Today's "Talk out of School" on PreK reopening and how to improve online learning

This morning, on my “Talk out of School” podcast, I spoke to Alice Mulligan, director of a preschool in Brooklyn and head of CBOs for Equity, whose school reopened last week.  She described the changes and renovations she had to make to ensure proper safety precautions, without help or reimbursement from the DOE. 

Alice almost had to cancel the interview when right before the broadcast, one of her students developed a runny nose.  As she explained, she hurriedly put on PPE and waited outside for the parents to come to pick up and take the child home.  Luckily, Alice was able to return to her office right before 10 AM to speak on the show. Just one of the many unpredictable events that educators will have to deal with during this unpredictable year.

Then I interviewed Tom Liam Lynch, director of education policy for the Center for NYC affairs and editor in chief  of InsideSchools, who explained their new project, InsideSchools plus, an online community site for parents to share information about their schools and express their concerns.   

Tom also helped develop the iLearn learning platform when he worked for DOE several years ago.  iLearn was used during this past summer school with  inconsistent results. Tom explained how he believes remote learning could be strengthened from the version that was implemented over the summer and last year, that is, if teachers are properly supported. He has also developed a free online course for parents to let them know how to help their children succeed with learning remotely. 

As I made clear during our discussion, I’m not a fan of online learning, and strongly believe that at its best, learning is a collective, social endeavor and that most students need the steady in-person support of their teachers to thrive. And yet given the fact that most students will be relegated to remote instruction for much of their time, even if they opted into in-person learning, it is important to try to improve upon the method by analyzing the failures of the past .

Why you should not believe a word in the teacher data reports, due to be released today

The DOE is due to release the inaccurate and unreliable teacher data reports today, based solely on standardized test scores from 2010 state exams known to be invalid; with the names of 3-8^th grade individual teachers attached.  All the major newspapers are likely to post these false and defamatory reports as soon as tomorrow .  I suggest you refrain from looking up your child’s teacher, but if you do, you should NOT believe ANYTHING the report says.

Check out my interview on  WPIX - TV news yesterday where I explain the huge margin of error in these reports and more.   There is not another profession, whether in the public or the private sector, where the media has ever publicized this confidential stuff, whether accurate or not – and the reporters are all very aware of how inaccurate these reports are. This is just one more attempt by the Mayor to scapegoat teachers & blame all his own failures on them. 

 For more back up, see this great and succinct piece on InsideSchools about why no parent should believe the TDR’s, by Meredith Kolodner, formerly of the Daily News: GothamSchools has a longer piece about this here.

Neither InsideSchools nor GothamSchools will post the ratings because they are so unreliable, and clearly not NEWS from any point of view.  I think we should all thank them by  sending a donation; here are the links.  I just did! 

·         Support Insideschools Now 

 Donate to GothamSchools

 Finally Karen Fine, teacher and Class Size Matters supporter, has a good quote in today’s NY Times:

Karen Fine, a third-grade teacher at Public School 134 in Manhattan who previously taught fifth grade, said she and her colleagues believed that the ratings were an unfair and inaccurate measure of a teacher’s performance because they used an unreliable methodology that had been criticized by many respected researchers and statisticians, and because they did not account for factors that could affect students on the day of testing, like being tired, nervous, or scared. 

“For many of us who teach in N.Y.C., this has been our life’s calling,” she said. “We are constantly attacked on so many levels for what ails education in our country when we know that it takes a community to help children learn: principals, administrators, parents, lawmakers, and yes, teachers. The responsibility cannot lie solely on us.”

I am posting the quote but NOT the link, as I think we should all boycott the NYTimes for as long as possible.