CCSU Literacy There is a crack in everything, that's how the light get in.

Another CCSU Literacy Center Thursday...searching...

Searching for cracks

In between getting ready for class and making the final placements for our Fall Literacy Program, and teaching...I found some time to start getting our Literacy Center ready for our children on Monday and to work on our Hispanic Heritage Month invitations. The truth is Hispanic, history is American history, the Spanish arrived long before the English and the French. They were in the Americas, and yes Texas, California, New Mexico before there was the United States of America. 

We will also on Monday, October 14, 2019, celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day to honor our Native American sisters and brothers's history and culture. Their history is American history. It's the same for Black History, and Women's history...they are American History. All we non-native peoples live on stolen land and all our histories are entangled together. Lands built by African slaves, immigrants backs, and Native souls. We shall honor all people here. It's our stories that bring us together not presidents. We love all our stories here. 

How and what we celebrate matters to children. What is taught is not always learned, and what is learned is not always not taught. Our monthly Read-A-Thons, our Gold Medal Challenges, and our Wax Museum Project becomes one of those not explicitly taught things that help us all grow new friendships, a new respect for each other, and come to understand an America not melting, but growing into this beautiful tapestry of many voices, many people. Imagine one day a moth to just read anything you choose. 

These are particularly hard days on our Hispanic families between ICE threats and detention center stories of children in cages. Even if you are a citizen these policies hurt your families. It's not much, but it is our way to say you are welcomed here. All are welcomed here. 

I'll be here Friday night and Saturday making sure all is ready for Monday. Can't wait to open the doors and say welcome to the children, their parents, and of course our very very special Literacy Center teachers. Have to run to Costco's for some healthy snacks and cups. 

Dear policymakers, legislators, and data crunchers, we shall measure our data, not in test scores, but in how many Gold Medals are awarded, how many smiles we grow, and how many new friendships are grown. How many stories, chapters, and books are read. We shall celebrate our discoveries and learning journeys. 
It is not about the numbers, it's about building an inclusive community that respects our children, parents, and teachers. It is not nearly enough, but it is as Lenard Cohen wrote: "There is a crack in everything that's how the light gets in"
"You can add up the parts
You won't have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That's how the light gets in." 

It is about helping young people here come to see literacy as an amazing gift, that never ever stops giving. Trust me this literacy is a gift thing, that is far far more important than any test scores. And if somehow along the way we come to value and respect others, well my friends that just might be the most important data out there. 

Time to let the light in,
Dr. Jesse P. Turner

If you like to listen to the tune that inspired my walk this morning? Its Lenard Cohen's Anthem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wRYjtvIYK0

Education Reform a world without humanity

About our Policymakers, Mainstream Media, and Legislators.
They have no idea any norm reference assessment will always indicate half fall above the mean, and half fall below. They become like deer in the highlights as soon as some mentions test scores.
With the two major types of assessments used in education are one Norm Reference and Criterion Reference Tests.

1. They have no idea any norm reference assessment will always indicate half fall above the mean, and half fall below. Thus no matter who you test half will always look like they fall below the mean. If it shows anything else then the assessment is invalid. This type of test Mainstream Media love to report that half of the population are unable...you can fill in the blank ______________.

2. Criterion Reference Tests are performance-based mastery assessments, depending on what you call mastery 70%, 75%, 80%, most people choose 75%. By the way, these cut off scores are judgment calls, not objective calls at all. Policymakers determine proficiency levels and passing scores on criterion-referenced tests in my professional opinion are highly subjective or misleading. The potential consequences are particularly significant, with tests used to make high-stakes decisions about students, teachers, and schools.

If I wanted to make it look like our schools are failing I would raise the proficiency level, and keep teachers out of any decision defining cut off scores or defining what it means. In other words, this is what we have now. Assessments made to make children, teachers, and public schools look like they are doing poorly. Of course, this is just my professional opinion, other professionals may disagree with me.  The way Criterion Reference Assessments are being used today show even higher rates of failure than Norm Reference tests. More importantly, they are far far more expensive to develop and create. If I wanted to make a whole lot of money on testing children, these would be my go-to assessments. Over time, I could charge states hundreds of millions, even billions with these.

Regardless of the standardized assessment, our policymakers have ignored the history of racial, linguistic, gender biases, and a hundred years of Eugenics history.  Eugenic scientists went as far as sterilizing 70,000 women because they knew better than the women they sterilized. These women had no court of appeal.

Any standardized test that is determined to be more reliable or valid than the voices of those closest to the child? Is an assessment system void of any sense of humanity. Why? Why? Why? Our children have become monetized into a system that reduces them to test scores that feed profits driven by convincing American our public schools are failing. Why? I can think of only one reason for sustaining an assessment where children, parents, and teachers have no voice. Only "MONEY" can drive this kind of inhumanity. If you like to hear the song that inspired my walk this morning its the Ojays Money Money Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll3uipTO-4A

"Some people got to have it

Some people really need it

Listen to me why'all, do things, do things, do bad things with it

You want to do things, do things, do things, good things with it

Talk about cash money, money

Talk about cash money- dollar bills, why'all

For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother"

170 years of Fix the teachers, Fix the kids, Fix the tests, but never ever fix inequity

Winston Churchill said: "The farther back, you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see." On my journey into the mountains this August, I found a gem in an antique store in Peterboro New Hampshire. It wasn't for sale. It was just a part of a display. I explained that I am a teacher educator and love finding these kinds of gems. The store owner said I don't know how to price this kind of thing. I said it is for a good cause. Teachers of today need to know what it was like for those of yesterday. Five dollars sealed the deal.

It's time to share my 5.00 find in the mountains, and how it informs my thinking and wandering on education. America's Public School reforms have are rooted in three concepts for more than 170 years. I have spent considerable time searching through old public documents over the last decade.
I have found three common threads.
1. Public schools need more rigorous standards in our schools,
2. We need better teachers. To get them we need higher standards for teachers,
3. We need more stringent assessments to improve our public schools.
These three are the revolving door of education reform to fix the standards, fix the teachers, and fix the tests. Occasionally someone like John Dewey comes along and offers a more child-centered approach, or inquiry-based learning, or community school movement. All of these are positive, but when the measure of success becomes some high-stake testing standard. Everyone always falls under these standards, and without equity, it becomes an immoral failure.

Some cheer on the idea that American Public Education is about community schools. Each community is responsible for its public schools. The concept of every child walking to his/her local school embedded in local control.  I love this concept, as well. But, when many of those local schools are underfunded and under-resourced that harms children in those community schools. Then your public school system because a system of the haves and the have nots. When those schools have been in this state for 170 years, then something about the public school system is immoral.
Do we send rockets to the moon?
Do we spend more money on prisons than on public schools?
Do we fight wars in every corner of the world?
Do we give trillions and trillions in tax breaks to the wealthy?
My list could on and on, but when you can do these things, and we don't give equity in our public schools to all children. What do we call it?
 
Honestly, America's public school system is in a state of Structural Racism.  Racism driven by fear,  fear that Black, Brown, Immigrant, Jewish, and Muslim children might rise above their children. Something that happens time and time again, even under the harshest conditions of hate and inequality.  Imagine all our public schools fully funded?  That is the White Suspremercist nightmare.  I do want community-based schooling, but not community inequity. Equity has always been the prize sought by people of color, immigrants, and the poor in America.

So, what did I discoverer in these mountains of New England within that old 1869 Peterboro school finance report, and my studies over the past decade? 
That reforms without equity cannot bring justice to all our children attending our public schools.  American local schools have been segregated by race and poverty since the beginning — the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. The Board of Education has not led to the desegregation of our public schools.  Time and time again that decision has been weakened at both the federal and state level. From Plessy to Brown, these American courts and legislators had numerous shots at desegregation. In my opinion, they have run far away from those opportunities at every chance.  If they get a clear shot at it, like 1954 with Brown, well then those winds of Racism stir up the haters, and it's a full-court White Suspremercaist press stopping it.  Change can't come from merely chasing more rigorous standards and assessments over and over again. But, it does provide excellent cover for a system not willing to change. 

The issue of inequity never gets systematically addressed in my professional opinion.  Shouldn't all researchers accept improving public education begins with equity?  Should every education reformer be standing to shout from the rooftops equity first? I often find some mention of the inequity of resources in my studies. I see it but addressing it, demanding it, implementing it, and making it a reality. It's too big, too abstract, and too costly. It, however, is always mentioned.  Mentioning the White Elephant in the room has been America's way of dealing with inequity.  Black, Brown, Immigrant, Special Education, and Poor Children have been waiting for justice for over 170 years.

I find the vast majority of policymakers, legislators, and reformers not vested in an all-out fight for equitable resources. Race and income inequality get briefly mentioned, never really addressed. Reformers always return to those three safe status quo choices.
1. Public schools need more rigorous standards in our schools,
2. We need better teachers. To get them we need higher standards for teachers,
3. We need more stringent assessments to improve our public schools.
In 2000, within NCLB the language of Inequity and Race found it's way into our current Education Reform picture.  Communities of color given new reforms coming in more robust tests, new standards, and intense competition would save their children.  In 2019, our public schools are more segregated and broken then they were in 1954. I see no serious attempts to address inequity and lack of funding for poor schools. 
I find those same old ideas of new standards and assessments still driving our current education reforms. With an assumption that competition and incorporating business model thinking is the only way to improve equity and quality in our public schools.

In conclusion, I find Racism still drives American public education.
What will change it? A mass uprising of parents, teachers, and citizens who understand this public school system rooted in Racism is the greatest threat to our democracy.
Rise up, teachers and parents reject silence and apathy, 
Dr. Jesse P. Turner
Moral Monday Connecticut Education Ambassador

If you like to hear the tune that inspired my morning walk today, its mystery of iniquity from Lauryn Hill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHC1vE-zZZQ