When any educator dares to challenge the conventional wisdom and say that our schools are not failing, they can expect to be excoriated by reformers. A reformer these days is someone who believes that the “system” is obsolete and broken and must be handed over to private corporations.
Reformers dismiss NAEP scores because they show that test scores of all groups–blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians–are at an historic high. Reformers love the international scores, because they show that the US scores about the international average. They ignore the fact that the international tests, like all test, reflect the influence of poverty.
Low-poverty schools in the US have amazingly high scores on the international tests–higher than the average for Japan, Finland, and Korea. As the proportion of impoverished students in the school goes up, the scores go down. You will never hear a reformer acknowledge that every standardized test score in the world is a reflection of the affluence or poverty of the test=takers.
The definition of a reformer these days is anyone who agrees that public education stinks and that children must be rescued from failing public schools. Because of NCLB–with its unrealistic mandate that 100% of all students must be proficient by 2014–most schools in the US are now “failing schools,” even a great school like New Trier High School in Illinois is a “failing school.”
If you dare to say that the reformers are wrong, you are smeared as a defender of the status quo, or in the pay of the unions.
The reality is that the reformers are wrong. They are wrong on facts. Their “solutions” have no evidence. Some–like merit pay–have repeatedly been shown to be ineffectual. Others–like charter schools–have repeatedly been shown to be no better than the public schools they replace. Nonetheless, the reformers push boldly ahead on their reckless mission to privatize and dismantle public education.
Anyone may attack, anyone may call themselves a reformer, no matter how unqualified, but no one is allowed to counter the attacks. Only the views of non-educators are permitted into the public discourse. And anyone who defends the profession will stand accused of being self-interested or greedy and not caring about those they serve.
Frankly, the idea that educators are not allowed to defend their profession against attackers, marauders, and vandals is a sure way to ensure its destruction. And that is why I constantly applaud those who do speak up. If you don’t, the public will never understand the grand theft that is taking place in their own communities.
How about this double standard: It’s okay to raise $1 billion from the super-wealthy to attack public schools, but not acceptable to stand up against the marauders.
If you defend voiceless teachers, you must be in the pay of the unions even if you are not. If you solicit millions of dollars from the 1% to attack voiceless teachers, you too can be a national icon.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My wife, a retired teacher with 33 years experience, believes the NAEP test to be the best at showing student performance.
You selectively pick facts. NAEP scores are referenced often by reformers because they show our schools are failing (as this reformer pointed out http://www.bushcenter.com/blog/2012/08/24/who-education-reformers-truly-are-a-response-to-diane-ravitchs-conspiracy-theory-on-education-reform/). You make insane accusations and hurt children in the process. Put you hateful agenda aside and stop lying. Your hurting a nation and its children. Perhaps you are the profiteer.
I served on the NAEP board for seven years. I have every NAEP report. I report the facts.
If you choose to rely on the Bush Center for your version of NAEP, good luck to you.
I ‘ve had a few run-ins myself , strangely it hasn’t been educators or parents, but self- anointed education experts who personalize attacks or question your intellectual capacity when their arguments fail. I applaud your restraint. I haven’t evolved to that point yet…but hope to do so one day.
What’s interesting about her character assassination is that she stopped short of impugning your patriotism. I ‘m guessing that’s next on the reform agenda. Those who disagree are un-American. The calendar says 2012, but I feel like we’re living in the 1940’s or 1950’s.
I wonder about the people constantly demeaning US students, US teachers, US schools, and everything associated with our education system. Why do they revel in humiliating our nation before the world?
Does the NAEP not demonstrate our nation’s students are not performing above proficiency in the top 60%? This is a failing grade. How is it not a concern of yours?
Proficiency on NAEP represents a solid A.
Have you ever seen a school where almost everyone gets an A?
A school like that, if it exists, practices grade inflation.
Is that what you want?
Diane – the proficiency includes three levels of performance “Basic indicates partial mastery of fundamental skills, Proficient indicates demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter, and Advanced indicates superior performance.” This certainly does not indicate an A in performance and you know this. It indicates minimal levels. And you also know these levels significantly drop with low performing schools, where most impoverished students who have been stripped of choice are stuck. The high 60s are not good enough for our Nation’s students. You can help us be better, so why do you choose to be barnacle on the wheel of society?
excuse me, I was a member of the NAEP governing board.
Advanced is A++ performance, which about 3-8% of students reach.
Proficiency is a solid A, which about 30-40% of students reach.
Basic is B-C
Below basic: kids are in trouble, many of them LEP and special ed
The achievement levels are based not on anything objective, but are judgment calls by panels drawn from different walks of life.
There is nothing sacred about them.
I might add that NAEP tests are normed.
There are no circumstances under which 90% will ever be proficient.
Have you ever heard of “norming”?
Do you know what a bell curve is?
Do you know that the tests are designed to produce the results they get?
CL,
One of the problems is that you believe that these nefarious practices that we call standardized tests have a basis in logical and rational thought. They don’t. And as N Wilson states any conclusions drawn from a process-standards and standardized testing-that is riddled with error and invalidities are “vain and illusory”. Or as I put it a bunch of mental masturbation or obligatory onanism-the MMOOO concept of education reform. (Visualize a cow with tail raised crapping out piles of standardized testing/education deform acronyms).
Duane
CL, you say that most impoverished students are stripped of choice and stuck …
They are stuck in a cycle of poverty that brings with it a whole host of problems that make it difficult to overcome their poverty situation. It is these very problems that cause most schools who serve high poverty populations to struggle. The problems of poverty are not easily overcome simply by offering choice to parents whose poverty situation continues to impact their lives. Public schools would be able to better meet the needs of their high risk populations if they were given the resources and freedom to initiate innovative policies to support their high need students. Give public schools the same freedoms given to charter schools and we too will produce positive results. We don’t need to cherry pick our students. We will continue to educate ALL students who enter our doors.
So lets consider your idea about A++ (never heard of that grade), A and B-C is correct. Are you claiming about 35% of students in America are LEP or Special Ed? Our results are not good enough. Walk into a school and notice what is happening. Compare our progress to that of other nation’s and we are way, way behind (25th our of 34 industrialized countries). I don’t agree with all reform ideas, but Diane you must believe something has to change. Your experiences in education must tell you something better can happen.
Do you think you live in Somalia or some other 3rd world country?
This is the mightiest nation in the world, economically, militarily, technologically.
The might was created by people with scores LOWER than kids today.
How did that happen?
Yes something needs to change. That something should begin with addressing the appalling poverty statistics in the U.S. Over 25% of our children live in poverty and test scores bear out that students in poverty are struggling in school. CL seems to be on a mission to blame schools for all the ills of society.
What a novel idea!
Diane, I must point out that you do not address the response piece to you. It makes your argument seem weak, as all you do is dodge the question, twist facts and not address the argument. I have studied your work in education. It is great and I am surprised you will not respond to a research institution or even simple questions on your own blog.
I notice you hail from Teach for America. Did they teach you manners?
It’s a testament to Diane’s civility that she lets you spit on her like that in her own living room and yet she responded calmly and politely.
Diane – I’m a newbie around here, but I’m already addicted to your blog and I’m so happy to see you (and others here) fighting for what is right. I’m not a teacher, just a parent who keeps up with education issues and who is utterly depressed at the “educational” world my kids will face. Fortunately, we are lucky to be able to send our kids to a private, progressive school, at least until 5th grade. I’m sorry I had to take that step, as I really do support public education, but I couldn’t send my kids to our local school where the principal proudly showed off a class of 40 kindergartners sitting quietly in their seats taking a spelling test.
I understand why you made that decision. What a disgrace: 40 children in a kindergarten class! Taking a spelling test! Ugh!
I do hail from TFA. And yes I have manners. Now will you respond to the article left by CL. You are ignoring facts and side stepping by labeling me as rude. Will you respond? Will you use facts to define what a reformer truly is and make the case that the NEA and AFT super PACs are better for children? Or will you continue to hide behind talking points and accusations?
Are you asking whether the unions representing 3.5 million classroom teachers are better than what? Better than Teach for America? Yes, indeed. They represent people who are committed to careers in the classroom. Your questions have been discussed and answered by past posts and discussions on this blog. Peruse the archives. You can also read my latest book.
@Laura S. That link is a shining example of how deformers pick and choose data to make their points, and they do it unscientifically. It is obvious that “CL” doesn’t understand what the NAEP scores really mean. Have you not looked at the responses? That link does not represent “fact”, they distort the data because the author doesn’t understand what it means to be “basic”, “proficient”, and “advanced”.
Do you know what norming and scaling tests involve?
Until we can figure out how to KEEP teachers, than any “quality control” methods by you and your friends (NCTQ, etc…) are useless. We are losing 50% of our teachers, after they enter our profession, within 5 years. It’s even worse in our urban areas. This deprofessionalization and deskilling of teachers is part of plan that you are purposely ignorant of – to further dismantle the public sector and middle class. Obama’s neoliberalism forces him and his friends to throw us under the bus in order to implement their wishes upon the masses. Finland only loses 3 – 4% of their entering teachers, we lose 50%, now you tell me where the problem lies. Its not with our students – they are performing at all time highs on the NAEP, and when disaggregating PISA, TIMSS, ACT, and SAT, there is a perfect causation between poverty and income levels and student achievement. The problem is NOT with teachers or students, the problem is YOU. The problem is that people like you do not understand how to analyze data and you have an agenda.
WAKE UP
CL,
While I can certainly admire your courage in coming into this site to challenge Diane, I certainly cannot agree with what you have said. I haven’t read the responses to your comment yet but I’m sure that the good folks here will do their best to enlighten your thinking!!
Duane
CL,
Having now read your linked post, my question/comment for you is at least Diane allows responses/comments on her blog, but the one you linked does not have a response function (unless I missed it). Why would that be???
Thanks,
Duane
To CL,
The real barnacles are those who want to destroy public education to supposedly, “save it”.
We believe otherwise and almost all of us have real experience teaching and working with impoverished students and communities.
May I inquire as to your background?
Mark,
Yep, The edudefomers are just like in the 60s when the “best and the brightest” determined it would be best to burn those Vietnamese villages and villagers in order to save them.
I could never wrap my head around that one. Even after a course I took back at Rutgers in the 1980’s, it was such an Alice in Wonderland policy.
Notice that CL seems to be here only to personally attack Diane. CL hasn’t responded to others questions.
Perhaps this is the moment that Mr. Little of previous posts [aka Mr. Civility] offers scathing comments condemning CL for his use of terms about Diane like “selectively pick facts” and “insane accusations” and “hurt children” and “hateful agenda” and “lying” and “hurting a nation and its children” and “you are the profiteer.” All this in just 54 words according to my word processor [if you take the web address as one word]!
After all, one’s principles count the most when you apply them as much to those with whom you agree as with those with whom you disagree. In other words, when it hurts — because the principles count more than personal comfort, debate advantage, and delight in the suffering of others.
Perhaps KIPP can’t take up Diane’s challenge, but I would love to see Mr. Little respond forcefully to someone who could easily be taken [or to give Mr. Little some credit in spite of his spite, or mistaken] for someone taking his side.
Mr. Little, CL is calling. [ET, phone home!]
Here’s another interesting tidbit about scores. I attended high school in an upper middle class suburb near Chicago . The schools there are terrific. I was a pretty average A/B student. I struggled in some subjects, but I studied and did my best. When I applied to college in 1995, my ACT score was 27. At the time it was considered above average and I remember many of my friends were envious. My most envious friends were those who had taken the special test prep courses and still had lower scores. I decided against paying for one of those. I applied and was accepted to one of the top public universities in the state. One of their requirements was an ACT score of 26 or above. Fast forward to 2010. My cousin began applying to the same university and his ACT test score had to be well above 30 to be accepted to the same university I went to. So how is it that our schools are failing? That is a huge change in acceptance requirements. Food for thought….
Wow Baker, I was thinking the same thing recently. I applied to college on1980 and my ACT was 24. Just as you, my friends were envious of my above average score. Having come from a pretty dysfunctional family I was also just an average A/B student. I eventually finished graduate school with a 4.0 GPA. I guess I was a late bloomer. Fast forward to my own two children, both scoring in the 30’s on ACT. I often wonder, just as you do, how is it that our schools are failing? May it is really the Chicken Little story in education. Is the sky really falling Chicken Little? Just wondering???
The qualifications of students applying to the most competitive universities are much higher than twenty years ago. I was frankly shocked that my son did not get into every school he applied to. But that is just evidence that the top end of the academic spectrum is moving up, not that the whole group is getting better.
I think we need to call the reformers what they are: science-deniers.
Follow them carefully, and you will see that everything the reformers/deformers say is a lie, including the words “and” & “the” (apologies to Mary McCarthy).
One of the most insidious deceptions is their railing against a straw man status quo, when in fact, they are the status quo, and have been for a while now.
I say that again and again: The reformers ARE the status quo! They own the US Department of Education and all the major (and almost all the minor) foundations. What don’t they own, other than this blog?
Yes, reform IS the status quo. I say this a lot, too. Education has not been in the hands of educators for a very long time, a minimum of 10 years across the country, since NCLB. Longer in some locations.
Chicago has been under mayoral control since 1995, when the business model of education was first implemented. The mayor changed the title of Superintendent to CEO then, and he got his cronies in the state legislature to pass laws allowing him to hire superintendents who have no training or experience in education, unlike other districts that must hire state certified superintendents. The mayor appointed his city budget director to be the first CEO, Paul Vallas, and later Arne Duncan, who had been Vallas’ deputy chief of staff.
So the ineffective business model of education, with regular top-down mandates, including the establishment of standards, high-stakes testing, failing students that don’t do well on tests, closing schools that don’t test well, and handing over public schools to charters, which Duncan prescribed for the entire nation, has been the status quo in Chicago for 17 years. And this was all done in the same name of “reform” that it’s referred to today.
In fact, there have been three eras of “reform” in Chicago, since the Reagan administration in the 80s. So, yes, “reform” is and has been the status quo for a very long time now and, Chicago, the model for our nation, has made little progress in closing the achievement gap to show for it.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-11-14/news/ct-met-cps-racial-gap-1114-20111114_1_performance-gap-cps-jean-claude-brizard
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/23/1085542/-A-Brief-History-of-Chicago-Education-Reform-1992-Present-VIDEO
From an article by the economist, Dean Baker, at the huffingtonpost.com:
“The situation is made even worse by the fact that so many of those in poverty are children. In 2010, 27 percent of all children in the country were reported as living below the poverty level. For African-American children, the share in poverty is approaching 40 percent.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/poverty-the-new-growth-in_b_1833158.html
I am so confused. I taught special ed in a high school for 27 years and watched many students succeed and fail, both classified and unclassified. They fell along a the whole range from very successful to drop out. Not everyone went to college or even met the qualifacations for college but were successful, working consumers. Some students fell to peer and media pressure and just didn’t want to be there. Just like any job there were teachers who worked extra hard to reach students and some who went through the motions. I know some changes are needed to be able to reach some students. I hear talk of reformers and charters and cyber schools. I see charters being started in NJ, but following the same structure of public schools. How is that any different? I want to see a charter that does something different. If changes are suggested in public schools the union demands no teachers be let go. Where is the change going to come from? In NJ the students needed credits in certain areas. While that is good, some special needs students benefited more from technical school rather than two years of a language. Students had to be pulled out of the tech school to take a made up class of language exposure they would never use. Where is the reform in that. I know I’m rambling but there is good and bad on both side of this issue. Until they get together more kids will fail and fall to the wayside. Is there a site where both side can discous real change?
Bill,
Please define “real change”.
Thanks,
Duane
Bill said: “If changes are suggested in public schools the union demands no teachers be let go.” You are blaming unions for the supposed failure in some public schools? The union demands? They just ignore the union and the powers that be, especially Christie and Cerf, do as they please. Unions are not in control of the schools, contrary to what passes for the given “wisdom” of the media or the school deformers. Unions don’t hire the teachers, unions don’t evaluate the teachers, unions don’t give teachers tenure, unions don’t pay teachers’ wages. In short, the union can only make suggestions. The local union is the party that negotiates a contract with the school board. Does the contract count for anything or is it just a fake document to be ignored by the school board?
To Joe. I am not blaming the unions for failure in some schools. Without the unions teachers and schools would be in a huge mess. They help bring stability to the system. What I mean is that it is one of their duties to protect teachers and their jobs. Somtimes a reform might include a change in the structure or schedule of the program that might mean a loss of jobs for some. How can we have change if we can’t have change?
I don’t know what people think of the TIMSS tests, but the National Center for Educational Statistics has a great site that allows you to play with all sorts of data. I looked at the average score in mathematics for eighth grade. They did not break down the scores by income, but I was able to break down the scores by resources available in the household. Here are the results from 2007, first for students who reported having a calculator in household and second for students reporting that no calculator was available in the household. The standard error is reported in parenthesis.
With Calculator Without Calculator
US 511 (2.8) 454 (6.1)
Japan 571 (2.4) 516 (11.6)
Korea 599 (2.7) 563 (6.1)
While having a calculator in the home is at best only a rough measure of poverty (or perhaps parental interest in education), it does seem that at least on these tests US students did not do nearly as well as students in other countries when holding this household resources constant.
TE,
Your conclusion is a huge leep of logic. Could a calculator be a proxy for “parental involvement in child’s education”? Not sure that one can be successfully argued.
Duane
Parental involvement is not my first interpretation. I am using the presence of a calculator at home as a proxy for poverty. Students who live in households without calculators in Korea score much higher on the TIMSS exam than students who live in households with calculators in the US. I think it might be evidence that poor students in Korea do better than wealthier students in the US.
Or it may be evidence that cultural differences, i.e., differing levels of differing subjects are taught at different age levels. Think about it, if the US teaches “x” subject/concept at the 9th grade level while it is taught in the seventh grade level in Korea (just for example purposes only) and then that concept is tested on the 8th grade TIMSS, which country will come out on top? I certainly don’t know the finer points (or any points of) of Korean vs US education curriculum scopes and sequences but that type of thing may be at play here.
On a side note, speaking of Korea, we at least know that N. Korea must have a great system of education as its intelligence service was able to insert M. Rhee as a mole to destroy American public education.
I do not know anything about the structure of the exam, but I trust Dr. Ravitch when she used the results of international exams in her comparison in this post. The statement that got me thinking about it was “Low-poverty schools in the US have amazingly high scores on the international tests–higher than the average for Japan, Finland, and Korea.” I don’t think she would have made the statement unless the curriculum in the countries involved are comparable.
I was uncomfortable about comparing the average scores for schools in Korea and Japan to the scores of the wealthiest schools in the US, so I wanted to find a way to look at individual scores from poor households in the US and poor households in Korea and Japan. Unfortunately I could not find data on household income, but there was data on household educational resources like calculators, computers, desks, etc. I think that households without calculators in the home are likely to be poor.
On the 2009 PISA international reading, the U.S. results were also reported out by poverty level. U.S. schools with less than a 10% poverty rate were 1st in the world; U.S. schools with 10-24.9% poverty were 3rd in the world; U.S. schools with 25-49.9% poverty were 10th in the world; U.S. schools with 50-74.9% poverty were 30th in the world; and U.S. schools with over 75% poverty were 2nd to last. Check it out on the National Center for Education Statistics website under “pisa2009highlights)
Thanks for the supporting data. It’s sad that the data that shows the disparity by poverty level are rarely discussed in detail. These numbers clearly support that it is not a teacher problem, but a poverty issue. Private charter schools aren’t the answer. Putting initiatives in place that address poverty issues are the first place to start. As long as poverty is removed from the discussion, the achievement gap will persist. Education is not what’s broken. Education for the “haves” is just fine. As the above statistics show.
Bridget,
Sadly, it’s easier to blame and bash teachers than to solve a child poverty rate of 25%. But if the educational reform fools can do it…lets award them all a Nobel Peace Prize. But, they can’t and they won’t, so let’s retire them pronto.
I’m tired of the lies, I’m tired of politicians sucking up to them, I’m tired of my tax dollars being wasted, I’m tired of being demonized and I’m tired of a generation of children being experimented on. Robbing kids of their childhood by testing them or having them think about careers in kindergarten. The next person who suggests something similar should be given a plastic cup. Who would have ever imagined?
I was not able to find data based on income levels for the PISA reading exams, I would very much apreciate a link to the data that compares academic achievement between countries controlling for absolute poverty.
I did find data for the reading exams that was disaggregated by the studet’s housing (2009 score for reading). The scores below are for students who had their own room and students who shared a room with someone else. As before, the standard error is given in parentheses .
US. 505 (3.8) with their own room, 477 (4.9) sharing a room.
Japan 522 (3.5) with their own room, 513 (4.8) sharing a room.
Korea 543 (3.8) with their own room, 529 (3.6) sharing a room.
Do you think that the wealthy in Korea are more likely to have children share a room than the wealthy in the US? If not, I think this too suggests that we can do a better job educating our children.
Go to Highlights from PISA 2009, p 15 or 16 to find US scores disaggregated by percent of students who are eligible for free or reduced price lunch.
US schools with 10% or less in poverty have score of 551, which far exceeds country scores for Finland, Korea, Japan, where there is far less poverty.
As level of poverty in school rises, test scores fall.
Diane
Dr. Ravitch- I have no doubt that higher income is correlated with higher scores in every country, including the US. No doubt the wealthy in the US out score the student with average income in Korea. The average income level in Korea is, of course, far lower than the average in the US, and much much lower than the average wealthy household in the US.
My posts try to look at the academic performance of students in the US and Japan and Korea controlling for the impact of poverty. Mine is an imperfect measure, but I have not. seen a better one posted here.
You are aware, I assume, that the child poverty rate in the US is more than 22% and far exceeds the rate in other nations.
Diane
Of couse I am aware of the poverty rate in the US and how it is measured, though I think you deleted my post about it.
Do you think that not having a calculator in the home is an indicator of poverty? Do you think that sharing a room with a sibling or grandparent or other family member is an indication of poverty?
That’s not how the US calculates poverty.
Diane
That is true, but if you want to do international comparisons, looking at consumption instead of income is really the preferred method.
In any case, I am trying to make do with the data I have available. I think that not having a calculator at home is highly corrolated with poverty. Do you think that not having a calculator at home is not calculated with poverty?
It should correlated, not calculated with income in the post above. Wish I could blame the iPad, but the nice zin with dinner probably had more tomdo with it.
Teaching Economist: Don’t you find it interesting that US test scores are higher than 20 or 40 years ago? And somehow that nation with terrible test scores became the most powerful nation on earth.
Diane, I find it interesting that most of us who started school before the 1970s didn’t begin formal education until the first grade and began learning to read around the age of seven. Yet we now consider children who can’t read in kindergarten to be in need of some sort of remediation. Now children in PK are tested on a developmental skills checklist to determine if they are on-level.
Having learned how to read at a later age did not prevent me from graduating from college and graduate school. Are we really failing to educate our children or is this just a case of Chicken Little claiming the sky is falling?
I do find it interesting that US test scores have increased. I was just trying to compare the poor in Korea and the poor in the US. There is no reason to think that an increase in average scores in the US is inconsistent with the US scoring relatively badly on mathamatics exams compared to Korea and Japan.
Perhaps not being the battleground for two world wars and benefitting from the education that was provided to emigrants to the
US like Einsteim, Von Neuman, Von Braun, Dirac, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Teller had something to with the US having a dominant position in the world.
@teachingeconomist: It’s an interesting thought – comparing with or without calculators, but I am not sure such a comparison appeals. I think the simplest thing to do is to disaggregate based on poverty levels for each and every country. Comparing such resources may be interesting but a real stretch for correlation studies. I would think poverty data would be much more straightforward. And we all know what the data says when disaggregated based upon poverty levels – there’s no denying it unless you have your head stuck in the sand.
The simplelest thing would clearly be to have scores by poverty levels, but that data was not available on the site. Can you point me to the data that does dissagregate these scores by household income? Without seeing the data it will be hard for me to know that I “have my head in the sand.”
It seems reasonable to me that households without calculators are likely to be poorer than households with calculators. Do you think that rich and poor households are equally likely to have calculaters at home?
Poverty on standardized tests are disaggregated based upon the number of children on free/reduced lunch. Check here for a great article about the 2009 PISA reading scores.
http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2010/12/pisa_its_poverty_not_stupid_1.html
Interestingly every breakdown for PISA and TIMSS that I’ve ever seen looks exactly like the one portrayed on the above link. This relationship is also evident in NAEP. More specifically, mean SAT and ACT scores are dependent upon family income, with of course higher incomes scoring high and a predictable decline in scores for every lower income bracket. Just face the facts and quit searching for excuses. This is a “No Excuses” environment after all!
Free or reduced price lunch is not a useful international measure for poverty. I was posting about test scores across countries, so I needed a poverty measure that was valid across countries.
I have no doubt that higher poverty is associated with lower test scores in a country. The interesting issue is if poor households in Korea have children with higher academic achievement levels than poor households in the US. I think my posts have provided evidence suggesting that poor households in Korea and Japan have higher test scores than even relatively wealthy households in the US.
You can argue that the tests scores do not actually measure academic achievement or that my proxy measures for poverty are not accurate, but saying that poverty levels and scores on exams in the US are correlated is not really relevant to my posts looking at scores across countries.
For being such a poor indicator of poverty across countries, and being so true across PISA, TIMSS, and NAEP, it sure does paint a consistent picture huh?
Why do you feel as though the free and reduced lunch rate is not an accurate portrayal of poverty levels in schools?
Your line of reasoning is questionable. It’s like you are searching for anything just to excuse you from the truth.
More specifically, the free and reduced lunch rate is comparable because it marks a threshold at poverty levels. Do you think families that receive free and reduced lunch are middle class? Schools with high numbers of free and reduced lunch students indicate the schools are poor. The higher the incidence the poorer the school. Why do you think every standardized test disaggregates on this measure?
Can you show me the data on free and reduced price lunches for Japan and Korea?
teachingeconomist – I read the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell in which he presents some underlying reasons why many asian students perform better in their understanding on mathematical concepts. Just something interesting to consider. It has a lot to do with the culture/language that adds to that understanding, which we do not have in our English speaking language. Below is a link to the synopsis of a chapter for Gladwell’s book –
http://chineseculture.about.com/b/2008/12/16/why-are-chinese-better-at-math.htm
Julia-I looked at Japan and Korea because they were the countries that Dr Ravitch posted about. I’ll certainly look at some other countries data. I do think to some extent mathamatician’s are born, not created. One of my sons was born a mathamatician.
The farce of charter schools lies in the often stated fact that they rarely are required to follow the same rules as public schools. Here in Louisiana they do not have to adhere to any of the same rules, using the term innovative practices as a justification. If these so called innovative practices are do great for charter schools, then why aren’t all public schools allowed to be just as innovative?
We would love to be freed from the bonds of those so called accountability guidelines of NCLB that require us to test ALL children on one type of test. We know that NCLB has destroyed education, yet WE are labeled as a failure for implementing NCLB practices that were put into place by the very people who blame us for their own failed policies. Oh, the madness!
In Louisiana teachers do not belong to unions, yet the madness has taken over our state. I just re-watched the speech by Texas superintendent Khun, and his Alamo letter. Like him, I will continue to educate my 94% poverty population of students bc I choose not to skim and cherry pick students. Give me the same freedoms to replace NCLB failed practices with innovative practices allowed by charter schools and I too will produce great results. Give me the same resources to fund innovative initiatives and I too will produce great results. What I won’t do is abandon children in poverty. RTTT is not the answer. Why is it that these policy decisions continue to be made by people who have little or no education credentials?
BTW, CL, you are clueless. The hateful agenda is not Diane’s. End of discussion…
Bridget, teachers in Louisiana do belong to unions. The problem is more should. I find that educating teachers the importance of being a member is more difficult in some situations than teaching a skill and the understanding of a concept to a group of students. Numbers do make a difference. Solidarity is important.
When one grasps the concept that standardized test results are not reliable or valid enough measures of student progress with which to make high-stakes decisions concerning teacher quality and student academic growth, the agenda of the “educational reformers” collapses.
The educational upheaval that is caused in the name of “reform” is actually the result of ignorance. Too many people, without the proper background knowledge, have too much educational decision-making power.
Thank you, Diane, for doing your best to educate us.
RE,
Your first paragraph says it all. As Wilson has shown in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” all of the errors involved in the process of developing standards and then attempting to “measure” a students knowledge of them through standardized tests render them completely invalid. And if they are invalid then any discussion of the results is “vain and illusory” (Wilson’s phrase).
To better understand what Wilson has to say I invite you to a free, graduate level seminar on my blog “Promoting Just Education for All” at: revivingwilson.org . I am summarizing each chapter and then discuss the implications and add some thoughts of my own. Brought to you by the Universidad of OYE–if Broad can have an “academy” and TFA can “train” teachers I think it’s only logical that I can have my own private university-ha ha!!
What is unjust is wrong no matter how the argument is wrapped. Children deserve to have their needs met. Feeding them, clothing them, and meeting their needs will do more than any insipid test regime. Our schools need to return to a developmentally appropriate curriculum. I remember having my administrators, master 20 year teachers, one of whom had been a special ed teacher and a school psychologist, check my lessons and give me tips to make them developmentally appropriate. Why did my teacher education program include developmental psychology and human development classes? For this very reason of course. I already had an M.A. in Psychology, but I had to take these classes again. Piaget may be dead, but he wasn’t wrong. Take the money from testing and we can afford most of our children’s school needs. Our schools should be the heart of the communities, not the hollowed dreary places they are becoming. Make corporations pay their fair share of taxes since they are people, or let them choose a board member to go to jail as the proxy for the corporations that won’t pay their fair share. That would be meaningful reform. You said it well Readingexchange!
Remember, they may be picking your retirement home!
If “status quo” means the current state of affairs,” then how can “reformers” smear the people who disagree with them as ” defenders of the status quo.” They have been driving the conversation for quite a disturbingly long time. Perhaps it is Michelle Rhee who is the Defender of the Status Quo. Hmm that gives us an idea! http://goo.gl/lD20l
And–rest assured!–there is NOT ONE PARENT who has children at New Trier H.S. who asked to have his/her child sent to a “choice” school upon receiving that letter! People around these parts simply rip them up and laugh, doncha’ know?
Also, how is it that a school which can rank amongst the top three in the state (for ACT scores) be–at the same time–an “F” school?! Could it be the “standardized” (Pearson PSATs in IL) tests themselves?!
Ironically, sometimes, what corporate sponsored “reformers” say they want is the exact opposite of what they really want.
For example, this week on Twitter, Arne Duncan was promoting student involvement in mock elections and said, “Watch the MyVoice National Mock Election 2012 PSA series, and get involved!” However, this is a man who believes in, and personally benefitted from, mayoral controlled education, which has meant recinding the democratic rights of citizens to vote for and elect their local school boards and, instead, turning education over to mayors who appoint puppet boards and Superintendents –which is how he got his job as CEO of schools in Chicago. (As rightwing ALEC promotes.) Of course, Duncan got appointed to his current position due to cronyism and a Congress that had a majority of Democrats at the time, so he really believes in voting only when it might be to his advantage (such as re-electing Obama).
Other times, what corporate sponsored “reformers” really want is deeply entangled in the language they choose to use to describe what they say they are against.
For example, Gates, Rhee and Duncan have claimed repeatedly that teachers are not “interchangable widgets”, in order to combat unions, seniority and lane and step pay schedules. However, when it comes to teaching children, they think it’s fine to use teachers as “interchangable widgets”, such as when they promote Teach for America, which has placed people like Rhee, who had a bachelor’s degree in government, in a classroom teaching 3rd graders, who are not very likely to be studying much, if anything, about government.
This TFA placement practice still exists today, according to Barbara Veltri, author of Learning on Other People’s Kids: Becoming a Teach for America Teacher,
“most corps report that they are teaching out-of-field and in Special Education classrooms, where they arrive with about 5 hours of training”
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/category/teach-for-america/
I think the Common Core mandate on informational texts paves the way for using more teachers as “interchangable widgets” in classrooms. For example, English curriculum is likely to include reading books about people and events in history, which will make it easier to justify the placement of out of field teachers (not just TFAers), such as those with degrees in history teaching English classes –like Tony Danza.
Reflecting on the Republican platform in TX which (supposedly by mistake) described outlawing critical thinking in education, this makes me wonder if eliminating separate history courses, by combining (revisionist?) history with English, might facilitate such an agenda. Maybe science will be combined with Engish, too?
I would never have predicted that I might one day be wondering whether both Republicans and Democrats alike could want to prevent American students from developing critical thinking skills.
Sorry, the end of my message above got cut off. The last sentence was supposed to end with:
or that they would use such covert and draconian methods to accomplish it.
I started reading about the history of education reform in America about 10 years ago, when our national insanity was becoming too extensive to ignore under the reign of “W”. Wondering how a country could boast both the most widely and extensively educated population in history and also have the greatest disdain—if not outright loathing—for intellect, I found my way to Richard Hofstader’s “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”. Hofstader’s book (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964) gives an excellent description of America’s historical distaste for intellectual discourse, instead favoring a volatile combination of fundamentalist religion and laissez-faire capitalism that emphasizes received wisdom over deliberative thought. In discussing this history, Hofstader gives an excellent overview of the heavy influence that business had on the education reform movements that started about 1890 and their brutal treatment of those who wanted to center American schooling around a traditional liberal education model. His comments on the NEA’s “The Committee of Ten” report in 1892, advising a rigorous liberal arts education for all American children and its drubbing by the elites at schools like Columbia’s Teachers College makes rather depressing reading.
Following Hofstader, I came across a copy of the first edition (1940) of Mortimer Adler’s “How to Read a Book”. Adler’s book, which I found to be an excellent tutorial for what we now seem to call “deep reading”, included a blunt discussion of the reformist forces that demanded the end of the traditional liberal arts curriculum and its replacement with electives which he and Robert Maynard Hutchins fought against at the University of Chicago in the ’30s and ’40s. I’ve read both Adler’s and Hutchins’s later critiques of education as well, and, having attended several of the notable schools in this country (including Chicago) and watching the increasing barbarity of our culture the graduates of the schools seem so bent on imposing on us all, I can only say I consider much of what they wrote to have been prescient. I’m a big fan of Adler’s Paideia approach to education.
I also highly recommend Diane’s book “Left Back”, which is a more focused history on reforms in public secondary education than Hofstader, Adler, and Hutchins. Diane, I hope you will write about your book to share the history of our reformist “misery-go-round” in education in which the same tired and failed ideas are recirculated every generation or two, and the wild-eyed, take no prisoners reformers simply move from one fad to the next without any care of the history of reforms. American education reform truly echos Santayana’s famous remark that “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” I’m currently reading “Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces That Have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools”, by Raymond Callahan. Callahan’s book take a very focused look at the influence that business leaders have had on reform, how they and the elite university Education schools drove a brutal “efficiency” agenda in the early decades of the 20th Century, and how so much of the criticisms we see today are nothing but rehashes of the same straw men, red herrings, and defamation that were common a century ago. Callahan makes many references to the demands of business leaders that schools abandon traditional education in favor of what is essentially job training and the rebuttals from educators, including an excellent excerpt from a school superintendent who called out the reformer’s charade for what is really was (and still is): another public subsidy for big businesses.
From all of this, I have come to some tentative conclusions:
1. Americans won’t ever be happy with public education until they understand that education and job training are two different things, and that we can’t have a functional democracy and market economy—the two most intellectually demanding forms of society imaginable—without the sort of education that historically has done the most to produce sound thinking—a traditional liberal arts education that develops the whole intellect.
2. The reformers will continue their pernicious campaigns until we abandon the childish fantasy that education can be done cheaply, painlessly, and effortlessly by some technical fix. Having earned two degrees in chemistry and a law degree, and having taught my own children as well as the children of others, I know that learning any subject is an intensely personal experience. Good teachers are more like good coaches than sales persons or entertainers. The idea that we can substitute pedagogical training for mastery of actual subject matter, or that filmstrips, radio, television, movies, or computers, or whatever whiz-bang technology comes next can substituted for actual intellectual engagement between a teacher-master and a student is nothing but charlatanism. We—parents, school boards, and tax payers—have to start saying “no” to the self-proclaimed experts reformers who are nothing but shills for corporations that seek to insert they probosces into the tax revenue stream.
3. Our political and economic structures are founded on certain ideas that grew out of a region of the planet we call the “West”. These political and economic structures thus reflect certain cultural ideas and practices that are different (not necessarily better, just different) from the cultural ideas and practices found in other parts of the world, and are expressed in a large body of history, philosophy, literature, and art that all who want to be citizens of our country should understand. These ideas and practices are open to all people, not just to those who claim some vestigial cultural heritage (like northern European Protestant ancestry). The best way to create a tolerant society is to teach everyone about that society’s cultural heritage, so that the members of that society have a sound foundation from which to study and understand other cultures. (I have to agree with Allan Bloom on this point.) The key however, is that we recognize there are differences among cultures, that we have to accept that our way is unique (but not necessarily better), and that we first must understand our culture and ourselves before we can understand other cultures and others. Now, I fear, we start from the premise that all cultures are equally valued; therefore all are the “same”; therefore there is no need to learn about our history, philosophy, literature, and art; therefore we should just learn what we need to in order to get a job. And we wonder why America is beset with bullies and war mongers.
Diane, I hope you will comment more on the history of reform movements in America, so that we all can better communicate the current reform charades we are plagued with. And any comments on my thoughts are most welcome. I expect some will find point 3. controversial, I can only say that I make my points without prejudice to anyone.
David,
May I suggest Ray Callahan’s “Education and the Cult of Efficiency” from the early 60s. It’s an excellent history of business discourse/practices entering into the public education realm.
Duane
Thanks, Duane. As I mentioned further into my comments, currently I’m reading his book.
Corrections:
The white, black, Hispanic and Asian NAEP scores are not for “all groups.” They are for the NAEP racial and ethnic groups. NAEP also breaks out scores by qualification for free and reduced lunch, by gender, by geographical areas, and by states. All of these are groups.
All NAEP reports are available to the public on the NCES website.
NAGB has slots reserved for experts in curriculum and assessment. Diane did not hold one of those. Diane’s appointment was for “general public representative,” which does not assume any scholarly expertise. The board meets 4 times a year.
I am a historian of education. I served seven years on the National Assessment Governing Board. Scores at an historic high on NAEP for blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians.
Diane
Could you please cite a source for the NAEP achievement levels expressed as A, B, and C grades? I can’t find any NAGB policy on that. thanks.
Every NAEP documents the achievement levels in every report.
I gave my own estimates as to the grade equivalents. “Proficiency” is defined by NAGB as solid academic mastery.
I can tell you from having reviewed questions and answers on exams in history, civics, reading, and science tht the “proficient” level is very high indeed.
Why don’t you take a NAEP test and see for yourself?
seekingtruth: FYI -data, charts, graphs, tools and 2000 released questions.
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about/naeptools.asp
NAEP Website Tools and Applications
The NAEP website features a number of applications designed to give users quick and easy access to questions from previous assessments, performance comparisons, and NAEP assessment data for quick or complex analyses; read a brochure, NAEP Tools on the Web (1107K PDF), describing the tools. See more information about each tool below, and print Quick Reference Guides if you are a new user.
That can be a daunting site for the uninitiated, so this article displays some of the graphs;
NAEP Score Trends Not So Flat After All
http://blog.ednewscolorado.org/2010/03/30/naep-score-trends-not-so-flat-after-all
Also, I think the PISA scores of students from low-poverty schools should be mentioned here, because the chicken little mentality inherent in the shock doctrine of today’s “reformers”, intent on keeping the “failing schools” narrative alive, is consistently about presenting aggregate PISA scores. That approach fails to distinguish between kids from different income groups or explain how the scores of kids from high poverty schools pull down national averages. The data are broken down here:
PISA: It’s Poverty Not Stupid
http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2010/12/pisa_its_poverty_not_stupid_1.html
Our country has an outrageously high child poverty rate, yet “reformers” today would prefer to call poverty an “excuse” and expect teachers to eradicate poverty all by themselves, rather than address the socio-economic conditions and out of school factors that impact children in poverty. “People who say poverty is no excuse are making excuses about doing nothing about poverty.”
Is Poverty an Excuse?
http://www.joebower.org/2012/08/is-poverty-excuse.html
It’s easy to scapegoat American teachers, when corporate sponsored “reformers” and the media they own fail to mention how the impact of poverty on learning is not a problem that’s specific to America. The achievement gap between children from lower and upper income families is problematic in other areas of the world as well, such as England, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Belgium:
Pupil Achievement Gap Highlighted
http://news.uk.msn.com/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=161224203
Makes you wonder if all the money that’s going into testing here wouldn’t be put to better use as school discretionary funds, such as the “Pupil Premium”, to help ameliorate the inequitable funding that we have at schools attended by children in poverty, especially those in low income areas where funds are based on property taxes.
Government Announces Pupil Premium to Raise Achievement
http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a0063284/government-announces-pupil-premium-to-raise-achievement
Rather than learn from other countries, Michelle Rhee is trying to export our corporate sponsored education “reform” policies to places like the UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/michelle-rhee-witchfinder-general-of-americas-classrooms-flies-in-to-give-gove-her-gospel-7888973.html
England is a country with a long history of divide between the aristocracy and working class, as well as increasing immigrant populations. Following our corporate model would probably set them back decades. I think we can learn a lot from their research on poverty and school achievement:
“Just 14 per cent of variation in individuals’ performance is accounted for by school quality. Most variation is explained by other factors, underlining the need to look at the range of children’s experiences, inside and outside school, when seeking to raise achievement.”
Click to access 2123.pdf
@teacheredblog
I agree with you about poverty and educational achievement. That is why I have commented about comparing educational achievement in the wealthiest schools in the United States to the educational achievement of the average student in Korea. Unfortunately, The Principal Difference repeats thiis error by comparing students in wealthy schools in the US to the students of a average wealth in lower income countries.
Saying that our apple is a deeper red than the other country’s fruit basket is really not very persuasive.
@teachingeconomist
Perhaps what you’re looking for is in The Measure of a Nation by H.S. Friedman (though Korea did not report its poverty rate):
http://open.salon.com/blog/howard_steven_friedman/2012/08/29/americas_poverty-education_link
@teacheredblog
Thank you for the reference. I will be especially interested in seeing his analysis of why socioeconomic status has a much larger impact on measured learning in the US than other OECD countries.
As defenders of education, we need to point out that enough time has gone by to categorize the ineffective, top-down practices in our education AND economic system as failures…and it is THOSE practices that are the status-quo. Inspired/inspiring educators, well versed and adept at guiding groups of varied ability learners need to be freed from those who benefit from that status quo. It is bogging us down and making true progress very difficult.
I study psychometrics and NAEP, but cannot find the grade equivalents of A, B, and C outside of this blog. NAGB does not recognize them, nothing in NAGB materials in how to interpret the achievement standards show that kind of conversion to be valid, nor has any NAEP technical expert published a paper supporting a conversion to grades. So I ask, since Diane is not an expert in assessment or curriculum and has never taught in K-12, where do these grades come from? I am assuming you have a citation of a document or publication that I have overlooked. Thank you.
If you study psychometrics and NAEP, please publish your name, as I do. When you do, I will respond to your questions, when I know who you are.
I have searched all NAEP publications and found no citation to support assigning grades to NAEP achievement levels. I teach math. I have an M.A. in testing and measurement. Why would I give an 8th grader in algebra or geometry an “A” for getting the same scale score as a pre-algebra student with the same score? I wouldn’t. And I would never describe the NAEP achievement levels using grades. The achievement categories for each NAEP test have been decided separately, so you have to know something about 4th grade reading and 8th grade math, etc. to give grades like that.
I explained previously that NAEP achievement levels are not aligned with “grades.” They are also not based on any exterior standard. If you have a background in psychometrics, as you claim, you surely know that the NAEP achievement levels have been criticized repeatedly as being too elevated. Very few states have standards aligned with the NAEP achievement levels. If you would be kind enough to tell me your name and your institutional affiliation, I would be glad to continue the discussion. It is unfair that you know who I am, and I don’t know who you are.
Thank you. We agree. Your readers should not associate NAEP achievement levels with grades of A B C or D.
The achievement levels on NAEP were an attempt to impose external standards to the NAEP scale. You are right that they have been criticized for being too high, but that has nothing to do with our discussion. I’m pointing out that your blog has a tendency to misinform its readers about NAEP and testing in general. And when you reply to criticism or questions by saying that you spent many years on NAGB, that is also misleading. You are not an expert on testing. Your NAGB appointment was a political appointment as a public representative, not as an expert on curriculum or testing. You are an expert on American education history.
Now you respond to my questions by wanting to know my name and school. You want to out me in my own district. That is so harsh. Why? My district’s top level people and union would go after me. Have you asked people who agree with you the same information? Please give an example.
If people have good information, they can make good decisions.
My appointment to the National Assessment Governing Board by President Clinton was not political. You hide behind anonymity to insult me.