, real education will ultimately triumph. The real subversive work of the teacher is what happens in the classroom. That is why I…
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I Am That Teacher Too (Letter 3) Thematic Learning—Where the Pieces Work Together
Dear Former Students,
What do I hope you remember about me?
Reading, Math, and Science, Oh My!
Social Studies, Art, and Music, Oh My!
I hope you remember the special activities and projects that made learning so much fun—different activities for different years. Some of you raised calves and others hatched baby chicks or silkworms. We grew plants. Lots of you will remember our parakeet and our gerbils. You took turns letting Little Bird sit on your shoulder. You cleaned out cages and pens and learned a lot about life and a little about death. Some first grade classes researched dinosaurs and created individual reports on their work producing the most fantastic books.
Our whole day was about learning how to read, but you didn’t know it. Reading was in everything we did. I cocooned you with the look, sounds, and feel of language. When you emerged from that cocoon at the end of first grade, I had succeeded if you loved to read and to learn. I had succeeded if you had found a passion in some of the many things we explored: math, science, social studies, art, music, and of course language itself. We sprinkled in movement, drama, and dance. Was there anything you couldn’t do? I remember one of you telling me, “I am UNSTOPPABLE!” When the year began, your behavior was unstoppable, but when the year ended, your desire to learn was unstoppable. That was success for both of us.
Retired Superintendent: Standardized Tests Are Stupid: My Grandsons Are Opting Out
Just imagine…
Jim Arnold, former superintendent of schools in Pelham, Georgia, explains why he encouraged his grandsons and their parents to opt out.
He writes:
“Just imagine the millions of dollars spent on standardized test development, scoring, actual testing, test training and test security that could be spent to hire new teachers, lower class sizes, restore art and music and elective classes, buy new school technology, books, materials, end furlough days or – gasp – give teachers a raise.
“Imagine an end to the silly insistence that standardized testing is the only way to hold teachers and schools accountable.
“Imagine the return of the authority of the classroom teacher to actually teach their students rather than follow a scripted test-centric routine designed not to improve teaching and learning but to improve test scores.
“Just imagine schools focused on taking students where they are educationally and socially and concentrating on teaching and learning…
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The Pendulum
At the Vanderbilt University physics building there used to be a huge, several storied pendulum with a mesmerizing swing. I know about pendulums; I believe in the pendulum swing. Education philosophies, methods, and approaches go through full pendulum swings with regularity. I’ve both observed and read about the swings. For example, phonics was relegated to one end of the arc and whole language to the other end. In the middle, for a brief time, we get to experience teaching that makes sense. Some of us have always tried to maintain that focus, rather like keeping true North on a compass.
My latest posts have been reblogs of a few of the many outstanding posts about testing and opting out. I have interrupted my blog posts “I Am That Teacher Too” (Letters to Former Students) because of what is currently happening in education. It is that important. I have waited for it. I have hoped for it. I have prayed for it. The pendulum is starting to swing back towards the middle. I know it is a small movement, but it is movement, and compared to the recent years of intransigence, this is a big thing. The catalyst was the actual testing. For every force there is an opposite and equal reaction. When the force of testing was applied, brave parents and students reacted and said “NO!” They said “no” not just once, but over and over again and in many states. For the first time in years, I have real hope that future generations of students and teachers will not have to endure CCSS and over-testing. I have real hope that joy and creativity will be restored to the learning process.
Business News: Follow the Money!
You definitely need to read the linked article. It gives the data for the “Follow the Money” theory I have espoused since the implementation of CCSS. The three scariest take-aways are lobbying costs, Pearson’s purchases of other companies, and Pearson’s poising itself to begin ADHD testing. Pearson earns an F on education issues and an A+ on business acumen.
This is one of the best articles you will read about Common Core and testing. It appears in the Long Island Business News. It shows the big business of testing, with a focus on Pearson.
Race to the Top, it turns out, unleashed a dash to the cash. And Pearson was the biggest winner. Since 1996, it has been buying up other companies in the testing industry. It is now the biggest provider of testing in the U. S.
You will learn about the big money behing the political decisions that affect children and why their parents want them to opt out.
NY Opt Out Leaders Reject “Delay” in Testing
Tisch’s offer to continue CCSS and testing, with a delay, is proof that the opt-out parents have gotten policy makers’ attention; it is also proof that the policy makers are still not listening to “core” concerns.
New York Chancellor Merryl Tisch offered to delay Cuomo’s high-stakes testing regime for a year. Legislators were delighted.
But opt-out parents rejected the offer. They saw no change in the onerous testing, just a one-year reprieve.
education pathways 