Yesterday I received an email from a reporter from the New York Daily News asking for my reaction to a bootleg copy of the Pearson-made fifth-grade exam for English Language Arts. This is part of the first tests of the Common Core in the state, administered in recent weeks to students in 3rd through 8th grades. Students spent about 90 minutes per day for three days on the ELA tests and repeated the process the next week in math.
I read the passages and the questions based on them. My reaction was that the difficulty level of the passages and the questions was not age-appropriate. Based on test questions I had reviewed for seven years when I was a member of the NAEP board, it seemed to me that the test was pitched at an eighth grade level. The passages were very long, about twice as long as a typical passage on NAEP for eighth grade. The questions involved interpretation, inference, and required re-reading of the passage for each question.
I suppose that is what the test-makers think of as critical thinking, and it may be, but there are also issues of what is appropriate for fifth-graders, as well as recognition that this is a timed test.
When the article appeared, I was not quoted but others agreed that the exam was above fifth-grade level. Aaron Pallas at Teachers College said the vocabulary was sixth grade. But it was not the vocabulary that was disturbing to me: it was the cognitive load, the expectation that fifth-graders could read and interpret long passages on a timed test. It would be interesting to put this test alongside released items from eighth grade NAEP. I tried doing that yesterday afternoon, and to my eye, most of the questions would be rated as “medium” or “hard” for eighth graders.
Very high-performing students may find the exam easy. I suspect it was beyond the comprehension of average fifth grade students, and extremely hard for students in the bottom half.
If this test is indicative of what is in store, It reinforces my concern that the Common Core will widen the achievement gaps. Struggling students will fail.
And by the way, read the smug, arrogant editorial in the Daily News. The editors think it is just great that many kids will fail. They are sure that the tests will reveal the poor quality of education in the city’s schools. They forget that every student in the city has been educated under mayoral control, for which this editorial board has been a consistent cheerleader. Do they understand the contradiction? Not likely.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And by the way, read the smug, arrogant editorial in the Daily News. The editors think it is just great that many kids will fail. They are sure that the tests will reveal the poor quality of education in the city’s schools.
Which would be an indictment of Bloomberg, Klein, Rhee, Anderson, King, Tisch et. al.
Nice call-out Diane. The News I guess hopes that people will be distracted and have a short memory, otherwise, the failure of NYC and it’s reforms of 11 years should be laid at Mayor Mike’s feet.
Kudos to the teacher who leaked this exam. The media should be flooded with copies of these tests, so the public can see the toxic cocktail of greed, incompetence and viciousness that’s driving them.
And, as you rightly point out, Diane, the expected poor student scores will reveal the bankruptcy of Bloomberg’s status quo, since the entire current cohort of NYC public school students knows nothing but this forced march to tedium, irrelevance and obedience.
The tests for third grade and particularly fourth grade are equally inappropriate. The time frame, the vocabulary, the needed background knowledge, not to mention the interest level for the students are all inappropriate. But, “they” who made the test know better. Sure they do.
This is not new. I had the same sort of readings in Massachusetts. I had to go back to the reading to answer questions, infer, and try to understand big words on associated computerized SAT-type exams. This story can be re-written every year. I am sure it will be come May 2014
Sorry, Andy, but I taught for over 30 years in NYC and can tell you both the reading and math Core tests were beyond belief. I helped procter in grade 3 and the tests were way harder than any I’ve ever seen. At least former tests had no time limit and when they did, kids were kept apprised of how time was passing. Teachers now could not indicate time except to tell them they had 10 minutes left.
I’ve been working with several high poverty special ed charter schools where 5th graders initially reading at a first or second grade level are making gains of one-and-a-half to two years growth in a year. How will these tests show that type of growth and what will motivate the schools to provide the kind of effective instruction to older students for whom dysteachia led to a lack of basic skills?
I fear that rather than provide them with the Direct Instruction curricula (or other research-based curricula taught with fidelity) that has finally led to growth, the school districts now will be tempted to have them immersed in frustration level reading of complex text for the Common Core tests. More of the same they always had in the past…..only now even worse. Where is the encouragement in math and reading – the two stepping stone curricular areas – to identify exactly where students’ skill levels are and then be responsible for providing instructional strategies and curricula that will effectively move them up and beyond – with demonstrated accountability that that growth is occurring.
I couldn’t agree with you more Mary. I don’t think state tests inherently dictate to schools that they should drop evidence-based practice such as direct instruction, but schools nevertheless do it because they think there is a shorter route to high scores on a test. The truth is that the fastest way to getting ANY student to perform well on a test is to teach them the best way you know how. Doing things like immersing them in instruction with complex text above their instructional level in comprehension is a bad idea – not just with instruction, but with passing tests.
Still, this often doesn’t happen, and you’re right – we’re seeing more schools teaching less quality material, but in my opinion that’s because of how they interpret test demands.
I also think we should use more data sources to get a picture of how students are achieving. With a fifth grader who moves from a 1st to 3rd grade reading level, you’re absolutely right – that just is probably still failing the state test, which gives no indication of whether or not progress was made.
Mary
These have been the two stepping stones since the beginning of time.
***** the two stepping stone curricular areas – to identify exactly where students’ skill levels are and then be responsible for providing instructional strategies and curricula that will effectively move them up and beyond – with demonstrated accountability that that growth is occurring.
PROBLEM??????
curriculum is scattered
curriculum is cluttered
curriculum is covered ..not taught
curriculum is designed to compare each and every student for academia…completely ignoring the many non-academic talents of the average person..who…in reality keeps this country moving forward.
The special ed kids (and their parents), already 1+ grades behind in vocab and synthesis, must have wept (as I used to) over these tests. More time during the HSTs to melt down and feel stupid. That’s what these tests did — and the NYS Regents exams will do — to my mild cognitively impaired 16 y/o student.
Our district’s core teachers are not interested in teaching CC to students like my son, they want students w/ mild-mod impairments to be placed in special ed immediately so as not to impair teacher APPR scores. This is fact. Rather than bring the special ed kids into GenEd CC, our school in NYS is trying to use SpecEd as the CC, UDL, BL salad option so tchrs who would have been measured by ‘growth scores’ will be the only ones teaching the material. The APPR–CCSS initiative is creating schools-within-schools, promoting segregation of SpecEd students who will likely be drilled, and drilled and drilled on CC HSTs like trained seals, in the hopes that on test day they’ll be able to be ‘proficient’.
Thank you Diane for another informative article, I just wish “they” would get it!
“If this test is indicative of what is in store, It reinforces my concern that the Common Core will widen the achievement gaps. Struggling students will fail.”
This rings true, based on my completely unscientific observations. My “high-performing” fourth-grade daughter reported that the worst part about the tests was that students who finished early had to sit quietly in their seats until the time limit was up. But it also appears that large numbers of students struggled to get through the tests. I worry about my son, a few grades back, who’s a very different sort of person and student than my daughter.
I wonder how goes the witch-hunt to find who leaked this test? The “authorities” must be red with anger and contempt.
The Pearson “house style” for K-12 is slowly being revealed as be something out of a 19th century British public school.There seems to be a foundational belief that children are inherently problematic and in need of punishment to grow into properly functioning citizens. Part of this program seems to involve large dollops of arbitrary and confusing communication that reinforces the authority of the controlling party because you have to do things just “because they say so” even though it makes no sense (see also Dilbert.) There also seems to be a bit of malice, as when the bullied grow up to bully the next generation.
Basing your comments on which specific behaviors of Pearson?
I’m guessing “large dollops of arbitrary and confusing communication”.
Certainly spoon feeding the exact information to the answer isn’t good, but hopefully the questions are clearly worded.
TC, again – which specific behaviors – “large dollops of arbitrary and confusing communication” is vague.
edededucation,
I apologize for a too-hasty blog drive-by. I only had a few minutes yesterday and couldn’t come back and clarify.
I’m not talking about anything Pearson as a company has done. I’m saying that the writing/communication/presentation style of test items on Pearson tests is less straightforward and more arbitrary than that seen on the previous vendor’s (McGraw Hill) tests. There is indication that Pearson and also, to be fair, top NY State education officials, consider this a good thing – they are comfortable with confusing and arbitrary being considered the same as challenging (apparently it yields a comparable set of rankings?)
One of the new common core aligned exercises my child (4th grade) undertakes with some regularity is writing a 3-4 paragraph essay comparing two passages that relate to a common theme – especially in terms of the two authors’ communication goals and the tools they employ to reach those goals. This goes way beyond drawing inferences and into the realm of what I would consider “bullshitting” (I mean that in the most positive sense, and acknowledge that it is a skill needed for college and career – though it is also something Piaget maintains a pre-adolescent can’t do well.) Though the explanatory materials around this exercise say this is close reading and requires no background knowledge, it does seem to involve making some kind of personal/aesthetic/cultural call and then justifying it with “evidence” from the texts. It’s like op-ed writing.
In that spirit, I am saying that I am experiencing, as a close reader, a stylistic shift in test item preparation between old and new tests that seems to be evidence of a more authoritarian approach mapped (with some background knowledge) on an academic tradition built on an image of the student as something inherently in need of correction and reform. Of course another possibility is that the other product is better written.
I am not an expert – I a pissed-off end user. If I could review the product on Amazon instead, I would.
I made the test item comparison between
on the one hand:
5 years of published NYS ELA and math tests for grades 3 and 4, which I have read cover to cover and discussed with other NYC school parents.
on the other hand:
a few “leaked” test items from the last two years of tests (including the “Pineapple” item – not the reading the questions. and all of the sample teaching questions made available on NY state websites including the the Leo Tolstoy passage for 3rd graders.
Is that a fair comparison? Not at all – I’d love to make a more balanced one (maybe I am talking about a Pearson behavior after all.)
I am not an expert. I am an end user unhappy with the product ( I have been forced to use who can point to a competitor and say can point to cometitors
Please ignore last paragraph, cut and paste error from earlier draft.
Thanks “Mom from District 2” – I really appreciate that response, and what you are saying makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that you are qualifying your comments as based only on what you’ve read, and I should do the same with mine. I also, by no means, have expertise related to Pearson’s test construction.
I guess I have 3 responses for you. First, I appreciate your perspective. I appreciate that you say you wish you had the ability/information to complete a more substantial review, but I do think it’s a relevant statement when a parent reads various test questions and says they think they are too hard. What makes your statement different from the original blog post is that you have qualified your comments, are aren’t trying to imply that your observations are conclusive evidence that the tests are invalid. I do think parents (and folks like Diane) have something to contribute, but we should be realistic about the weight of our observations, important though they may be.
Second, I’d be more interested in your thoughts on how item difficulty translates into an authoritarian or condescending approach toward education? I can understand if it’s demonstrated that items are too hard, but how does that imply a moral agenda?
Third, I’d point out that there is a difference between standards and test items. If test items are difficult, but commensurate with standards, the test is not the problem, but the standards. The test is simply serving the needs of the school to evaluate a student’s progress toward standards. So, looking at a test item and saying “these are too hard” is not evidence that the test is too hard by itself. You’d have to demonstrate that standards are reasonable, yet the test is more difficult than it should be. So, if you found that an alternative assessment of the same standards yielded pass rates much higher than the Pearson tests, that would be evidence that the Pearson tests are too hard.
The 2 years of leaks and samples that I am talking about straddle the imposition of the new standards. 2011 was old school, 2012 was Common Core. The stylistic difference between Pearson tests and earlier test materials was there for both years.
I don’t think the Pearson test questions at my daughter’s level are too hard – I think they are a different formulation of “hard” than the tests I have to compare them with, This new formulation of hard makes me uncomfortable in a way that the other tests did not.
I think that NY State is pushing Pearson beyond their comfort zone (maybe beyond any test preparers comfort zone) in terms of making it “harder” and that Pearson is responding by making questions more arbitrary (the space between the “best answer” and the next best distractor reduced so much that teachers can’t call it?) and instructions more confusing. Also there is a subtle tonal quality that comes across as “nyeah, nyeah, nyeah I’m (that is, the test preparer) an adult and I know more than you, hah hah!” This still produces the desired distribution of 4s, 3s, 2s and 1s but does seem less about measuring what kids really know.
Some of the new test prep at our school is devoted to understanding “the test as a genre” (this is a quote from an administrator speaking at a parent session on the new tests.) The Common Core only enters into it because it has introduced (or maybe reintroduced) some CCS specific jargon into the obfuscatory mix.
As a parent, my experience of the new standards as been neutral-to-positive, though as I said in a comment above my daughter (high achieving kid at high achieving school) is sometimes expected to do isolated things that seem very age-inappropriate. When she struggles with those particular things her reaction as a student (anxiety, hopelessness) is very different than when she is exposed to something she just has to work at to grasp (dogged focus.) At the 4th grade level this just seems like something that could be tweaked, but I feel for children in younger grades whose whole relationship with education is being colored by that probably unnecessary struggle.
Oh, I’m sorry! Post above first paragraph should say “2012 was old school, 2013 was Common Core.” When the posts get too long I can’t scroll them to reread and edit. It’s the technology’s fault, honest!
I blame technology all the time – quite alright! Those are interesting observations about the test being qualitatively different, or more difficult even though measuring the same content. Again, I haven’t seen them so I can’t respond except to say that it’s interesting. I’ve said this on other threads, but I do think that any test used for public purposes in the way that state tests are should be subject to third party psychometric assessments. I think it’s a bit too little accountability to not do so. Hopefully soon this would happen and there could be more formal investigation into the things you’re observing.
the “best answer” and the next best distractor
Oh, how right you are! As a retired teacher and math specialist, I have plenty of experience with test items. While looking over a test item this year, I was under the impression that 2 of the choices were correct. The class teacher, also with long experience, came over and agreed. After reading and retreading the choices several times, we realized there was a very subtle difference between 2 of the items. If we had such difficulty picking the correct response, what were the chances for the 8 year olds for whom the question was written?
I am not sure that a harder test would widen the gap. It would just make the gap less obvious. Fifth grade students that read at a second grade level would still be reading at a second grade level, fifth grade students who read at an eighth grade level would still be reading at an eighth grade level.
You may be confusing the snapshot of the test with the long-term trends. Over time, those who succeed will continue to see education and school as something that they are good at and continue to work diligently. Those who feel overwhelmed may take on any variety of attitudes to justify their results or give up altogether as a result of frustration and a sense of personal failure.
I suppose that some might get discouraged, but the same thing would be true when those students receive poor grades in classes. Do you think there is a danger that high performing students would get discouraged and disenchanted with school if they routenely found the asssemts trivial?
Why don’t we give those people a test over their head and in a field they do not know and their future is on the line if they fail. That is fair isn’t it? Fair for one, fair for all. How would they like it with the shoe on the other foot?
Ethical issues of distributing bootleg test copies aside, have you compared your informal observations with the reliability and validity data given by Pearson? While you have had great experience in the area, I’m not sure you should be passing your informal observation of the assessment off as a means of derailing legitimate, formalized estimates of validity and reliability. I don’t consider it professional, though (should you have gotten the copy through legitimate means) I definitely think it’s valid for you to have some reactions or observations. Attempting to discredit the document by casually looking at it one afternoon doesn’t provide substantial evidence, unfortunately.
On a more specific note, I have one point of agreement and one point of disagreement. I disagree with your conclusion that a 5th grade child could not read and answer comprehension questions. You’ve qualified your comments by characterizing the passages as “long” and being within a “timed” environment, but 5th graders routinely read passages and answer comprehension questions based on those passages – cognitive load is, in no way, an issue with that process. If your critiques are more specifically that the amount of time allotted is too short or the passage is too long, wouldn’t it make more sense to quantify the discussion a bit? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that 70% of 5th graders were unable to finish that particular section, compared with only 20% on the NAEP (or whatever the data may show)?
I do agree, however, with the underlying premise that tests should be constructed so as to be able to accurate assess the skill it’s designed to assess. I’m totally with you if 5th graders are being asked to do 8th grade level work. That would be a concern for me, as well as if kids who were otherwise demonstrating successful academic performance being unable to complete the test because of time constraints that were inappropriate. So, we’re in agreement on principle, but I’m questing how you’ve found yourself able to accurately conduct validity and reliability studies in an afternoon of casual reading.
NOT just “informal evaluations with reliability and validity given by Pearson,” Triple ed-ucation–PLEASE read Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry by Todd Farley.
We have observed–time and again–that Pear$on’s so-called “standardized” tests are NOT, in fact, standardized, for they are neither valid nor reliable. Not even the FIELD tests are valid or reliable–kids have no stake in them, it’s June, and they are FIELD tests, so not taken seriously by students! Have you not read earlier, recent posts here, such as Alan Singer’s RE: Pear$on tests? Read “The Answer Sheet” in The Washington Post–LOTS of recent posts RE;”standardized” tests. Good Lord, not only are the questions and answers flawed, but–and aside from the cheating that’s gone on–scoring is juked (and that is at the Pear$on scoring centers)! STOP wasting taxpayers’ money on test preps & tests! Parents, OPT OUT! Older students, OPT OUT!
And–there is NO good reason for ANY student out there to be taking Pear$on field tests in June–so, DON’T DO IT!!!
It would be a good start, actually. Let’s see how much capacity for civil dis-obedience people have. How about teachers refusing to GIVE them? Naw. THAT would actually be dangerous, potentially injurious to one’s livelihood. Well, it’s not as important as Jim Crow laws, thank goodness.
Thanks for the references retiredbutmissthekids – I’m certainly not saying I have an end-all-be-all knowledge of the state test element of Pearson, and am more than open to hearing legitimate arguments about how reliability and validity are compromised. I will check out that book you recommended – thanks for the link. And no – I’m not sure I’ve read those particular posts you’re talking about, but am open to any links you might have.
My main issue here is NOT standing up for the validity of Pearson state test construction, but the questioning the validity of evidence presented by casual observation of tests. If you’re going to attack the psychometrics of state tests, do it will actual evidence, not casual observation.
Harlan, I think a good start would be to put forth a legitimate, academic argument against the validity of state tests, and referencing those arguments/documents in blog posts such as this. I’m not against civil disobedience if there isn’t another way, but stealing a copy of a state test so someone can look at it and make casual observations? Seems juvenile and trite.
To me, it’s about being strategic and effective – not simply refusing to do something. Sure, if the best (or only) way to change something that presents a challenge to social justice is civil disobedience, that makes sense. But be strategic about it – someone stealing a single test and Diane giving her opinions? Not so much strategic, organized, or convincing.
I’d also take issues with the comparisons with Jim Crow and other social justice issues. How specifically are these tests discriminatory, and are you really saying state tests are causing harm that could be comparable to the civil rights issues that occurred in the first half of this century? Do you really think, for example, that the average Black child attending school now is as harmed by state tests – and specifically Pearson as a company – as they were by the educational policies experienced by Black children in the first half of the century? Can you see how such a comparison might sound not only silly but outright offensive?
edededucation,
The central theme that’s being blenderized through everyone’s different personal testing issues here is that the scores of these tests are now being used to support policy and personal outcomes for New Yorkers that will greatly affect their lives (possibly in the “social justice” sense) and yet the tests are secret.
It’s not that different from New York bidding out the justice system to a private concern and that concern then doing away with juries because its not efficient – there would be anger and unrest, yes?
The errors in G&T scoring were originally found by parents, not Pearson, and the reason the parents went looking was that their children were mightily affected by the outcome.
“They powerfully show the value of the Common Core approach…” Now mind you, I’m more than just a bit skeptical of the educational value of Common Core and suspicious of its connection to proprietary programs. But this quote sounds an awful lot like a plug for the top down management systems of mayoral control and wealthy reformers.
Author claims the tests seem age appropriate, but I doubt his qualifications for making such a claim.
Is it just possible that there’s an agenda to toughen up the standardized tests to prevent public school reform efforts from being able to show improvement?
“The value of the Common Core approach”. There’s value?
We’re largely agreeing here. I’ve spent the last few days looking at CCSS for 9-12th grade Social Studies. It’s just varying types of research. Nearly every history standard has the word “sources” with words like gather, evaluate, analyze, and so on. There’s really no content. I could have students research a “compelling question” for 2 weeks and then move on to the next one. There would be no content and limited understanding of causation or historical trends. (Sure, they make courtesy references but only to protect disciplinary material.)
Then I looked at the people on the Social Studies committee. ALL college professors. Like other teachers, I have taken college classes, several in fact, over the last 8 years. At some well-known universities. Those professors did nothing to teach these skills themselves. Just lots of lecture. How college ready are these kids going to be when the professors create standards that aren’t very aligned with what they actually do?
Would this be another way of saying the Social Studies Common Core Standards are process oriented, rather than content oriented?
And it’s not greater depth and less breadth. There will be expectations about both that will be very heavy.
Exams can be effective indicators of achievement only if most questions are gauged to somewhere near the middle of the distribution and are age-appropriate. If an exam is beyond the ken of a majority of students, you will get a pile of blank papers and nothing to go on. Likewise, if questions are below far grade-level, you would expect almost everyone to get it right.
It may be easier to see in a math context because the year in which a concept should be introduced is indisputable, e.g., converting fractions to decimals is in Grade 7 in Common Core, but a sample NYSED exam put such a problem into the Grade 6 questions. For a class full of students in an unaccelerated program, you could reasonably surmise that no one in the class will be able to answer the question—demeaning to students and a useless barometer for educators.
NAEP often tries to reveal the age-appropriateness of concepts by giving the identical question to Grades 4, 8 and 12—not a bad idea. These NYSED exams are putting the cart before the horse and letting the students get run over by both.
I certainly agree that there should be a range of questions so that the range of student achievement can be gauged, but I don’t think that it is wise to assume that students are only introduced to mathematical concepts according to the class schedule. There are too many independent ways to learn mathematics these days, especially for aggressive students with access to the internet.
You should not hold teachers responsible for students that do not learn math concepts independently from school. It is true that some students do learn outside of school, but to make it practice to consistently test above and beyond that which is taught, and blame the school for poor performance is obscene. By all means sample the range of student ability, but do not expect the exception to be the norm. Piaget may be dead, but he wasn’t wrong!
I have no interest in blaming or praising a teacher for the things that the student learns out of class. Testing the range of students ability, including expectations above the norm, and you mit be surprised what you might find.
On a school or class level, the information becomes more valuable for differentiating instruction. The use of this kind of testing is not useful for making decisions about a teacher’s performance. We don’t have an instrument that can be used to reliably predict teacher performance.
Perhaps it would be useful to desperate the notion of standardized tests from the uses to which they put. The criticisms here are that the tests are too hard for students and might discourage them in their future class work.
There is an enormous amount of completely trivial education today. I invite you all to open a contemporary literature textbook for, say, grade 9. Open the book at random.
What you will find is a tiny dollop of literature/text surrounded by pages and pages and pages and pages and page of activities and accompanied by fifty different ancillary materials. Activate your thinking activities. Prereading activities. Cross curriculum activities. Higher-order thinking skills activities A, B, C, and D. Social studies extension activity. Guided reading questions. Multicultural activities. Vocabulary extension activities. Grammar extension activities. Critical thinking activities. Extending the lesson activities. Think, pair, share activities. Small-group discussion activities. Multimedia extension activity. Biography of the author. Real-world connection. Writing extension activity. Projects. Pretest. Posttest. Checktest/formative test. LEP activity. ESL activity. Mathematics connectivity. Test prep activity. The list goes on and on and on–I have barely scratched the surface.
A given spread in one of these contemporary lit books contains more moving parts than a Boeing 747–thirty-five different fonts, tons of little graphic elements–borders, tabs, swooshes, screened backgrounds, arbitrary graphic shapes thrown into the background, little cartoon figures, call-out boxes, pictures, illustrations, maps, graphs, and charts,
and somewhere, somewhere, COMPLETELY BURIED in the middle of all that MOSTLY MINDLESS AND WORTHLESS CRAP with only the remotest connection to anything worth learning is THE LITTLE SCRAP OF TEXT that the lesson is supposed to be about.
It’s no wonder that kids have attention deficits. Their textbooks look as if they had been designed by gerbils on methamphetamine.
Amusingly, the new Common Core Editions of ALL the major publishers’ texts still look like this. They clearly haven’t read the Publishers’ Guidance, which is extraordinarily wise.
In the 1960s, a literature text used to have a little introductory note, if necessary, to provide background, the selection, maybe an illustration or two, and some questions about the selection at the end. In other words, a literature text was about, duh, reading literature.
Reading those long lit passages on the tests might turn out to be a lot easier if kids actually spent a little more time, uh, reading, and a lot LESS time doing prereading activate your thinking group discussion activities and like crap in which they are learning nothing from anyone and are, for the most part, wasting their time listening to one another say the banal and the obvious.
I like your post, Mr. Shepherd, but I hesitate to say so for fear that it will diminish your welcome here. You see, I am the Goddess-designated Grinch/curmudgeon and customary contrarian of this blog who is only tolerated because I’m good for a laugh. Ha, ha.
Nevertheless I want to extend your remarks in the most insulting and hostile fashion possible to speculate that the REASON the publishers compete with all of the ancillaries is that the actual teachers teaching from the books don’t know enough about real literature to even begin to teach it or perhaps even read the “text” itself with any understanding. And how did that come about? They’ve got an education school education. I KNOW what kind of paper can get an A in a literature class at Eastern Michigan University. And it ain’t purrty.
My observation is that the 2012 McGruder also has moved in the same direction. When my son too his 8th grade Civics course in 1977, his book was all text, a third as thick, and six times less expensive (uncorrected for inflation). COST my man. COST. As long as the govamint is paying for the books and giving them to increasingly poorly educated teachers (especially in what might laughingly be called “The Social Sciences,” where everyone knows everything about social justice but nothing about the constitution, as well as “English Language Arts”—a subject whose name exhibits total lack of command of what it names—where one word is never enough but we must use three to increase the abstraction level and obfuscate to the point where words mean nothing), the publishers have to satisfy their true audience—ignorant teachers, not ignorant students.
Have a cup of tea?
Gladly, Harlan. Gladly.
One more thing, Harlan. One of the reasons that I find myself on this blog is that I’ve long known Diane Ravitch to be a staunch supporter of rich, substantive, knowledge-based curricula with a distaste for EduFads. I suspect that you are much more than tolerated here. I suspect, in fact, that you are welcomed because you are a serious thinker and give a damn.
You are most gracious, Mr. Shepherd. I do presume to favor knowledge that is such.
The comment about the term “English language arts” is spot on. I almost fell off my chair laughing.
“As long as the govamint is paying for the books and giving them to increasingly poorly educated teachers (especially in what might laughingly be called ‘The Social Sciences,’ where everyone knows everything about social justice but nothing about the constitution, as well as ‘English Language Arts’—a subject whose name exhibits total lack of command of what it names—where one word is never enough but we must use three to increase the abstraction level and obfuscate to the point where words mean nothing), the publishers have to satisfy their true audience—ignorant teachers, not ignorant students.”
Well, THAT didn’t take long. I see you’re up to your old “bash the ‘govamint’ schools and their teachers” foolishness.
I suppose I already know the answer to this, but I feel compelled to ask: On what research are you basing your judgment of teachers as “ignorant?” Have you completed several peer-reviewed research projects on the topic or would that just be more “laughable social science” nonsense?
Perhaps wolves most enjoy their tea when they are dressed as sheep.
No real research. Just anecdotal impressionism. And a global statement to boot. It would be interesting to know whether any studies have been done of the teachers of a city or a state. I’ve often thought the teachers should be tested before the kids are. A degree don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that sting. I don’t bash by preference. I see my grandson’s reading in the AP class of the best district in the state. Public school teachers are in an impossible situation in poor districts. What bugs me is the drumbeat of bash capitalism, when none of them would have anything without it, not even freedom. It pains and puzzles me no end. The privatization movement, again not researched, but impressionism only, in my estimation, grows out of a backlash against the social theories embraced by teacher unions and organizations without, apparently, any reflection on what makes a country prosperous. But no, it’s always greed, privatization, and apple pie, uttered with such a moralistic nose in the air condescension that a country school teacher like myself sees self-inflicted wounds rather than victims. There IS no public sector. ALL the money for schools comes from working stiffs. But now things get difficult. Does that tax money still belong in some sense to the individuals who have paid it? Some argue, no, that once the tax money is collected it becomes “public” and the government schools have some sort of divine right to it. Others say, no, that in principle, the money still belongs to each individual tax payer and should follow the parent and the child into whichever kind of school the parent wishes. It is a philosophical dilemma. The elected representatives in the legislatures of the state are charged with the responsibility of appropriating the revenue. Some parents of a capitalistic frame of mind, because that’s how they MUST make their living, might well prefer to have lower taxes AND teachers who respected them. Public school teachers, in my limited experience, seem to believe they have replaced priests as custodians of education. They are more like an established church than any other institution in this society. I’m not really trying to bash public school teachers, just giving one person’s impressionistic opinion of WHY the privatization movement has become a juggernaut in a number of places. I think if public school teachers would simply recognize that they have no more right to the money than anyone else, that they are NOT the custodians of morality and justice in the country, the attacks on them might not be so virulent and destructive of the good they do do. It comes down to fundamental morality. Some in this culture think they have a right to limit wealth creation. I just don’t understand the mind set. I provoke to try to get someone, anyone, to disclose their real assumptions about the status of government provided services. Wealth does corrupt, but in this case it’s the wealth that comes to the states and school districts through the Department of Education that seems to me to be doing the corrupting, not so much Gates, Koch, and Broad. Education for jobs is not an essential government service. Education for citizenship is, but the conceptions of citizenship I see posted here are mainly verbal shibboleths, and are the self-interested utterings of a special bureaucratic class.
I would guess that most of the people who read Diane’s Blog on a regular basis do what I do when they come upon a HU post; read the first few sentences, recognize that it is no different than his usual banal commentary and decide not to waste their time reading what he has to say.
Oh that hurts, Betsy. “Banal”? Wrong maybe, but boring and dull at the same time? Ouch.
Glad it’s not just me, Betsy!
“No real research. Just anecdotal impressionism.”
Well, Mr. Underhill, perhaps you should “get out of the sticks” and observe what’s going on in the rest of the civilized country.
“And a global statement to boot.”
A global statement based on the same false rhetoric that fuels the privatization movement. One would think a self-proclaimed scholar, such as yourself, would see these “apples-to-oranges” comparisons for what they truly are: a vehicle to “justify” the privatization of public education.
“It would be interesting to know whether any studies have been done of the teachers of a city or a state.”
Why bother with research if one has his “country teacher” point-of-view to back up his narrative? I mean, why look to research now since it hasn’t informed your stance thus far?
“I don’t bash by preference. I see my grandson’s reading in the AP class of the best district in the state. Public school teachers are in an impossible situation in poor districts.”
That last statement is the truth.
“What bugs me is the drumbeat of bash capitalism, when none of them would have anything without it, not even freedom. It pains and puzzles me no end.”
I think you are misconstruing the stance. The call for regulated capitalism is not the same as a call for its dismantling. No one is asking for a socialist society. That argument is as extreme as the one that states that politicians like Obama want gun regulations because they want to “take our guns away.” It’s pure zealotry based on biased rhetoric with no evidence. The problem with the capitalist society we have now is that government is too hands-off when it comes to regulations, and why shouldn’t law makers, who stand to make personal and political gains from big corporate donors, be on the side of Big Money? Oh, right, they’re elected by the people. Problem is, campaign finance laws have allowed elected officials to amass the wealth necessary to talk big talk which aids them in getting elected but then screw the public AFTER they get in office.
“The privatization movement, again not researched, but impressionism only, in my estimation, grows out of a backlash against the social theories embraced by teacher unions and organizations without, apparently, any reflection on what makes a country prosperous. But no, it’s always greed, privatization, and apple pie, uttered with such a moralistic nose in the air condescension that a country school teacher like myself sees self-inflicted wounds rather than victims.”
That’s the narrative that those in power would want you to believe, and, by golly, you’ve allowed yourself to taken in without any regard to the facts that the majority of struggling schools are in states with right-to-work laws and in districts that have lost local control. If you want a professional staff, treat your staff like professionals.
“Some parents of a capitalistic frame of mind, because that’s how they MUST make their living, might well prefer to have lower taxes AND teachers who respected them.”
What does one have to do with the other? Did your colleagues mistreat you or something?
“Public school teachers, in my limited experience, seem to believe they have replaced priests as custodians of education. They are more like an established church than any other institution in this society. I’m not really trying to bash public school teachers, just giving one person’s impressionistic opinion of WHY the privatization movement has become a juggernaut in a number of places.”
Wow–such strong words for someone with no real evidence outside of his “country school” and Fox News.
“I think if public school teachers would simply recognize that they have no more right to the money than anyone else, that they are NOT the custodians of morality and justice in the country, the attacks on them might not be so virulent and destructive of the good they do do. It comes down to fundamental morality.”
No teachers are siphoning off the public’s funding for their own profits. They are working and expecting to be paid for the work they do.
Tell you what…how about you pay back all the health benefits you’ve earned (and according to you, stolen), and stop accepting your pension (even though you paid into it) since you hate the fact that greedy teachers (obviously, like yourself)–and all those ignorant ones that you have “noticed”–have/had the unmitigated AUDACITY to ask for these to balance the compensation of a marginal salary? I will applaud you at your announcement of this act. Perhaps you never had these things at all in your “country” school which would explain your disdain for those who have fought to negotiate for them.
Oh, Harlan, how to explain it to you? Please stop blaming the teacher for not teaching, and put the blame on those who insist on forcing programs like Teachers’ College onto them without any choice. When a program insists that 6, 7, 8 year olds each choose and “read” their own book silently and never read aloud to the teacher, there is very little teaching to do. The teacher can not possibly know every book In the classroom intimately and find enough time in the day to sit one-on-one with each child to see how they are progressing. The children do, however, get to use Post-It Notes and share with each other. Talk about the blind leading the blind! A very gifted teacher I know (with proven success) literally has to sneak teaching in behind her administrator’s back!
Nope, it’s not the teachers!
Sorry, I meant the Publishers’ Criteria.
BTW, there is a reason why the texts look like that, and it has nothing to do with education. The major textbook publishers compete with one another on their features and ancillary materials. Every time one publisher adds some feature and every time some new buzz word starts being heard on the education carnival midway, all the other publishers rush to add that one to. The result is the contemporary spate of textbooks, all of which are an ungodly mess.
Correction. I was typing too quickly.
I meant the Publishers’ Criteria.
BTW, there is a reason why the texts look like that, and it has nothing to do with education. The major textbook publishers compete with one another on their features and ancillary materials. Every time one publisher adds some feature and every time some new buzz word starts being heard on the education carnival midway, all the other publishers rush to add that one too. And every time some publisher had some stupid feature, the adoption committees all put it on their checklist, and the publisher that doesn’t have it loses the adoption.
The result is the contemporary spate of textbooks, all of which are an ungodly mess.
I made a similar comment in a response before, but wanted to post it as a main comment for others to see. I think that Diane made a statement in the original post that others may not get – she says,
“If this test is indicative of what is in store, It reinforces my concern that the Common Core will widen the achievement gaps. ”
Notice she draws the conclusion that test difficulty isn’t necessarily indicative of Pearson problems or test problems, but of the standards they are purporting to measure. If the tests accurately measure the standards, the test is just fine, and the issue should then not be with Pearson or tests, but with the standards.
After reading some comments, my concern is that folks aren’t seeing this distinction.