It's remarkable that people in positions like yours, or even Secretary Duncan's, cannot be bothered to do the cursory research necessary to establish that these value-added evaluations you so value are nothing but junk science. Your rush to implement Common Core without even bothering to test it is indicative not of great passion, but rather of incredible carelessness.

As an ESL teacher, I am frankly amazed that the State of New York fails to differentiate between native-born English speakers and kids like those I teach, who have plainly different needs. It's incredible that no one at the State Education Department seems able to make such an elementary distinction.

I am consistently amazed by the decisions of those who run education systems, and frankly, I find it preposterous that all you have the audacity to boast of the evaluation systems and Common Core, the former of which has been repeatedly disproven, and the latter that has never even been tested. I wish you luck with Common Core, and I certainly hope it proves far more worthwhile than it appears.

However, your enthusiastic embrace of VAM leads me to think your mindset is one more worthy of cowboys than educators. And I'm afraid I see precious little possibility your plans will rustle up anything whatsoever in higher quality eduction for the kids I've been serving for twenty eight years.

This is the same tired argument repeated over and over again. Forge on despite the evidence, the warnings, and the costs.

Whether we are moving too "fast" or too "slow" is a red herring. The proper question is "have we defined the problems correctly and are we moving in the right directions?" My opinion, as the parent of a child in a public elementary school child in NYC, is unequivocally "no." On the curriculum front, there is a completely false and unproductive concept of "rigor" being imposed on schools in the service of test prep. This was built on a circular argument that non-existent declines in test scores justified expanding testing. Educrats then cherry pick meaningless numbers to either congratulate themselves or blame others. For parents and students, this is resulting in the narrowing and dumbing down of curricula, and a constant struggle to keep up with increasing volumes of pointless and age-inappropriate volumes of homework.

On the governance front, the bureaucracy is less less and responsive to parents and teachers, and more and more beholden to those with a financial stake in the expansion of testing, all in service of an idea of "accountability" that doesn't withstand scrutiny. Once one looks at how the "metrics" actually work, it becomes clear that the game is rigged to push schools and teachers toward "failure," leaving the door open for "turnaround" plans that lead inexorably toward replacement of existing school with charters or other alternative models.

These alternatives may or may not be good, and it's certainly a good idea to allow encourage experimentation and flexibility in educational approaches. But alternatives need to be implemented transparently, for well defined reasons, and with proper attention to process integrity and the concerns of parents and educators.

From top to bottom the current notion of reform abandons real transparency, integrity, analytic rigor, and the interests of most stakeholders and replaces them with sham versions that allow educrats in a bubble to congratulate themselves and blame others for chimerical success and failures respectively.

One of the most telling facts of "reform" is that virtually no one advocating it has any skin the game as a parent, student, or career educator. Ms. Tisch and Mr. King need to spend some time experiencing "reform" from the perspectives of the people being subjected to it.

In my experiences there are precious few educators (or any others for that matter) who are opposed to the idea of embracing academic rigor (though I do feel academic vigor is given short shrift recently). The Common Core and high academic standards are tremendous aspirational tools. However, there is a great deal of appropriate skepticism of HOW implementation of the Common Core and (even more) untried and extremely faulty evaluation systems should proceed. At present, both are promoted with heavy doses of shaming and blaming. Teacher evaluation protocols are adapting systems that have been proven to be faulty, prone to error, and extremely likely to advance cheating and "gaming" the standardized tests that we hold up as a Holy Grail. In highly degrading ways, some are using data as a "hammer" rather than a "flashlight".
There is no desire to have any student wait any longer for a truly great educational experience. However, in our urgency to promote this latest of reforms,let us NEVER forget that we need to model those " college and career ready" skills we so strongly advocate in the Common Core: collaboration, collegiality, emotional safety, respect for differences,and equity. Let us practice in all our policies what we so fervently want to preach.
Richard Cardillo
Director of Education
National School Climate Center

The biggest problem I see with educational reform is when it takes power out of the hands of the teachers. The most fundamental component of child development lies in the dyadic relationship between the child and the adults to whom they look up to. Children have to have confidence in their teachers as authorities just as they require confidence in their parents as authorities. It is for that reason that I look, with some skepticism, at outside mandates, not because the common core curriculum might not be good, but if it compromises the conditions of power and authority that the teacher has in the class. We don't want teachers looking over their shoulders and failing to exercise the judgment that they have.

I have the same feeling about parents and homework. One of my major concerns about homework is that it supplants parental authority. I don't like parents feeling they are accountable to teachers in how they use their evening time, any more than I like teachers being unable to use their judgment while teaching our kids.

http://thehomeworktrap.com.

Meryl and John, you are Harming Children in Kindergarten with your misguided fluff about how they don't have time to play because they "have to learn."
You are emperors with no clothes.
You are derelict in your duties: enforce state laws about the amount of gym time every principal is legally required to provide and to which every child is entitled. Require schools to reinstate "real" libraries -- remove the test-prep "multimedia" computers to another room and put books back on the shelves. Send kids to the library weekly to check out and enjoy books and learn to love reading -- as opposed to Christmas holiday reading "homework."
Play is the way kindergarten-age children learn. We now have children in cognitively inappropriate settings losing valuable time. Where they once expanded their vocabularies in the blocks, trucks and dress-up corner, they are now sitting mute while getting a lecture from a teacher about, "What do readers do, class? Let's look at our chart on the wall. Readers read. First, readers look at the title. Let's look at the first letter of the first word in the title of this book..."
While enduring this drivel in one of you kindergarten classes, I searched my pocked for a pen so I could poke myself in the eye and relieve my pain!

I demand Real School Reform now:
1. We need a Constitutional Amendment barring the operation of schools to serve, as Mayor Bloomberg recently said in the Atlantic, "the needs of industry." Schools need to serve all students -- even those who want to become Mayor, a Member of the Board of Regents, a political activist, a scientist, artist, surgeon...not just students who want to serve Microsoft in some inaccurately imaginared future where "technology jobs" will employ all.
2. Blended literacy with teaching of phonics, grammar and composition at cognitively appropriate ages.
3. Discovery-based protected Kindergarten (with rest time, a predominance of child-led or teacher-inspired play time and minimal exposure other adults such as to lunch ladies, custodians, gym teachers, music teachers, etc.
4. Four years of science paid for by the state in every high school: biology, chemistry, physics and one elective.
5. Latin in all schools.
6. Teach a foreign language at the most appropriate ages: pre-K. Through a conversation-heavy, play-based approach.
7. Outlaw Family Math and Everyday Math and reinstate traditional, foundations-building real math.
8. Every child has the right to a complete Geography and History education. Not watered-down Social Studies.
9. Stop denying NY City citizens their full political rights: reinstate elected school boards.
10. Ban all cash collections in public schools. Join the 21st century and allow only traceable payments for lunch and other items: check, credit cards or PayPal. Or at a minimum, no cash collected by any school entity ever.
11. Stop school custodians from cashing in on public resources. Crack down on their acceptance of tips and their "renting" out school space to line their own pockets.