Ohio high school students taking 6th-grade PARCC standardized math test

Hear that train a comin', comin' round the bend … -- "Folsom Prison Blues"

If you want to see why the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) standardized tests are likely to be a train wreck, just watch these Ohio high school students taking a 6th grade-level online practice test.

Or link here:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=327363847461483

Here's what the kids said about the video -- and their experience with a standardized test that will be given to 6th-graders in Ohio later this spring:

Brooke on the right and Megan (myself) in the middle are both seniors, Melanie is in the middle and is in 10th grade. We are taking the practice Math PBA PARCC test for sixth grade.
Brooke is in Calculus which is only available on the track of honors math classes meaning during freshman year she started in Geometry, although students can get on the track and double up on math classes for a year and get up to calculus.
I took a quarter of calculus but dropped it because I did not need it for college and am taking statistics.
Melanie is in honors classes but is a sophomore, she had more of a fresher memory to middle school math since she's younger. This test was hard for ALL three of us. We recorded our reactions to taking a few sample questions of this test.

Posted to Facebook Feb. 14 by the Ohio chapter of Badass Teachers (Ohio BATs). In lieu of a mission statement on the About Us page: "BATs is full support of authentic teaching and public schools; giving teachers and parents back their voices in legislative decisions regarding students!" This video, 13:27 minutes long, will certainly help do that.

LATER: The national Badass Teachers Association has uploaded it to YouTube (see embedded video above), with this note: "What happens when an Honors Calculus student, an Honors Algebra 2 student, and a Honors Statistics student meet with the 6th grade online version of the practice PBA PARCC Math Test? (BTW, One of these gals has a goal to be a teacher!)"

Accountability, assessment, English majors and whether 'tis nobler to take arms against a sea of troubles or to master the competencies in Common Core Reading Standards 1, 2 and 4

An article by Michael Godsley, a high school English teacher in San Luis Obispo, Calif., sums up what "college readiness" standards, accountability, assessment and the politicization of the K-12 curriculum since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 have done to the old idea of studying English and the humanities in order to be "exposed to great thoughts and deep advice, and the opportunity to apply them to [one's] own life in [one's] own clumsy way" -- which is more or less why I decided to switch my major to English in grad school.

Godsley's point is that NCLB, Common Core and the "teaching to the test" they have imposed on classroom teachers "emphasize technical skills like analyzing, integrating, and delineating a text" to the exclusion of literature and thus impoverish the K-12 curriculum.

---

By the way: There's still time to write the U.S. Senate Education Committee, which is conducting hearings on NCLB and standardized testing, at FixingNCLB@help.senate.gov. They are hearing a lot from proponents of testing, testing and more testing. They need to hear from the rest of us.

---

You can read the whole thing on The Atlantic magazine's website. I'll just quote a couple of Godsley's vignettes. They tell a story. First this:

I remember when, 10 years ago, my students spent an hour sharing their favorite lines from Father Zossima’s sermon in The Brothers Karamozov and how and why it affected their own lives. One student was visibly moved by the idea that suffering for a loved one might be a blessing available only in a life on Earth, not in heaven. A few different students called it "their favorite class ever." This morning, my student-teacher—a college student I’m training to be a classroom educator—used a hip-hop poem as a primary text and started the class by saying, "Today we’re going to practice Reading Standards 1, 2, and particularly 4" in reference to the anchor standards that the students had on their desks. If this sounds a little dry, I’m partly to blame—for a month, he’s been watching me ask the students to explicitly reflect on their progress in each of these technical areas. In any case, with habits like these, he’s sure to land a permanent job in the fall.

Then this, a few paragraphs down:

Later, a kid who reminds me of the teenager I was in high school—a boy who is at different times depressed, excited, naive, and curious—asked me why I became an English teacher. I smiled in self-defense, but I was silent …, not knowing what to say anymore.

I like vignettes, and I like stories. I like the way they get a point across. But I don't like this story.

Michael Godsey, "The Wisdom Deficit in Schools" The Atlantic website 22 Jan. 2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/the-wisdom-deficit-in-schools/384713/.

Dear Senate Education Committee: It's time to put NCLB, Common Core in the time-out corner

Here's my letter to Congress asking a moratorium on the standardized testing in No Child Left Behind. NCLB is up for renewal, and I've been sharing material on how to lobby Congress about it on my Facebook page, but I'm also posting here because I want to link to a couple of other websites.

Not sure how much good it'll do … but, hey, they asked for input …

With the Elementary and Secondary Education Act(ESEA) up for reauthorization this year, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., is convening hearings that begin today. Alexander, chair of the Senate Education Committee, has issued a press release vowing to "fix the No Child Left Behind law, wrapping up six years of committee work and sending a bill to the Senate floor within the first few weeks of 2015." He's also asking for public input at this email address:

FixingNCLB@help.senate.gov

Here's mine. I sent it in this morning:

Dear Senator Alexander

I am writing to urge you and the Senate Education Committee to draft legislation: (1) declaring a moratorium on all high-stakes standardized testing; and (2) specifically rescinding the accountability testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act until a national education policy can be worked out with input from teachers and child development specialists in addition to the corporate school reform advocates and standardized test vendors who now dominate the field. However benign their intent may have been, NCLB and the testing component of the Common Core initiative are seriously flawed, and their implementation has done serious damage to children and educators, especially in low-income school districts.

As a college freshman English teacher (now retired), I am familiar with the kind of “college-readiness” standards Common Core purports to address. But the sample essay questions I have seen from the PARCC tests in media accounts are so poorly designed that they do not validly measure anything – except perhaps the haste in which they were cranked out by people who obviously were not familiar with in-class essay writing processes. They ask students to write about so many unrelated issues that I couldn’t have argued a coherent thesis in the time given, and I spent my entire career as a writer, editor and writing teacher. I understand the situation is worse in the math components of PARCC, and the whole concept of testing younger children for college-readiness has been called into question by child development specialists. It’s time to put NCLB, Common Core and PARCC in the time-out corner and replace them with a humane, educationally valid system.

You won’t remember me, but I covered your gubernatorial administration and met you as a cub reporter in Oak Ridge, Tenn. I remember how you helped us move past a dark period in Tennessee government and strengthened our system of education. As chairman of the Senate Education Committee, you in a unique position to do the same with regard to national education policy, and I trust you will do the right thing again.

 Peter Ellertsen
 Springfield, IL (13th CD)

PARCC, if you're not familiar with the alphabet soup of school reform, stands for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. It's part of Common Core.

How -- and why -- to write Congress

Here are some tips from Peter Greene, a language arts teacher in western Pennsylvania who writes a delightfully curmudgeonly blog called "Curmudgucation: A grumpy old teacher trying to keep up the good classroom fight in the new age of reformy stuff." He writes:

You do not have to be brilliant or super-articulate. Just speak from the heart. Don't write Moby Dick in email form. Keep it brief (aka "readable") and if you have a lot more to say, send several emails. If you just have a sentence or two and can't figure out how to add to that, just send that. If you've read something that really said it for you, email a link to the piece and write "Read this. I believe it's true."

But whatever you do, don't sit silently hoping that Congress does the right thing. You can bet the farm that DC is swarming with lobbyists and "activists" who are making certain that their point of view is heard up close and personal. We know that the unions that are supposed to represent the teacher point of view are unlikely to do so.

It's on us. It's time to speak up. It's time to speak your truth. Will they hear us and listen to us? Who knows, But I do know this-- there is no possibility that they will hear us if we don't speak.

Greene's readers are mostly teachers, but you don't have to be a teacher to lobby your elected representatives.

So I'd add this: It's kind of a fill-in-the-blanks approach:

1. Tell them what you want 'em to do. Like "stop the @#$%ing standardized tests." But that's me talking. You can read Alexander's press release and decide what you want to say.

2. Briefly state why you're interested in the legislation.

You don't have to be a teacher for your voice to count. I didn't have to worry about K-12 mandates, but I graded lots of essays -- and these PARCC essay "prompts" (i.e. the questions) sucked. So that's what I wrote about. If you're a student, or you've been a student and you have an opinion on just exactly what standardized tests measure (or don't), share it. A lot of parents write in, too. If your children aren't in school yet, here's a Washington Post story on standardized testing in kindergarten. It's scary.

Finally, whether you're a teacher, a student, a parent or whatever, it doesn't hurt to let them know you're a voter. I just mention my congressional district when I sign my name. I think it's a polite way of letting them know I'm watching. In fact, I'm going to send copies of my message to Illinois' senators and my U.S. representative, too.

Obama's higher ed ratings, student outcomes assessment and a dandy new standardized testing product -- here we go round (and round and round and round) the mulberry bush

So I'm on the Inside Higher Ed website reading up on President Obama's plan to rate colleges and universities -- which turns out to look like one more circuit around an old, old mulberry bush -- and I surf into an an editorial on higher ed assessment by someone named Geoff Irvine, who turns out to be CEO of Chalk & Wire, a Canadian assessment software company. At least it's labeled as an editorial. To me it looks more like an unadulterated sales pitch.

"Today," says Irvine, "leaders of colleges and universities across the board, regardless of size or focus, are struggling to meaningfully demonstrate the true value of their institution for students, educators and the greater community because they can't really prove that students are learning."

OK. Been there. Done that. I've been around this mulberry bush before, and it's not too hard to figure out what's coming next.

This is precisely the same language we were bombarded with when I chaired a faculty assessment committee 10 years ago, and we were mandated to really prove [our] students were learning, in meaningful, evidence-based, "value-added" ways that somehow turned out to involve the purchase of standardized testing products. Irvine adds:

Most [colleges] are utilizing some type of evaluation or assessment mechanism to keep “the powers that be” happy through earnest narratives about goals and findings, interspersed with high-level data tables and colorful bar charts. However, this is not scientific, campuswide assessment of student learning outcomes aimed at the valid measure of competency.

Campuswide assessment efforts rarely involve the rigorous, scientific inquiry about actual student learning that is aligned from program to program and across general education. Instead, year after year, the accreditation march has trudged grimly on, its participants working hard to produce a plausible picture of high “satisfaction” for the whole, very expensive endeavor.

But, Irvine helpfully adds, there is a way out of grimly trudging around the mulberry bush.

In part he recommends "change management" and "disruption," two of this year's most popular corporate school reform buzzwords, and in part he recommends buying a product he just happens to sell:

Most accreditation software systems rely on processes that are narrative, not a systematic inquiry via data. Universities are full of people who research for a living. Give them tools (yes, like Chalk & Wire, which my company provides) to investigate learning and thereby rebuild a systematic approach to improve competency.

Which led a commenter to paraphrase:

#Disruption #Consultants #NewTechnology (which I can sell you!) Yes, of course that is the answer. Because the "public" is dissatisfied. For one, I look forward to more pronouncements from our assessment overlords. That will surely (SURELY!) make higher education better.

And another to exclaim:

What poorly reasoned nonsense. This is a perfect example of "disruptive" pressure from outside, allegedly on behalf of "the public." It masquerades as an editorial but what it amounts to is free advertising for an "assessment" company. (Will _Inside Higher Ed_ run puff pieces by the CEOs of Nike or Coca-Cola next?) Those who listen to parasitic nonsense like this are just going to pile on the costs of higher education, and students will be no better off for it. Courses and curriculums redesigned to "prove" student achievements will be gutted, stripped down, homogenized.

So let's go back 10 and 20 years ago, for another trip around the mulberry bush …

In 1995, 1996 (don't ask) and again in 2005, we were mandated at Springfield College in Illinois to prove that [our] students were learning -- and we were warned by Cecilia L. López, then the assessment coordinator of the North Central Association, that things like grades and successful transfer rates didn't cut it anymore. In a paper ominously titled "Opportunities for Improvement: Advice from Consultant-Evaluators on Programs to Assess Student Learning," Lopez laid down our marching orders if we didn't want to lose our accreditation:

Evaluators note that information gathered on a number of forms assumed to be “measures” of student academic achievement by institutions does not in fact provide evidence of learning. One such non-measure is a questionnaire asking students if their personal goals for the course or major or program have been met. A second group of non-measures that institutions often mistakenly consider to be instruments that measure student learning are the measures and reports associated with program evaluation. … The fourth and most frequently submitted non-measure of student learning are grades and GPAs. Evaluators regularly stress that neither grades nor GPAs are adequate or reliable measures of student learning across an undergraduate major or graduate/professional program of study.

Which might explain why my eyes glazed over when I read the Obama administration is considering a "framework" for rating colleges and universities on criteria of affordabilty, access and "performance," or student outcomes.

"Over all," says Michael Stratford of Inside Higher Ed, "the department’s approach in the outline appears to be moving away from a system that lets students and families draw comparative value judgments between colleges and closer to something that resembles a set of minimum standards for institutions."

OK. Just like Common Core and Race to the Top. And, before that, No Child Left Behind. And, before that, mandated busywork circling the mulberry bush all the way back to the Professorenzetteln (professor's notes) required in 1556 and 1607 by the Holy Roman Empire.

But there's something I wish the experts would keep in mind. Mulberries, as Wikipedia reminds us, do not grow on bushes. They grow on trees.

GAO: States' share of higher ed funding declines again; students stiffed with bill, again

This trend has been under way for a long time …

According to a study for the U.S. Government Accountablity Office, state appropriations to public colleges and universities continued to drop and tuition continued to rise from 2003 through 2012. Or, as The Atlantic puts it in a blog post today, "Students Are Bankrolling Public Colleges Now More Than Ever Before." The GAO's executive summary:

From fiscal years 2003 through 2012, state funding for all public colleges decreased, while tuition rose. Specifically, state funding decreased by 12 percent overall while median tuition rose 55 percent across all public colleges. The decline in state funding for public colleges may have been due in part to the impact of the recent recession on state budgets. Colleges began receiving less of their total funding from states and increasingly relied on tuition revenue during this period. Tuition revenue for public colleges increased from 17 percent to 25 percent, surpassing state funding by fiscal year 2012, as shown below. Correspondingly, average net tuition, which is the estimated tuition after grant aid is deducted, also increased by 19 percent during this period. These increases have contributed to the decline in college affordability as students and their families are bearing the cost of college as a larger portion of their total family budgets.

Profitship! Fake ad sums up school "reform"

Posted to YouTube today, by The Progressive:

Profitship! Cashing In On Public Schools. This animated feature on school privatization stars little Timmy, a kindergartner who likes his public school. Timmy gets a confusing lesson in corporate education reform, starting with the rightwing mantra "Public Schools have failed."

Brilliant! No other comment on my part is necessary.

Inspirational quote from Ursuline sisters

Found while cleaning my office at Springfield College in Illinois, posted to the blog in 2006 and re-posted here for easy reference, an inpirational quote from the writings of St. Angela Merici, founder of the Ursuline order:

Do something,
get moving,
be confident,
risk new things,
stick with it,
then be ready for
BIG SURPRISES!

(as translated by Sr. Terry Eppridge, OSU)

I found it in a three-fold brochure promoting the Ursuline Companions in Mission, Central Region, Crystal City, Mo. It is a modern paraphrase of a passage in St. Angela's Counsels and Legacies, dictated to her scribe, Gabriele Cozzano, ca. 1539-40.

Since 2006, a translation from the Commentary on the Writings of Saint Angela Merici by M. Ignatius Stone, OSU, has been available on line. In that translation, the passage reads:

"Act, move, believe, strive, hope, cry out to him with all your heart, For without doubt you will see marvelous things, if you direct everything to the praise and glory of his Majesty and the good of souls. (Modern American translation: “Do something, get moving, be confident, risk new things, stick with it, get on your knees, then be ready for big surprises!”)

-- Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, Maple Mount, Kentucky, 2009. http://ursulinesmsj.org/_uploads/SaintAngelaMericiwritings.pdf

Show 'em your you're cross, Sister

Does this story (a lightly edited version of one that's been around for a while) have anything to do with value-added measures for teacher and school district assessment?

SHOW 'EM YOUR CROSS, SISTER

Two Irish nuns were sitting at a traffic light when a bunch of rowdy drunks pulls up alongside of their car. One of the drunks shouts, "Hey, show us your tits, ye bloody penguins!"

The Mother Superior turns to Sr. Margaret, "I don't think they know who we are. Show them your cross."

So Sr. Margaret rolls down her window and shouts, "Screw off, ye little fookin’ wankers, before I come over there and rip yer nuts off!"

Sr. Margaret looks back at the Mother Superior and asks, "Was that cross enough?"

Oh, well, I guess really it isn't about education. But I still like the story. It makes me feel better about a lot of things.

Benedictine University-Springfield, 2003-2015

It's been a month now since Benedictine University at Springfield announced it will shut down its 520-student traditional BA program at the end of spring semester and lay off 75 of its 100 full-time employees in order to concentrate on adult and graduate education. The university estimated it would cost $40 million to build all the dorms, athletic facilities and other amenities of an elite residential college campus, and to serve the greater "social … and spiritual" needs of traditional (18- to 22-year-old) students.

Which suggests that adult students who wait till the kids are older to go back to college aren't scared to death and don't have needs. Who knew?

Maybe the powers that be at Benedictine believe what they're saying, and maybe they believe their numbers. Maybe their cost estimates weren't gold-plated in order to justify a predetermined decision. Who knows? Certainly it's consistent with a widespread trend that isn't confined to higher ed.

BenU's decision comes at a time when other colleges and universities nationwide are relying on part-time, temporary adjunct instructors to teach their undergrad classes; urban school districts like Chicago are closing neighborhood schools, firing the professional teachers and replacing them with entry-level temp workers half-trained by Teach for America. Even service industries like retail banking are laying off branch bank tellers and replacing them with ATM machines.

So maybe Benedictine is cashing in on that trend. Maybe not. Maybe their aim is what they say it is, to provide quality graduate education.

Whatever. Who knows?

There was no input into BenU's decision from students, faculty or the larger community in Springfield, all of whom were blindsided by it. So there's no real way to question it. Why bother, anyway?

Fletcher Farrar, editor-publisher of Illinois Times, had the most gracious -- indeed, just about the only -- public comment. In an Editor's Note that ran Oct. 30, the week after BenU's announcement, he said:

We had thought Benedictine was doing so well, and appreciated how the Lisle-based university had brought life and investment back to the historic Springfield College campus. The abruptness of the announcement highlighted how little connection Benedictine’s board has with Springfield. Had somebody here known the place was in trouble maybe something could have been done to save it.

Whatever. Who knows? Who cares anymore?

Farrar also said Benedictine broke its promise, proclaimed all over town on billboards that were hastily taken down after the announcement, to provide Springfield with "affordable and attainable undergraduate education." That comment, one paragraph in length, said everything that needed to be said.

Required reading: A blogroll

• http://dianeravitch.net/ -- Diane Ravitch's blog: "A site to discuss better education for all." I never could have imagined, when I was chairing the assessment committee, that I would ever agree with Diane Ravitch on anything. Now she has the most comprehensive and credible website tracking education issues.

• http://preaprez.wordpress.com -- Fred Klonsky: "Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data." If you've been missing Slats Grobnik the last 10 or 15 years, check out the Tony at the Red Line Tap archives. Indispensable source on Chicago schools, Illinois politics.

• https://deutsch29.wordpress.com -- Mercedes Schneider, who has a Ph.D. in psychometrics and now teaches in the public schools in Louisiana. Her critique of high-stakes testing is withering because she understands the science behind it and how it is being abused.

• http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com -- CURMUDGUCATION: A grumpy old teacher trying to keep up the good classroom fight in the new age of reformy stuff. By Peter Greene, a high school English teacher in northwestern Pennsylvania. Writes a local newspaper column, too. Keeps up. Has Common Core, charters, other "reformy stuff" absolutely nailed!

• Jersey Jazzman

• http://edushyster.com -- "EduShyster: Keeping an eye on the corporate education agenda" by freelancer Jennifer Berkshire who edited an AFT newsletter in Massachusetts. (She's also originally from Springfield [Ill., not Mass.]! Funny. Incisive. Has cool stickers that say "Rotten to the Common Core" and "Blame Me -- I'm a Teacher."

• http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/ -- "Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Sharing some ideas about public education, school reform, and ed-politics in general" -- Chicago.

• http://www.schoolnewsservice.com Jim Broadway's Illinois School Policy Updates. Bio here.

Accountability bites: A rubric for assessing politicians like teachers -- and kids taking standardized tests

What would it look like if politicians, college presidents and school "reform" experts were assessed by the same benchmarks and criteria as classroom teachers? Comes now the Chicago Teachers Union with something I've wanted to see for a long time -- a rubric for assessing the performance of elected officials in three "domains" that parodies the language of Illinois' Performance Evaluation Reform Act of 2010.

Fred Klonsky, whose blog on Chicago school politics is required reading (yep, even for a retiree whose teaching career was in higher ed, at a private school downstate), headlined his post: "Whoever thought of this at the CTU deserves an award." Yep, and yep again! Klonsky writes:

This almost caused me to do a spit-take with my coffee this morning.

Whoever came up with this at the CTU: God bless ‘em.

If you missed it, this completely mirrors what politicians in this and other states have foisted upon teachers.

In a nutshell, the CTU questionnaire evaluates candidates for political office on evidence of proficiency in three domains (planning, legislative issues and professional ethics), according to a rubric that sets criteria for ratings of unsatisfactory, basic, proficient and distinguished. It's exactly like the rubrics I worked with at SCI-Benedictine.

Greg Hinz of Crain's Chicago Business found it: "Cheeky, boldly assertive and even arrogant," not to mention "a bit bureaucratic and onerous." (I would have added: "Snotty." But that's how the language of all rubrics strikes me.) Klonsky thinks Hinz missed the joke, but I'm not so sure. Over the years Hinz has been a pretty astute observer of Chicago and Illinois state politics. And he does headline his article on the questionnaire:

CTU tells candidates: Sit up straight and raise your hand for support

Which perfectly matches the tone of CTU's gambit.

Hinz aptly summarizes it:

Overall, CTU asks that those seeking its endorsement answer three general questions, with as many as five sub-questions each, about them and their campaign. On each — much like a standardized test — the candidates will be ranked: unsatisfactory, basic, proficient or distinguished.

For example, in question 2e, dealing with cuts to public services, an "unsatisfactory" candidate would be one who has supported cuts in services such as health clinics, Medicaid, police protection and schools. A "proficient" candidate would have "consistently opposed cuts" via "pubic pronouncements and legislative initiatives." To be rated "distinguished," that contender would have to have "proposed reinstatement of prior cuts."

Another example: campaign communications. The "unsatisfactory" candidate has "no strategy for communications," but does have an "uncomfortable" public speaking style. But a "distinguished" one would speak "in multiple formats" in ways that are "easy to comprehend." And the candidate should be such a good speaker that his or her future constituents will be "excited about the candidate."

In other words, no dees, dose and dems, alder-people.

Here's why I think Hinz maybe gets it after all -- it's when he slips "much like a standardized test" into a subordinate phrase. He adds:

To those who think this all sounds a bit bureaucratic and onerous, the union pretty much says: tough.

In the form, it notes that, over its opposition, the state in 2010 adopted new teachers evaluation standards that have "four domains with 19 separate components," with teachers being rated unsatisfactory to distinguished.

"We believe those who develop, pass and enforce laws should be held to the same standards as our members," the evaluation form says. "To that end, the Chicago Teachers Union will assess candidates for elective office using this rubric based on the one used to evaluate teachers."

It's also the language that has been used to evaluate students for years now. And, as Hinz noted, it is much like a standardized test.

The complete text of CTU's rubric, uh, questionnaire, is available on line at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/247306416/CTU-Questionnaire.

Education, corporate school "reform" blogs -- re- opening an old blog for some new links

Reactivating an old blog in new times ...

I opened this blog several years ago, planning to use it as a teaching journal and "to keep abreast of developments in learning outcomes assessment" at a time when I chaired my private liberal arts college's assessment committee and the Bush administration was pushing hard for standardized testing in higher ed.

The journal part of it -- the "-/log" part of "B/LOG" -- only lasted a few days. Then, as the standardized testing threat subsided, I let my blogging on higher ed issues slide, too. As a classroom teacher, I wasn't comfortable blogging about politics anyway -- and assessment was more about politics than education.

So I sputtered along and finally put the blog on haitus after two years.

Now, for reasons that are increasingly obvious, I think it's time to reopen the blog and freshen up the links -- as a portal to some blogs I like to follow, that give me hope teachers are beginning to resist the corporate agenda for education. I'm no longer in higher ed. I'm retired now. And I have other interests to keep me busy.

But education at all levels is increasingly under attack from powerful vested interests, especially in Illinois. Some of the dots, at least in Chicago, are connected in a blog post by Paul Horton, a history teacher at the University of Chicago's lab school. It's a polemic, but it's an unusually well documented polemic.

And there are signs that teachers at long last are beginning to fight back effectively. ...

Well, it's pretty obvious what's happening and why it's a good idea to keep up, isn't it? Some blogs I especially like:

• http://dianeravitch.net/ -- Diane Ravitch's blog: "A site to discuss better education for all." I never could have imagined, when I was chairing the assessment committee, that I would ever agree with Diane Ravitch on anything. Now she has the best website -- to my knowledge the only credible website -- tracking education policy issues daily.

• http://preaprez.wordpress.com -- Fred Klonsky: "Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data." If you've been missing Slats Grobnik the last 10 or 15 years, check out the Tony at the Red Line Tap archives. Indispensable source on Chicago schools, Illinois politics.

• http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com -- CURMUDGUCATION: A grumpy old teacher trying to keep up the good classroom fight in the new age of reformy stuff. By Peter Greene, a high school English teacher in northwestern Pennsylvania. Writes a local newspaper column, too. Keeps up. Has Common Core, charters, other "reformy stuff" absolutely nailed!

• https://deutsch29.wordpress.com -- Mercedes Schneider, who has a Ph.D. in psychometrics and now teaches in the public schools in Louisiana. Her critique of high-stakes testing is withering because she understands the science behind it and how it is being abused.

• http://edushyster.com -- "EduShyster: Keeping an eye on the corporate education agenda" by freelancer Jennifer Berkshire who edited an AFT newsletter in Massachusetts. (She's also originally from Springfield [Ill., not Mass.]! Funny. Incisive. Has cool stickers that say "Rotten to the Common Core" and "Blame Me -- I'm a Teacher."

  http://rpnps.blogspot.com RPNPS Voices: Rogers Park Neighbors For Public Schools. Especially good at tracking legislation in Springfield. Tim Furman teaches at a Chicago suburban high school. Archive: https://plus.google.com/+TimFurman123/posts.

• http://susanohanian.org/index.php -- SusanOhanian.org. National focus on what her bio on HuffPo calls the "current corporate-politico assaults on public education." Updated frequently.

• xxx

• http://reclaimreform.com Ken Previti, retired teacher of English/Language Arts at a Chicago suburban high school. Now living in Florida. Obviously keeps up, though.

• http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/ -- "Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Sharing some ideas about public education, school reform, and ed-politics in general" -- Chicago.

• http://www.schoolnewsservice.com Jim Broadway's Illinois School Policy Updates. Bio here.

Essential background: Article by Jim Nowlan, "The politics of education: Erosion of local control." Illinois School Board Journal May/June 2009. http://www.iasb.com/journal/j050609_02.cfm.

Black's - definition of plagiarism

"The deliberate and knowing presentation of another person's original ideas or creative expressions as one's own. Generally, plagiarism is immoral but not illegal. If the expression's creator gives unrestricted permission for its use and the user claims the expression as original, the user commits plagiarism but does not violate copyright laws. If the original expression is copied without permission, the plagiarist may violate copyright laws, even if credit goes to the creator. And if the plagiarism results in material gain, it may be deemed a passing-off activity that violates the Lanham Act." Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed. (2004), p. 1187. [The Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C., is the federal law regulating trademarks.] From my old syllabus.

387 paper assignment / D R A F T

Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift once said, "satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."

Reviewing a theater adaptation of "Lucky You" for Broadway.com , Beau Higgins says Hiaasen's columns at The Miami Herald "have outraged just about everyone in South Florida, including major politicians, law officials and even his own bosses." In "Lucky You," his targets include South Florida developers, religious quacks, redneck militias, white liberals, Hooters and, yes, the newspaper business.

Research Hiaasen, his journalism and his novels. Based on that research and your reading of "Lucky You," write a documented feature article

How does "Lucky You" reflect the ethics of a working journalist? What media trends, practices, etc. does he satirize? What would you consider the moral center of his work?

Hold it down to 1,500 words.




"A Brief Introduction to Restoration and Eighteenth Century Satire," lecture delivered by Ian Johnston in November 1998, in English 200, Section 3, Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/Eng200/satire3.htm

COMM 387: Draft goals and objectives

A. Goals Students will understand the historical development of professional journalism in England and the United States; appraise ethics, principles and craftsmanship in authors who made the transition from journalism to literature; assess the professional ethics, attitudes and craft agenda of professional journalists writing today; and reflect on how these principles and practices can inform their own professional writing.

B. Student Learning Objectives. Upon completion of the course, students will be able:

To discuss the development of journalism in the English-speaking world, from 18th-century magazines to the 19th-century penny press, "yellow journalism," muckraking and professional mass-market news media during the 19th to 21st centuries

To formulate a set of journalistic ethical standards and values, including such principles as accuracy, the verification of fact, objectivity, serving as a watchdog and exposing wrongdoing in powerful institutions; and to compare these values to commonly accepted benchmarks of literary value

To discuss and evaluate common stereotypes of journalists, including those of Ben Hecht [as reflected in His Girl Friday (1940) starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant]; Hunter Thompson; and Carl Hiassen, novelist and Miami Herald columnist.

To evaluate the work of literary figures including Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway in terms of values, principles and rhetorical strategies they may have acquired as journalists

To evaluate the work of journalists including Richard Harding Davis, Ernie Pyle, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Mike Royko and Robert Fisk in light of both journalistic and literary standards and rhetorical strategies

To reflect on how the values, principles and work product of journalists from 18th-century London coffeehouses to creative nonfiction markets today can help in the formation of their own personal and professional values and principles; and how some of the techniques studied might (or might not) be reflected in their own professional writing

Bloom's taxonomy -- skills-based, too

The Faculty Center for Teaching and E-Learning at the University of North Carolina Charlotte has Bloom's Taxonomy Objectives for skills-based courses as well as the cognitive domain. Also the affective domain. One to come back to.

J-blogs: Weblogs for J-school students?

After talking with a couple of students in the news-editorial sequence during finals, I'm going to start posting links to information about how journalism students might use a blog to enhance their careers. The conventional wisdom, at least in academic life, is to stay away from them. Up-and-coming professors have been denied tenure, at least so go the scare stories, because of controversy over their blogs. Middle East expert Juan Cole, who makes no secret of his utter distain for neo-conservative foreign policy, is often cited as an example. So be careful. Be especially careful of satire -- if readers can take something the wrong way, they will. Count on it. They most assuredly will.

But my instinct is certain kinds of blogs might be helpful to people just getting started in the business. ...

Especially appropriate for student journalists, perhaps, would be something like a writer's journal. This is one of those terms that means different things to different people. What I mean by a writer's journal is kind of like a notebook professional writers use to try out ideas, post observations, etc. Something, in other words, an awful lot like the blogs I had my students start fall semester in COMM 337 (advanced writing). Another warning: Don't post finished articles, or even nearly-finished articles, to your blog. Free-lance markets, as a rule, won't touch anything that's been published before. And a few of them might count your blog as a prior publication.

Again, be careful. It's a big, wide, wonderful, dangerous world out there. And the Internet is no less dangerous (and no more) than the rest of it. But you already knew that. Right?

The Helium.com writers' community website collects 15 articles under the heading Tips for keeping a journal like a professional writer. I haven't read them all, but they look very useful. I checked a couple of third-party ratings in an
Pandia Search Engine News webpage and a members' forum with comments by users at Editred.org web. Helium seems kosher, especially for beginners, but not a good way of making money by free-lancing. But in my experience nothing else is, either!

A website called the Internet Writing Journal maintains a list of "The Best Author Blogs" ... check them out. You may find something that's suited

Infed.org is a website put together by a small group of British educators who use it for "exploring informal education, lifelong learning and social action." They have a useful tip sheet "Writing and Keeping Journals" for teachers and education students.

How a band uses 'sticky' website

A band mixing the sound of Afropop, hip hop, soul and, yes, I can hear a little gospel, Soulfège is based in Boston, now doing a Sweet Mother Africa tour. Infectious music.

Also an awesome example of a band using new media. You've read about "sticky" websites? (If you're not sure, see below.) Well, this is how a well-thought-out sticky website works. Here's the band, in their own words:

So what is Soulfège? Glad you asked. Put it like this - if Fela Kuti, Bob Marley, Lenny Kravitz and Gwen Stefani were all jammin' with the same band, it would be this one.

Fusing funk, reggae, hip-hop, and highlife, Soulfège is more than a band...it's a big FUNKY band.

Electrifying audiences, from Boston to Ghana and beyond, with its positive vibe and relentless groove, the members of Soulfège have performed with and for some of the world's most talented artists and distinguished dignitaries, including Debbie Allen, Janet Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Bobby McFerrin, Nelson Mandela, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Dr. Cornell West, and Al Gore.

The group is known for building sonic bridges that fuse the influences of the African Diaspora into a musical vision all its own. Soulfège not only shines with creativity, it thrills audiences with a golden foundation in rhythm and harmony.

In general, the band tries to present a positive view of life and of culture, both American and African. Frontman Derrick N. Ashong, who is from Ghana, told The Boston Globe the band "was in a position to help change misperceptions on both sides." Says Daniel T. Swann of the Globe:

Soulfege has one foot in Africa, one in America. Its core members -- Ashong, Jonathan M. Gramling, and Kelley Nicole Johnson -- were brought together by their alma mater, Harvard, where all had been in the Kuumba Singers, a gospel choir. But Ashong was born in Ghana, and many of the band's lyrics reflect a connection to the African diaspora. "Yaa (dis be fo radio)," for example, includes lyrics in Ga (spoken in Ghana), as well as in Portuguese and English.

Plenty of YouTube clips and other eye candy -- ear candy? -- on their website. Quotes from and links to the Globe's laudatory story on the band and the SMA tour.

Here's how Erin Jansen's NetLingo.com website defines sticky content:

Information or features on a Web site that gives users a compelling reason to revisit it frequently. Stickiness is also gauged by the amount of time spent at a Web site over a given period of time. This is often maximized by getting the user to leave some information behind on the site, such as a personal profile, an investment portfolio, a resume, a list of preferred cities for weather reports, personal horoscopes, birthday reminders, and the like.

How many sticky features do you see on the Soulfège website? How many do you see on NetLingo, for that matter?

COMM 337 -- final exam

COMM 337: Advanced Journalistic Writing
Benedictine University at Springfield
Fall Semester 2007

www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/comm337syllabus.html

"There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers." -- H.L. Mencken

Final Examination – Due at 1:30 p.m., Wed., Dec. 5

The Principles of Journalism adopted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, available at http://www.journalism.org/, say telling the truth “is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation.” But words like truth tend to make working journalists nervous. So they tend not to use them. In her autobiographical book “Small Blessings,” Celestine Sibley of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said “newspapering is dedicated to something important – letting the people know.” Sibley, who covered courts, the legislature and major stories like the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, said she did it once with “a straightforward recital of the facts, devoid of feeling” (170-172). The story won a prize. And Donald Murray, author of our textbook “Writing to Deadline,” recalled his first prize-winning story, about a suicidal jumper on a window ledge: “I followed the specific detail – the terrifying chant of the crowd [‘Jump! Jump!’ Jump!’]. … I wrote the story with information – specific, revealing details and direct quotations. I didn’t attempt ‘great’ writing, I just tried to get out of the way of the horrifying information” (6). Murray, like Sibley, doesn’t use the word truth. Instead, he speaks of specific details, details and facts.

“I was told [as a reporter] and then learned by public attack and embarrassment that it was worse to spell the name wrong than to charge a person with public lewdness,” Murray adds. “If you got the name of the street wrong, no one trusted anything in the story.” So telling the truth is about getting the facts straight and presenting them to readers with enough context so they can understand them. Write a 1,000- to 1,500-word essay answering these questions:
How important is truthfulness to journalistic ethics? How do Don Murray's recommended reporting techniques, like seeking out surprise or avoiding clichés of vision, and his techniques for telling a story -- finding the “line,” explaining context and organizing a story around a clear narrative – help us get the facts straight and communicate them to our readers? How can they help you in your own writing?

What do other working journalists, or former journalists like Robert Fisk of The [London] Independent and those on the HBO show “The Wire” profiled in The New Yorker, have to say about finding and telling the truth? How can this help you in your own writing?
In reporting and writing your feature stories for Communications 337, what did you learn about interviewing people, getting the facts straight, understanding them in context and putting it all into words on paper (or pixels on a screen) so a reader could understand them? How can it help you as a professional writer?

COMM 337: Quote w/in quote w/in quote

Posted to my mass communications blogs. --pe

The CNN story was headlined "Why bad kissers don't get to second base." Cute enough. Worth a look. But what I really liked about it was the punctuation in the last 'graph! Take a look:

"The best kisses are always the ones that happen accidentally," observes New York City resident Benjamin Kayne, 25, a digital media sales director. "(Planned kisses) are just tedious, and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Is this over yet? The commercial is over and I'm missing "CSI".' "

That's a quote within a quote within a quote. That you don't see every day.