Pearson made scoring errors on tests for gifted programs in Néw York City.
13% of the students who qualified were wrongly rejected.
New York City is the only school district that uses a single exam to determine admissions to gifted programs. Because of differences in opportunity to learn, the children with the most advantages in life win the most places.
It is surprising that Dennis Walcott, once active in the civil rights movement, would defend this approach, which systematically discriminates against children with the fewest opportunities.
Remember the real civil rights movement? The one that fought for those with the least?
Not the ones who defend standardized testing. Not the ones who defend privilege tied to social class and wealth. They falsely claim to be fighting for civil rights. They are not. They fight for the status quo of inequality.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The 1/10 of 1/10 of 1% want a select elite that controls everything and the rest to be indentured servants for the rest of their life in a state of “Permadebt.” It is just that simple. This is the fascist world they have almost entirely obtained presently. Read “Hapsburgs to Hitler” and you will see that they are using a “Cookie Cutter” of that plan here now. 1% includes down to $300,000/year and that is a good salary but not a player where the buy in at the table is way over that with accumulated wealth of over 5 billion. These are just facts. Think about it.
C’mon George…with all your insightful comments, this now seems to indicate you think classes for the gifted, and highly gifted, should not exist in public schools. If so, I disagree. Focusing on the highly gifted, those students who test on the Stanford Binet at and above 150 IQ, need specialized ed as much as their age peers who are in other programs such a ‘special ed’. These students do not necessarily end up as the 1% but often become educators, doctors and researchers, lawyers, social workers, etc. They then pay major taxes and often add to the safety and progress of society.
Sadly, they rarely become legislators.
Ellen Lubic: and they might make better ones that we have—and have had.
From the late nineteenth century: “ Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” [Mark Twain]
🙂
Would that be the same Pearson that is distributing and scoring the national assessment for teacher education, the edTPA? When do we call the AACTE and Linda Darling-Hammond out for inviting this Pearson into teacher education/
Same one!
The one that now OWNS the American Educational System..LOCK…STOCK…AND BARREL !!!!
Race to the Top $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ all went to the Giant!
N100,
Barbara’s question was rhetorical as she is one who has felt the bite of the powers that be (Pearson influenced, especially). I especially like the “inviting this Pearson into” quote.
Duane
Nobody in gifted education that I know, would EVER suggest making placement decisions on the basis of ONE highly fallible test score!
Correct.
“They falsely claim to be fighting for civil rights. They are not. They fight for the status quo of inequality.”
Very true.
I find that gifted Ed programs are often easy targets for those wanting to level out achievement gaps. I was a gifted teacher in three districts and that would come up. I have had to fight this tendency in my district’s equity committee. In the process of helping bring up the disenfranchised or struggling students, we cannot ignore the far right of the bell curve academically. It does seem silly to just use one testing instrument to determine gifted services.
To me the only consistent fact in all education debate is that people keep looking for easy formulas. And there are none. Not anymore than that there should be one type of music with a huge data base to rank it all, or tests to see if people should be allowed to sing or make music. Imagine how distorted that would be. Targeting education the way it is getting targeted is like doing just that (I tend to look at everything in a context of music). But when you step back and take a bird’s eye view of all that is going on it’s as if people are trying to figure out how to get everyone to sing the same song in the same key in the same style with the same tempo and if you don’t then watch out you will be silenced!!!! How crazy is that.
Maybe people should make music more and it would help keep them humble.
As for me, I will not be silenced in music or in education debate that there is not one way or one rubric or one set of lessons or points to be called education. Education as a whole is not measurable–any more than fine art is. There are measurable aspects to it but to compare improving educational opportunity for all to eradicating disease (a specific , identifiable disease) is way off. To work together collectively and on the shoulders of giants (as in disease wipeout) makes sense in the education context but it stops there. Schools need improvements always but sweeping, national gestures of standardizing deny humanity.
Now if you will turn in your hymnals to a hymn that will help you realize there are no formulas for educating this sermon will conclude.
——
Singing cultures, God-fearing or not, are the ones that thrive.
Is the achievement gap more a product of the achievement of the top end of the achievement distribution or the achievement of the bottom end of the distribution?
Unfortunately some “schools of focus” in our state (NC) are looking at the gap from the outliers on the top.
It makes no sense to me. I have to just rely in what older teachers (dedicated ones) tell me–ignore the trends in policy and just focus on good teaching.
It is my sense that the top of the distribution is much more accomplished than when I graduated from high school 30 plus years ago.
Your words are beyond wise!
You need so to keep speaking, writing, and sharing your thoughts as they so eloquently describe the “ONE size fits all….Everybody goes to college….Everybody masters Physics…Everybody masters writing..Everybody needs to be a Rocket Scientists…
Everybody needs to tie in the RTTT nightmarish Common -Chaotic- Curriculum forced on the Public Schools.”.
Sigh of relief..”Thanks for the Private Schools”…
NYC is not the only district to use only one test to determine who qualifies for gifted programs. San Jose Unified in California also uses only one test, in second grade. Students who were close get retested in 5th grade but they don’t test new students who missed the test in 2nd or 5th. They also don’t test students who happened to be absent the day of the test.
The district I live in has no real gifted program. The solution for younger students is skipping a grade, in high school they can attend the local university for classes (at the parents expense), do independent study and or some AP classes.
No one spends money on the gifted!!
They spend money on all of the other students but figure the gifted can make it on their own.
They can knock the top out of any test.
Sadly, the ones with very low iIQ’s are expected to make the same grade on a Physics test as the highly gifted.
What a joke.
What a shame..Our brightest and best are thrown to the side.
Too often in Ca. some fairly rare individual testing comes about only when children act out in the classroom from boredom, usually at the behest of parents, or the insight of good teachers. This sometimes shows ADD or ADHD or other learning disabilities, but often shows highly gifted capabilities. This is not the universal standardized testing in grade-level testing mentioned above. Sadly there are few programs which address this segment of the public school population. Too many folks say they do not need special programs, that they will make it no matter what. Not true…many are lost to higher ed by not being sufficiently academically challenged early on.
And yes, I agree with Johanna about the arts. Music and general humanities is the first to go with budget cuts. I teach Title 1 students at the Getty Villa as a volunteer education docent in addition to my professional teaching. So many of these inner city students have never been to a museum and are so academically and culturally deprived. It is the Humanities that helps to civilize us all.
so let’s get this straight– under Common Core there will be less fiction and more non-fiction for students, but under Pearson’s testing regime, there will be product placements for companies and logos to be included in the “authentic texts” being tested . . ? Helluva a way to run a railroad Arne, Bill, ALEC, MichelleRhee, et al. And it’s “all about the kids,” right?! I hope the kids are still getting to read history. This cannot last.
http://nydn.us/11odhmq
You have it RIGHT!!!!
Diane being the gentlewoman that she is uses an “F” word to describe Peason’s mistake. Personally I would have used the other “F” word (and if you don’t know what that is you probably haven’t been in a classroom teaching).
It seems to me that this particular foul-up should be called up EVERY TIME teacher evaluation is linked to student testing, or when high stakes testing for schools and/or students is discussed. We know that the tests are a bogus measure of teacher ability, and the test that they want to use is not even designed for that, but the general public does not. We know that teaching to the test and test anxiety are bad for students, and that there is more to education than bubble tests, but the general public doesn’t make the connection. I spend a lot of my time explaining one-to-one why this is so, and still end up with people who think a different test would work better.
Here, however, is a great opportunity to pull in yet another reason that we cannot depend on the tests. It is one that negates that call for a “better” test. A 13% error rate? Be generous, call it a 10% error rate. That means one in ten. In a class of 20, two children are not graduating that should. In a school with 100 in the senior class? 10 are not going to graduate that should. Don’t tell me they get more than one chance…if they fail the last one, they fail. If that test is the one with the error, when the student really worked to finally pass, they will still FAIL. In an urban school with a senior class of 900? 90. Yes, NINETY students could potentially fail when they should not have.