The scores are out for New York, and they are devastating.
The story in the New York Times reports:
Across the city, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department.
The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and creative problem-solving.
City and state officials spent months trying to steel the public for the grim figures, saying that a decline in scores was inevitable and that it would take several years before students performed at high levels. Under the old exams last year, the city fared better: 47 percent of students passed in English, and 60 percent passed in math.
Statewide, 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math. Last year, 55 percent passed in reading, and 65 percent in math.
Some educators were taken aback by the steep decline and said they worried the figures would rattle the confidence of students and teachers.
When you read these figures, please bear in mind that the State Education Department determined what the passing score would be.
This was a judgment call, a political calculation.
Arne Duncan defended the collapse of test scores as a good thing, Now we are telling the truth about the failure of public education, he says.
The kids didn’t fail.
The State Education Department failed.
The New York State Board of Regents failed.
They are in charge of education in New York.
They decide on curriculum, instruction, standards, teacher qualifications, and allocation of resources.
They have failed, not the students.
They should be held accountable.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You are so right. KC
Sent from my iPad
“They should be held accountable.”
Indeed! After years of talk about accountability for teachers, let’s have some accountability for policymakers like Duncan.
Amen. Duncan and his gang are really bad people without a clue. And yet the spout. Follow the money.
Don’t feed the BEAST
United opt out, State Opt Out/Refusal Guides found HERE.
http://unitedoptout.com/opt-outrefusal-guides-for-each-state/
EXACTLY, Linda. Go the Garfield H.S. route–NO ONE takes the test–or so few do that there can be no data derived from the testing!
Parents–if you love your schools–OPT YOUR KIDS OUT!
Since I don’t have a firm opinion or strong immediate knowledge on the situation in New York and some other states, I am asking some questions for Diane and others with greater knowledge of this situation
* Do you think the NY standards should not have been changed statewide?
* Would you prefer that New York and other states use the NAEP assessments to the ones they (various states) have adopted?
* Or is your preference that individual schools and district adopt standards?
Again, I am asking what you think, not making assertions about what should be done.
Since you are asking I will be bold enough to respond. Start with M. Podgursky U. of Missouri in a memo he wrote to the NAEP Governing Board; he explains the difficulty in the use of the NAEP tests to set policy quite well. Start with Jim Guthrie who has helped Wyoming school boards decide what is “appropriate education” and how much it should cost. (We have an acronym for FAPE — appropriate education that came out of Massachusetts and PL94-142 (special education); Jim relies on professional judgments to assist in the definitions of appropriate and explains why tests are not sufficient alone. He doesn’t say “education professionals will screw up” (pardon the vernacular ; that is what M. Petrillii at Fordham is telling the publc.) For another perspective on international test comparisons look at Cornoldi’s work in Italy; he investigated why the kids in southern Italy were looking so poorly in comparison with the kids in northern italy ;he found it was an artefact of the tests and the students in the south were penalized by time/accuracy tradeoffs. (this happens to students who are gifted and creative in so many ways but just can’t get beyond average on processing speed.) Look at Germany’s longitudinal examination of what actually happens with the international tests; don’t just accept the international comparisons at Face value. The two basic concepts to look for are reliability and validity. The commissioner Klein (former) and Steiner (former) are saying there is predictive validity in the formulas they have developed but there isn’t.
If you and I were to take a bow and arrow test at hitting a bulls eye , for example, we would want to compare our scores in reliable and valid ways to see who was the better target shooter. (I have no doubt it would be you) Given that example, say we BOTH match up with the shots but we are way off the target center. We don’t expect cheetahs and donkeys to meet the same standards on a “race”; the Institute for Applied P. (IAP for short) has good information on that ; and they have a good explanation of the math in testing using Forrest Gump as the example. I don’t mean to overburden you but these would be some of the basic places to start. Maybe even look at the Forrest Gump analogy to get a picture of the math from IAP. (Kevin McGrew is one of the major persons behind this work at IAP and he is well recognized in psychometrics) I don’t want to clutter up the comments board you could use jeanhaverhill@aol.com if you want me to send you all the references (Jim Guthrie was one of my professors). Also, look at the psychiatrist Dr. Waber and her report from children’s hospital Boston as to why the MCAS testing should not be used in the way that tests are being used to punish students. I might even send you that one first.
Start with this one; A Lesson from Forrest Gump Regarding Appropriate Expectations …
http://www.iapsych.com/iqach.pdf
Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP) A Lesson from Forrest Gump . Regarding Appropriate Expectations for. Students
A wonderful 3 minute You-Tube celebration of the arts in a Northern Ireland city that has seen enormous strife for many years. Perhaps we can learn from how the arts are bringing many people together:
Will it be on the test? Ask Arne..if not they don’t care. Send this to the Gates USDOE.
Maybe the students in Philly can watch it after school since their arts programs have been cut.
Thanks, Jean. I thought this brief document building off of “Forest Gump’s” accomplishments was quite good. Thank you sharing it.
Along those same lines, you might want to check out You Tube music videos done by some inner city St. Paul high school students at the High School for Recording Arts. Some of these young people had been classified as having “special needs” and none had been successful in traditional high schools.
However, they now are at a school that uses their insights, skills and creativity, giving them a chance to produce these videos – they recently won a national award for the quality of their work.
Last (and enough) Someone on Diane’s blog posted an Australian study by a researcher who describes “psychometric fudge”. I will look back through the posts in August and find that reference; it was excellent. Nearly everything you read on here that has any back up references would be good to start with not just for opinions but for research data as well.
Jeanne,
See below for a reference to Wilson’s damning critique/study of educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students.
Duane
#3 NEAP Background Questions:
What Can We Learn from NAEP About The Effect of Schools and Teachers On Student Achievement?
A Discussion Paper Prepared to the National Assessment Governing Board
Michael Podgursky Department of Economics University of Missouri PodgurskyM@Missouri.edu
you can get it directly at the web Missouri .edu or email him directly (you can tell him I said his paper was well written and that people can easily understand things he is saying like “reiprocal causality”.)
Thank you Jean. I found this paper via google search. Do you agree that there are some things a state or country should expect all students should know and be able to do before high school graduation (as states have decided that there are some things everyone must know and be able to do before obtaining a driver’s license)?
Or do you believe that all standards should be set at the local level?
This is not an argument for using current tests or Common Core – I am seeking your (and others) opinions about whether students throughout a state (or country) should be expected to demonstrate some skills and knowledge, measured in various ways, prior to graduation from high school.
My answer to the question is yes, and there should be a mixture of ways to measure what students know, as there is a mixture of assessments used to determine whether a person can get a driver’s license.
I’m interested in what Jean and others think.
Thanks
Joe
#4 I will look for a summary of Jim Gurthrie’s work ; he knows how to work with school boards. To read his entire article on Wyoming would be time consuming. Also, # 5 and # 6 I would want you to have summaries of Cornoldi’s work in Italy and the German longitudinal study because they can be brutal to wade through with all the terms and math etc.
Would this have been allowed if Bloomberg was up for re-election?
Gee, test scores are plummeting??? Isn’t that REALLY what Arne and his merry band of corporate raiders wanted? Crocodile tears from him would make me furious if I lived in this state. It’s all about CHARTER SCHOOLS replacing PUBLIC
I am sick. Schools, kids, teachers have been set up to fail by Duncan and his hedge fund friends. They and their rigged standards are the liars.
And it’s child abuse…to use them in a predetermined ruse to bolster a warped philosophy. These are sick people without a conscience. They should not be allowed near children. Good thing they only show up for photo ops.
How can they KNOW that this is the truth? What validity did this test really have? What about the timing issues? The lack of ability to prepare students adequately for the format of the test? What about the students actually having the required background for the test over several years with a phase-in rather than throwing them under the bus?
This is indeed a political calculation – how can they begin to say “this is where students truly are” – indeed – how can they explain their lying tests in the first place and be assured that these tests are now “objective”.
None of this is objective – it’s based on belief and political calculation. It gives a whole new meaning to a faith based education.
Again, if there were any such thing as shame left in this country, Arne should be mortified. It’s not like he just took over someone else’s mess – he’s been in power for going on six years now. If test scores aren’t where he wants them, who’s fault is that?
“who’s fault is that?”
Well, the lazy teachers who work for the government schools…of course.
Get with the program.
😉
Oh, of course – how could I be so silly? 😉
Did New York write their own tests, or are these the Smarter Balanced or PARCC tests?
Pearson developed the NYS Assessments.
Yes, and we all KNOW how valid and reliable Pear$on tests are
(and their juked scoring, as well). Not! If you need to know more, read Todd Farley’s 2009 book, “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry,” his Dec. 27,2012 interview on this blog and his postings on Huffington.
Then you–and tell all your friends who have kids–OPT OUT (see Linda’s comments, above, on how to get information that will tell you how to do so. If you are a teacher/administrator and feel you can risk it, pull a Garfield H.S. (12 Curie H.S. teachers in Chicago also did this in 2002) In both cases, no disciplinary actions were taken. Also–grab some retired teachers and have them get the word out. Yes, WE can!!
These were Pearson tests.
This is what happens when standards writers are clueless about appropriateness of grade and age level materials (Two years off IMHO). Just think CC will drive curriculum that will also hurt children. Arne Duncan once again shows his ignorance.
“This is what happens when standards writers are clueless about appropriateness of grade and age level materials”
Agreed.
This is a big mess indeed. In good practice, curriculum, instruction and assessment are linked. What we have experienced is an out of synch hodge podge. The CCLS, if they are worth doing, should have been phased in so that the alignment could have been implemented. In the current situation, we have seventh grade students, for example, who have been educated for most of,their years in school according to one set of standards baing assessed against another. It makes no sense and, what’s worse, it is distracting and disheartening.
Let’s confront Arne Duncan’s racism — white supremacy if you will. Since he’ll whine that he’s not a “racist”. That’s is probably true, in the philosophical sense, but requires a simplistic understanding of how white supremacy functions… You don’t need the KKK and the sheets to be carrying out white supremacy in the USA. Welcome to the 21st Century.
Anyway.
If you want, use this as proof that Arne’s a racist.
More Chicago nonsense. Arne rehearsed all these lines before he left town here. For a time, he tried to make nice with the unions, but by the time he was heading to D.C. he was teacher bashing and union busting with the best of them. Most important, for his legacy, is the fact that he eliminated more black teachers and principals from public schools than any school supt (or “CEO”) than the white supremacists of Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia back in the 1950s and early 1960s.
That’s Arne’s legacy. Once the majority of people allowed corporate “school reform” to get away with tying “success” to test scores that hang with poverty, the scapegoats were inevitably going to be teachers who had stayed in the inner city schools. In Chicago, those teachers were mostly blacks..
I think Duncan’s use of “lie” is outrageous.
I also notice he can jump in on a moment’s notice to defend his CC vanity project and Mayor Bloomberg, but he can’t be bothered with the absolute meltdown of 3 public school systems under his watch; Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia.
What is Duncan bragging about? Is there a single public school system that is better off under his watch?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a DOE that actually supported public school after a decade of neglect under Bush and then Obama?
There is also in this smugness that kids are getting an honest evaluation, a very questionable “truth”.
That being – we know students were not prepared for college (careers subjectively depending on field) in adequate numbers, so, for the tests to be valid, you should have roughly the same amount of students succeeding in college or careers that pass the test.
Because the numbers are “closer” to what we understand the number of students needing remediation is, that must make the numbers closer to the truth.
Not so fast.
There were so many problems with this test, its administration, its field testing, its promotion to the teachers, the integration of content/process over time, and foisting it on teachers/students all at once.
All it says is that students were not adequately prepared for this one test at this period in time (and whatever this test is valid to measure). To extrapolate that to college/career readiness and/or the adequacy of the Common Core to begin to help fill the void is a MASSIVE leap.
There is not one iota of proof that this test supports developmentally appropriate learning goals for students that will help them develop as human beings. There’s not even evidence that it’s “Common Core aligned” – how many questions for each standard was there? How did they know that the questions were grade appropriate when the standards usually cover more than one grade at a time? And what questions were students asked since the Common Core lacks content? As there wasn’t a Common Core aligned curriculum this year, how were students systematically prepared?
This says that those promoting the test didn’t have the patience to try to make real change over time and so they inflict pain on the education system, blame those in the system for the pain, and promise they’re offering the solution.
No excuses, no waiting. They could be making things worse than before by persistently labeling students as failures. All they’ve done today is make failures of 2/3 of NYC through eighth grade.
They seem a little too smug about that despite lacking data that this test measured what it was supposed to, that those goals were reachable, and that teachers were prepared to teach it to students.
“(and whatever this test is valid to measure)”
And that sums up the problem of the whole educational standards and standardized testing regimes as no standardized test based on supposed standards is valid in any way. And that to attempt to “measure” something as complex as human learning, the teaching and learning process is a logical nightmare. Noels Wilson has shown exactly why in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms shit in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society
Thanks, Duane, once again for presenting Wilson to us in an understandable way. His work is extremely important with respect to the testing debacles, and he validates every single reason for universal opt out, a well-constructed logic that cannot be argued against.
Duane–I forgot to add that you are truly a teacher of teachers. If you have any energy left, get thee to a college/university education program some evenings/Saturdays/summers!
RBMTK,
Thanks for the kind words. I don’t think any would have me as I only have a MAEd.
Duane
Remember when Duncan went out to stump for Michelle Rhee when DC parents voted to throw her out?
This is just more of the same. Bloomberg and Cuomo support Duncan’s CC vanity project, so Duncan will ride in as a quid pro quo.
It’s how he ended up supporting Snyder’s privatization agenda in MI. Snyder’s divesting in MI public schools, but Snyder supports Arne Duncan’s CC, so Duncan supports Snyder.
It’s sleazy, but that’s what’s going on here.
Reformers want to apply a business model to education- with one exception. In business, when the numbers are “down”, the heads at the top are on the chopping block, not the heads of those on the assembly line.
Their actions and reactions betray their hidden agenda, while those most affected sleep through it all.
There are a variety of people trying to improve public schools who don’t always agree. Not all of those people are promoting vouchers. Not all of those people support allowing public schools to use admissions tests.
There also are a vast array of business – some run on a “coop” model. Perhaps worth considering as people criticize “reformers.”
Exactly which mayoral controlled school district runs on the “coop” model? All the city schools run by mayors I know of today, including the federal DoE, implement McGregor’s X Theory: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_74.htm
None, CT. But there are a growing # of public schools, some district, some charter, that are using the model. And it’s been endorsed, by among others, Linda Darling Hammond and Deborah Meier.
The problem with current reformers and their agenda is much larger than the “voucher issue”- In my limited experience in my Race to the Top state, I am living the resegregation of public education via charter schools, the skimming of better students and more involved parents BY these charter schools, the increased limitations on teacher autonomy and creativity in regular public schools, and unfettered funding of “successful” charter schools. Guess where they are. And guess where they are not.
As regular public schools become poorer and browner, their importance diminishes in the eyes of the voting public. We are a referendum state. Guess who votes. Guess who doesn’t.
The direction we are headed- and we are far along on that journey, is going to reap more social problems than we can fathom.
And those people need to be given the autonomy to create various, competing sets of standards, tests, model curricula and pedagogical strategies, etc. Top-down, authoritarian mandates do not make for innovation.
Robert,
Once again it seems to me you are advocating for something very much like charter schools, where there is freedom within the building to offer non-standard forms of teaching and freedom on the part of the students to choose a building (or even multiple buildings) in which to enroll. Is that a fair characterization?
The very publicizing of these scores has made them punitive. Then, of course, there’s the fallacy in labeling the individual students with this faulty test in the first place.
Yes, Mercedes, you’re quite correct about the “fallacy in labelling the individual students” (not to mention the teachers/schools/districts). Just one of the 13 errors that Wilson identifies in the study referenced above that invalidate the whole educational standards and standardized testing regime.
I was flipping through the NYC results. The results by race were exactly what “The Bell Curve” predicted. Asians scored the best (in general). Whites were 2nd. Native American/Indians were 3rd, Hispanics were 4th, and Blacks were the worst performing. The statistics mirror “The Bell Curve” almost to the percentage point. The “Bell Curve” predicted that Asians were outperform the other ethnic groups (in general), and this is what happened. This isn’t white supremacy, it is more of an Asian supremacy. What is the next step? Should students be sorted according to their abilities into certain schools? Should some ethnic groups be sent to schools to become plumbers, electricians, garbage men and women, service workers and others to college? What is the real purpose of these tests? If you are a NYC teacher with lots of Asians and whites, then you will be deemed an effective teacher…I don’t understand what they are trying to accomplish here.
“The results by race were exactly what “The Bell Curve” predicted”
What is “The Bell Curve”?
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life was an ignorant, racist book by Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray that took IQ tests seriously as measures of intelligence and that argued that intelligence was largely hereditary. The upshot of the book was that we can’t do anything to improve the intelligence of certain groups in our society. But there is an enormous amount of evidence that a) IQ scores can be strongly influenced by various kinds of interventions, b) that IQ is an extremely crude measure of intelligence, and c) that epigenetic mechanisms completely invalidate the twin studies on which measures of the heritability of IQ were based.
I agree with what you wrote, Mr. Shepherd.
Robert,
That is what I thought john was referring to but I wanted to find out for sure.
I’ve read that book (got it at a used book sale for $1.00) and was appalled that anyone still would give the kind of credence to the concept of “measuring” IQ these days but boy is that concept still a strong, albeit wrong, one.
So, john is that the correct reference?
Thanks,
Duane
Remember folks, this is just part of the business plan to privatize public education. It’s all about shock doctrine and crony capitalism, i.e., manufacture a crisis –failing schools, as demonstrated by more difficult tests and manipulated cut scores, using FUD tactics, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt– and thereby convince parents and the powers that be to close neighborhood schools. Then scoop in and open up charters that feed off the public coffers, employing under-qualified non-union teachers and lining the pockets of non-educator executives and investors.
As “reformer” Rick Hess wrote, “politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing…” See: The Common Core Kool-Aid: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2012/11/the_common_core_kool-aid.html
EXACTLY right, Cosmic. When the city market is saturated, the greedsters & villainthropists will go after the suburban schools. There are plenty of poor (low-income populated) school districts that just don’t have the cash or the clout to fight take-overs. K12 has already come a knockin’ on the doors of 18 Illinois suburban school districts (not all of them as I described, either–they had the “audacity” to come to a school district noted for its excellence, & the K12 rep. was rightly asked, “Why do you think our kids need your services? Our schools easily make AYP, with 97% of the students meeting or exceeding state standards!” And–as Chicago has demonstrated–if it’s not one reason (“failing” schools), anyway, its another–“underutilized” school buildings.
All with the phony reason “putting children first.”
Had that happened when my daughter & her friends were in school, I can assure you, these powers that be would be “getting parents’ fist(s)!”
Truly you mean “Parents FiRst(s)!
This is criminal. My kids are not these scores. I will tear up that envelope without even looking. What is most worrisome is now their wonderful school and its principal
will feel pressured to do more damage, more test prep, more teacher bashing, adding undue stress to my kids school
Of course the scores are devastating, it’s exactly what they wanted. Now, Common Core, King, Cuomo, Tisch, Gates, Pearson can ride in on the white horse and shove BS down our throats.
I believe that the regular public schools out performed the charter schools in NYC. Did I read those statistics correctly? I wonder why they included statistics that will harm their cause.
This is more of exactly what we’re seeing down here in Texas: if passing rates are high, as they were with the TAKS, make the tests unpassably difficult, as TEA and Pearson did with the STAAR.
The point is NOT to honestly assess students. The point is to fail and blame SCHOOLS, so they can be privatized, voucherized, and stripmined for corporate profits.
Are these scores supposed to be on ARIS now?
Click to access 2013ELAandMathemaitcsDistrictandBuildingAggregatesMedia.pdf
Thanks. I meant the individual scores. I’ve since learned that those will be released “the week of August 26.” I’m sure that’ll go smoothly.
Hasn’t Bloomberg been in charge of NYC schools for over a decade? Isn’t this his failure?
Exactly, Joe!!!
IF you buy the premise that these tests are valid and reliable measures, then they show either that a) kids had the intellectual abilities of slugs before the Bloomberg reforms or b) that the Bloomberg reforms were an utter failure.
But that’s a big IF.
Like a number 128 size font “if”, eh!!!
Exactly, Duane!
New York parents and students were sent some ominous and clumsy public messages this past spring about how the tests would be much “harder” and many more would fail them than in the past – but ths was a good thing, because it would help make students ready for college and career. Some of these messages were pretty gleefully detailed but their was no mention of a need to change cuts scores to align to NAEP. We first heard about the need for NAEP alignment a few days ago.
After the each day of the test, I asked my daugther if she found it substantially harder than the year before and if there were any questions twhere she didn’t understand what they wanted. Always no (she also was able to complete all the ultra long day 2.) Possibly she was very confused, but I doubt it – she scored quite well on the year before’s tests, and ths year she was heavily prepped.
My guess is that NY students did much better than was expected and the powers that be had to flail around to find a justification to produce those promised lower scores. Perhaps an email FOIL concerning the choice of the NAEP alignment will produce something Tony Bennett- like?
Duncan and his reformers own the reforms. Duncan is desperate. He’s now blaming parents and children for his failed policies with matching high-stakes test results.
Everyone failed Diane – COLLECTIVELY. Duncan is right, and you have decided that teachers should not be included in your assessment of the blame. I am not disparaging teachers in general. However, what’s clear is that we are resetting the bar. It’s been far too low for far too long. Remember Seth Godin’s Education Manifesto? The days of mass standardization, factory worker models are over.
So this is what the bottom feels like. Now we motivate everyone like hell that if they put they improve against these new standards, they can compete successfully with the students from developing countries for the next generation of jobs and keep our country strong.
I think this is the bitter medicine the entire education system needed. And now it’s time for teachers, students, parents and administrators to get this right, for the sake of our children.
Everything is “third person” here, Diane. Sounds like you feel you have all the answers, so why won’t Duncan et al give you a bully pulpit in the mainstream? It’s time for everyone to tone down the rhetoric and start collaborating. This is like the education version of the Time Warner Cable – CBS battle.
“Now we motivate everyone like hell ”
By telling everyone they suck? Ya, that usually works.
Exactly, TC. This was the big take-away from the obsession with Behaviorism and operant conditioning during the last century. Intermittent positive reinforcement is the most powerful motivator. The great Daniel Kahneman makes this very point yet again, very eloquently, in his new book, Thinking Fast and Slow.
“Everyone failed Diane”
Horse manure. What is the basis of your statement? Do you teach? If so what subject(s) and how long have you taught?
“So this is what the bottom feels like.”
Is that a baby’s bottom to which you refer?
“I think this is the bitter medicine the entire education system needed.”
You may think that but it has no basis in reality. Tis a surreal world your mind inhabits.
“It’s time for everyone to tone down the rhetoric and start collaborating.”
Please choose the following definition for your usage of collaborate (methinks it’ll be dos):
1: to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor
2: to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and especially an occupying force
3: to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected
It’s back and still clueless. Virtual software apps, is that your schtick still?
I love your “for the sake of the children” sound bite R—ed. Nice touch! But seriously, I doubt anyone here is interested in listening to your BS concern troll statements when there is an honest discussion being held by experienced professionals in the field of education.
“The days of mass standardization, factory worker models are over?”
What, exactly, is the Common Core, and what are these tests, and what is the new Gates LDC initiative for lesson planning, and what is having a single pedagogical approach touted in the CCSSI Publishers’ Criteria, and what is having a single national database of student responses if not “mass standardization”?
RED is in over his head…he has memorize talking points and it all ends there.
I dearly, dearly wish, Reinvent_ED, that the Reform movement were about de-standardization, about autonomy and entrepreneuriship and competing models. But that’s just not so. The evidence is overwhelming that that is not so.
As noted earlier, my experience around the country is that there are a variety of individuals and organizations trying to improve public schools. Some agree, some disagree, some agree in part and disagree in part.
And many of them are the hardworking, dedicated, life long teachers.
Yup.
You don’t get innovation unless you have autonomy and COMPETING MODELS. What we are seeing is precisely the opposite: one ring to rule them all.
Reinvent_ED–Have you not been READING this blog, Ed, with regard to the tests? These tests are PEAR$ON (Ka-ching!) tests.
Pear$on has NEVER, EVER produced tests that are valid and reliable, so they are NOT standardized tests. They have been flawed in the past and most assuredly are flawed now. Are any of you NYC teachers/readers out there who read questions aloud to students? Do you recall any questions that were outrageous (perhaps impossible to answer) OR that had more than one correct answer OR that had NO correct answer OR (& this you really wouldn’t know) that had a BETTER answer than the one Pear$on chose to be the correct answer? (Please comment anonymously–would love to hear it!)
In fact, ED, wonder what all the “secrecy” & “test security” is all about. I can assure you it’s not about security breaches invalidating the tests–it’s about the ridiculous & faulty questions, and the fact that some questions are used again & again (cheaper for test production, more $$$ for Pearson!)
Having been a special ed. teacher–Grades 6-8–I’d been reading aloud Math & Science questions from Pear$on tests for several years, and in multiple years, found all of these examples to be the case. (Also, couldn’t help but seeing the expository & Reading Comp. sections–even worse! And all the samples & test prep books–so much garbage for so much money! We could NEVER justify how the samples were scored {Again, you’ll simply have to read Todd Farley’s book, ED.})
The other SpEd teachers & I would just scratch our heads (at the time, our jobs were not so reliant on the scores although, at the end of my career, it did happen that way, & schools in our district were turned around–with no success, I might add).
And, ED. if you don’t believe what’s written here, Google the infamous “Pineapple Question” asked of NYC 8th Graders.
(There are also more examples to be found of poor Pear$on questions–not to mention test scoring–don’t get me started!)
But–I’ll agree with you on one thing, ED–it would be nice if there were collaboration. However, once again, you haven’t been reading–
it’s ALL about the money: making our schools fail so that people like Eva Mo$kowitz can take them over, hire inexperienced, cheap,slave-labor teachers, and teach “other people’s children” nothing but test information (no critical thinking skills, no creativity, no problem-solving, no art, music, etc.) so that they will, in turn, become non-questioning, slave-wage employees of the 1%.
Even putting aside the “schools are getting what they deserve” rhetoric – how do you expect teachers to “collaborate” when so much pressure is on an individual teacher that people will become laser focused on “their” students rather than “our” students.
It no longer takes a village according to the set-up of the “reformers” – it takes one – one teacher.
Another question. Why did the New York Times get the “selective” release of test items before anyone else?
They were released to anyone with an internet connection at about 9:30 today: http://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-common-core-sample-questions
And charters did not fare better?
Tell me what outcomes you want, and I’ll design you a test to get those outcomes. This is the dirty little secret of testing, but it’s not difficult to grasp.
Have you seen the CCC for the study of War of 1812 for 2nd graders? How do we stop this train wreck?
Please expound and explain! Thanks!!
We keep talking about making everyone accountable. What about the students. Did anyone ask them what are their goals and dreams. Students today are distracted by media telling them what is important, what to wear, where to go, how to think. They see no jobs with college grads, poor economy, and lack of interest. Inner city youth see very little in the future at all. Right now they may have an i-phone, expensive sneakers, and very little dreams. Yes there are those that beat the system, but the rest just get by. Most live for today, and this is probably the same for most students inner city or not. It doesn’t take much to come to this conclusion, just look around at schools.
Look around at the schools? Are you kidding. Look around at the neighborhoods you just described. Look around at the homes you just described. Look at the lack of parental control you just described. And better yet, go to Walmart in any community and look around and you will see what schools in that community are having to deal with. Look around all right. Schools are just a mirror. Fix that.
Here is a more balanced assessment and one that would receive a polite response, not the insulting, unprofessional responses commonly posted on this blog:
http://educationnext.org/test-scores-in-nys-it%e2%80%99s-on-all-of-us/
And yes, even what you would all call “conservative” policy forums can discuss public education in a civil manner. When folks like LInda can pen a thoughtful, professional response, than they will warrant my acknowledgment.
Practice what you preach RED. Look in the mirror.
If we are so insulting and unprofessional and whatever else…
why do you stay?
Please start your own blog.
I am sure you will have many followers.
RED loses out when the charade ends and the RTT stimulus $$$ dries up, hence the teacher bashing and hatred towards this blog. He does have one with very few readers.
Hi Linda,
I know.
He is an edu$ type from down my way.
As Duane frequently points out..hard to get someone to understand something when his paycheck depends on him NOT understanding it.
“Meyers accumulated more than 20 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry”
About sums it up.
(PS: I have family in “the biz” as it is called. They work hard for the money, too. But I am very wary of anyone from that end of the biz trying to sell services to education)
R_ED,
Odd what you consider thoughtful & professional. Most of the edu-reform mandates are thoughtless, anti-intellectual, and downright antediluvian. Duncan’s rhetoric and outright lies are particularly offensive and harmful to children & families facing the butt of his foolishness.
I suggest you treat Linda the respect an expert deserves. Everything Linda pens is thoughtful & professional. She’s forgotten more about education than Duncan & his acolytes will ever know and she exhibits a moral center when confronted with the immoral, rotten core of edu-reformer’s rhetoric.
Al Meyers …reinvent Ed.
http://www.reinventedsolutions.com/about-me/
Meyers also ran his own boutique consulting practice, Saisei Consulting, a provider of strategy and corporate development advisory services to early-stage, growth-stage and mature digital media companies around the world. Al has advised several startups in the areas of digital media, 3D technology, online games and games for K-12 education.
Al is also a sought-after speaker on such topics as disruptive innovation in education, and the role of online games outside of the “purely entertainment” arena.
In 2008, Meyers was Co-founder & CEO of Past4Ward, LLC, an Atlanta-based startup focused on developing an immersive learning platform for classroom education based primarily on online game-play. The Company’s mission was to improve education in schools, with a new technology that allowed students to play games and learn at the same time. Learning through video game-like environments is an ideal learning tool for today’s digitally-oriented children, who learn and think differently than previous generations. The company’s emphasis was on student-centered learning tools using game mechanics and other web 2.0 features. The Company’s approach, backed by academically rigorous research and data, showed unequivocally how using games in classroom instruction could lead to successful 21st century learning outcomes.
“The time has come for America to again lead the way in education during the 21st century, ensuring that our children, and children all over the world, have the requisite skills needed to become successful contributors to a digitally-driven work environment.”- Al Meyers
In February 2009, Meyers unveiled his vision for 21st century learning during the highly regarded and virally popular conference “TED@PalmSprings”. The video is shown below. Al was chosen to be one of twelve distinguished speakers invited to present at the TEDDIY session.
Thank you for this response, I wish Dick Iannuzzi’s response was as thoughtful. He never blogs and his response was crafted in a blog post today. Time to step up NYSUT. Do you see the BATs? C’mon, really?
Linda, my sincere thanks for promoting my background which I am immensely proud of. The problem is, you’ve left out a lot of stuff – good stuff I might add. But believe what you want to believe.
Tell me about LInda’s background that she deserves respect? Does she talk to her students the way she talks to educated adults like myself? I am not a career edu-reformer, but I can spot a failed system from a mile away.
I would happy to dole out respect, but when she makes personal attacks and continues to act like a bible thumping NEA member at a rally, I am sorry, but that won’t suffice for me. Seems that I’m the only person with the courage to challenge folks who complain all the time about every attempt to make the system better for our children.
Reality check, people – our children’s peers in developing countries are hungry, and getting a better quality education in many cases than our public school students are, in large part. Everyone needs to work together on this, and just like it will take students time to adjust to a higher bar, so will teachers, and they should not be expected to turn miracles overnight.
I posted what as on your site and a link so readers can read more. That’s all. You were also rapid the last time this happened….not sure why. I didn’t really read your entire rant, what you accused others of doing. This appears cyclical.
TYPO….I meant RABID….not rapid.
I was watching Colbert dance to “Get Lucky”….what a hoot. Take a break and watch. Dance, too:
http://www.cinemablend.com/pop/Watch-Stephen-Colbert-Dance-Get-Lucky-With-Jeff-Bridges-Matt-Damon-Many-More-58121.html
R_ED,
Are you the Al Meyers to which Linda refers?
I just prefer to be open about who I am and that is why I use my real name on this and other blogs.
Have you taught or do you teach in a K-12 public school? If so, what levels, courses, how many years etc. . . ?
Thanks,
Duane
Read here…click around..you will see for yourself:
http://www.reinventedsolutions.com/about-me/
Thank you for urging to use their real names and describe their experience.
Joe,
I appreciate the fact that you do and are quite honest about what you have done and do-even if I don’t always agree with your thoughts.
Take care,
Duane
Along these lines, I truly wish I felt I had the freedom to use my name. However, I am a teacher in a district and state that’s too small for comfort. I actually do like my job, and need my job. Using an alias is the only way I can speak the truth about the shenanigans going on around me.
Thank you for the link Reinvent_Ed. Mr. Steiner has worked within the public sphere long enough to merit respect as a sincere reformer, but like many sincere reformers he suffers from an inablity to view education’s ills from outside of the bureaucratic cage that confines him. To invoke a folksy metaphore, these people keep trying to dig a hole in a mud pit. We can move the stakes around, raise standards, and make life harder for little children so they will be ready to compete with South Koreans when they graduate college, but as long as Americans continue to get poorer, parents continue to spend less quality time with their children, and children’s brains continue to change as a result of exposure to LCD screens, our nation will go on existing in a perpetual state of educarional crisis. Rather than constantly move widgets or stakes around, why don’t we create a vision of the kind of schools where we want to sent our children, ones with rich curriculums and lots of opportunities for creative growth. Where we’re going is in the opposite direction unfortunately and we may not like the kind of people they become – even if they are college ready.
“Tell me about LInda’s background that she deserves respect?”
I see, R_ED, you are a software salesman. So, if schools need computer games you’ll be at schools with your briefcases full of software (or trucks if you get a system wide contract.)
Now, if schools need advice about embedding technology into curriculum, instruction, learning, assessment, & school organization, Linda would be the expert.
Thanks JC and that would be the difference between real\authentic teaching and learning and virtual pretend playing.
They don’t even know what they don’t know.
We shall soldier on….off to set up my classroom. 🙂
No one failed. The social and economic conditions failed. The drop in scores is correlated to the drop in middle class conditions, which is lower than any industrial countries. We need “no household economy left behind” from Obama.
The point is the kids are SUPPOSED to fail. If they had passed, the standards would have been even more impossible.
This is calculated in order to privatize the entire system.
People, you’d better wake up and and take a hard look at these parasites who are killing this country. Then do something about it.
Of course you are right, susan. Begin by supporting Sue Peters (later post today).
In fact, run for offices in your town, state–start with school board (so you all can keep your elected ones!) And–this can NEVER be said enough–parents: OPT OUT!
Make this the year to end this insanity.
From Class Size Matters:
Dear parents: As you may have probably heard, the new state test scores were released to the press and they are disastrous.
Only 31% of students in New York State passed the new Common Core exams in reading and math. More than one third — or 36% — of 3rd graders throughout the state got a level I in English; which means they essentially flunked. In NYC, only 26 percent of students passed the exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math – meaning they had a level 3 or 4. Only 5% of students in Rochester passed.
Though children’s individual scores won’t be available to parents until late August, I urge you not to panic when you see them. My advice is not to believe a word of any of this.
The new Common Core exams and test scores are politically motivated, and are based neither on reason or evidence. They were pre-ordained to fit the ideological goals of Commissioner King and the other educrats who are intent on imposing damaging policies on our schools.
Here are five reasons not to trust the new scores:
1- The NY State Education Department has not been able to produce a decent, reliable exam with a credible scoring system in at least ten years. That’s why there have been wild gyrations from year to year in the percent of students making the grade. For example, 77% of NYS students were at level 3 or 4 in English in 2009; this dropped to 53% in 2010 and 31% now. The last two years of exams created by Pearson have been especially disastrous; from the multiple errors in questions and scoring on the 2012 exams (including the infamous Pineapple passage) to the epic fail of this year’s tests – which were too long, riddled with ambiguous questions and replete with commercial logos for products like Mug Root Beer. Top students were unable to finish these shoddy exams, and many left in tears and had anxiety attacks. To make things worse, the exams featured reading passages drawn straight from Pearson textbooks which were assigned to some students in the state and not to others.
2- For nearly a decade, from at least 2003-2010, there was rampant test score inflation in NY state, with many of the same people who are now supporting the current low scoring system claiming with equal conviction that the earlier, rising test scores showed that NYS and NYC schools were improving rapidly. The state test score bubble allowed NYC Mayor Bloomberg to coast to a third term, renew mayoral control and maintain that his high-stakes testing regime was working, when the reality was that, according to everyone who was paying attention, the exams had gotten overly predictable and the scoring too easy over time. At the same time as the state exams showed huge increases, scores on the more reliable national exams called the NAEPs showed little progress. In fact, NYC made smaller gains on the NAEPs than nearly any other large school district in the country during these years.
3. The truth is that the new cut scores that determine the different proficiency levels on the state exams – which decide how many kids “pass” or are at Level 3 and 4 — are arbitrary and set by Commissioner King. He can set them to create the illusion that our schools are rapidly improving, as the previous Commissioner did, or he can set them to make it look that our public schools are failing, as King now is doing, to bolster support for his other policies.
4. The primary evidence that Commissioner King now bases his overly-harsh cut scores upon is that the results are mirror the percent of students who test “proficient” or above on the NAEPs. Yet while the NAEPs are reliable to discern trends in test scores, because they remain relatively stable over time, the cut scores that determine the various NAEP achievement levels are VERY controversial. See Diane Ravitch on how the NAEP’s benchmarks are “unreasonably high”; or this article that reveals that even the National Academy of Sciences has questioned the setting of the NAEP proficiency levels, and how many experts believe that level 2 on the NAEPs – or basic — should be used instead to estimate which students are on track for college:
Fully 50% of 17-year-olds judged to be only basic by NAEP ultimately obtained four-year degrees. Just one third of American fourth graders were said to be proficient in reading by NAEP in the mid-1990s at the very time that international assessments of fourth-grade reading judged American students to rank Number Two in the world.
In fact, by using NAEP levels as support for his cut scores, King is either confused or disingenuous about what these levels really represent.
5. So why are King, Arne Duncan, Joel Klein and the billionaires like Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch who are pulling the strings so determined to prove that more that 69% of the students throughout New York State are failing? This is the Shock Doctrine at work. Naomi Klein has observed that when you scare people enough, it is easier to persuade them to allow you to make whatever radical changes you want, since the status quo will be perceived as so disastrous.
In the case of Commissioner King, Bill Gates and Arne Duncan, they would like to convince parents that their corporate agenda, including a steady diet of developmentally unsound standards, the Common Core’s rigid quota for “informational text” and overemphasis on testing, and their favorite policies of closing schools and firing teachers based on test scores, expanding charter schools and online learning, data-mining and outsourcing educational services to for-profit vendors will somehow improve the quality of education in our state, even though there is little or no evidence for any of these policies.
NYSED has even tried to persuade parents to accept their unethical plan to share the personal data of the state’s children with inBloom and for-profit vendors by saying this will help ensure these students are “college and career ready.” (By the way, as Politico reported last week, North Carolina became the fifth state to pull out of inBloom; now only New York, Illinois, and Colorado are still involved, and Massachusetts is sitting on the fence.)
Joel Klein, who wrote an oped for Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post this morning, appropriately entitled the The Good News in Lower Test Scores, now heads Amplify, Rupert Murdoch’s online learning division, which is the largest contractor for inBloom. For Klein and Murdoch, the drastic fall in state test scores is indeed good news, because it will help them market their computer tablets, data systems, and software products to make more profit. In the case of Pearson, the world’s largest educational corporation, more schools will now be convinced to buy their textbooks, workbooks, and test prep materials, as 900 NYC schools have now done – in hope that their students may do better on the Pearson-made exams, that may even include the same reading passages as happened this year.
Rick Hess, the conservative commentator at Education Week, revealed the motives behind the promoters of these exams in a column called the “Common Core Kool-aid”:
First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and then will use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing. Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessment results rather than their own lying eyes… Finally, newly convinced that their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace “reform.” However, most of today’s proffered remedies–including test-based teacher evaluation, efforts to move “effective” teachers to low-income schools, charter schooling, and school turnarounds–don’t have a lot of fans in the suburbs or speak to the things that suburban parents are most concerned about….Common Core advocates now evince an eerie confidence that they can scare these voters into embracing the “reform” agenda.
My advice is not to let this ruin your summer or your view of your child’s school. When you receive your children’s scores, do not allow the results to wreck their self-confidence. These new Common Core exams and harsh proficiency levels are meant to scare parents.
To achieve their ideological ends, politicians, billionaires, and educrats are not only willing to define your children in terms of their test scores, but also to redefine them as failures – to help them implement their mechanistic, reductionist, and ultimately inhumane vision of education. It is all a high-stakes game, carried out by people with little thought about how these wild test score gyrations affect the self-esteem of the children whose fate they claim to care about.
For an eloquent critique of the callous thinking at work, please also read Carol Burris, NYS principal of the year, in today’s Washington Post, and Diane Ravitch, on the political motives of the people who are setting these standards.
Below are links to articles about the scores, and the NYSED website.
Talk to you soon,
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
http://classsizematters.us6.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=fb1f227100&id=b923adf828&e=693d0b0e70
http://classsizematters.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fb1f227100&id=2ac2b4b573&e=693d0b0e70
For all active links as they appeared in Leonie’s email, see here:
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=fb1f227100&id=579554f3a5&e=693d0b0e70
Do the NEAP exams track students by name? I think they must if we know that 50% of the 17 year olds who scored in the basic range eventually received four year (college I assume) degrees.
NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) does not test every student in a state – it ” tests small samples of students at grades 4, 8 and 12.”
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/parents/faq.aspx#ques2
Re NAEP not representing every student, how is the set of the reported students determined? Is it random or selected? If the latter, this is a significant skew.
EK – here is a description of how NAEP says it creates the sample group of students in each state who take its test(s):
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/glossary.aspx#sample
I think Duncan and Co should have included FLYING as a new Standard. After all, compared to other species, we are desperately behind. Birds do it, bees do it , why can’t WE do it? Some might say that we don’t have the right anatomy for the job, but that’s just an excuse. We have the technology, just not the will. Teachers just need to put their minds to it. Once students are prepared, the tests will prove their true worth.
All we have to do is raise the Standards.
“Birds do it, bees do it. . . ” Birds and Bees do it? I like the sound of that!
Yes, Beth, and if the students are unable to fly–remember–it is the TEACHERS’ fault!
One more question:
Will anyone get to see what individual students answered to these questions? Is there a plan for how these exams will be used to inform instruction at all?
A “baseline” is worthless except for rewarding and punishing – if this assessment is truly worth all of this, how does it factor into making the child that scores a 2 into a 3 or a 4 (sorry for the crass reduction of an individual but that’s what this system does).
If it truly covers so much of the common core, how will it be used to tell a student’s teacher “this is what they’re missing and what they need to learn”.
That’s what parents, students and teachers have the right to know.
It will NEVER happen…it is too risky for them. It will blow their cover.
That’s my biggest argument against these tests. There’s no way to “inform instruction” if teachers cannot see the tests AND each student’s answer to each specific question. Since these tests aren’t published, how can teachers change or inform anything? In Utah, we’re not even supposed to LOOK at the tests as the kids take them.
“That’s my biggest argument against these tests.”
Mine is that they are completely logically invalid. See Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Cuing Alonzo Quijano!
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms shit in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
The purpose of these tests has never been purported to inform instruction.
Interesting point about not seeing the test.
If we know that these tests have high stakes and us, then we are compelled to teach to the test. But even that is impossible if the tests are secret. With our old state tests at least we had previous tests to work from to prepare the students for what would be on the test.
Never the case in Delaware.
In my area, the tests HAVE been purported to “inform instruction.” That’s why I had that in quotation marks.
The “reformers” have created a crisis and they will not let it go to waste.
One can only hope that an informed public will see the truth behind these test scores.
From the article: “Arne Duncan defended the collapse of test scores as a good thing, Now we are telling the truth about the failure of public education, he says.”
Arne must be ecstatic. He met HIS goal. The myth of public ed’s failure wasn’t strong enough before, so he and the reformers managed to deliberately rig the game
in NY to make education look worse than before (as educators predicted). Key to this was the mayoral control of Bloomberg.
“He met HIS goal.”
In that case, instead of ecstatic he’s probably orgasmic.
Start a fire. Put it out. Take a bow. Sounds right.
System failure not student failure.
Somebody send Duncan his reports in a Dyslexic form at the severest level. Have him read it in a room without a trained reading specialist ready to identify or understand his struggle. Fill the room with too many people and lots of sound and sight distraction and make him ADHD without the ability to focus well. Before he gets to the office have him walk through poverty stricken neighborhoods with all the smells and sights to depress his spirit. Let him be mindful that each step of the way a gang member or druggy can assault him. No pencils, paper, books, equipment, working computer or any computer at home or at his workspace in place for him to accomplish his assigned work.
Repeat this day after day in his depressed home and neighborhood and workspace. Then test him and measure him and test him again and again. Oh! Make sure he has been nutritionally deprived and his brain cells have been ravaged from conception and his attitude and mind think in a short and violent life with little to no hope and that he is not considered value added enough for the privileges of society by the standards of those that are looking for that value added presumed bright creative worker. All others not apply.
Poverty is what needs to be worked on and a reinvestment into neighborhoods and their schools, not abandoned.
However, Duncan and gang have joined the scrap the poor, disenfranchised, immigrants, and disabled crowd and invest in those that will presumedly bring a return on their dollar, our dollar.
As for the tests…they are failed because they measure out the potential of possibilities of those that are trapped without prospect and abandoned by the privileged elitist.
The cities are being abandoned through the tests for the excuse of destroying neighborhoods without caring or concern for where the children and their families will go. The cities will be reclaimed with the same money that was denied them by the same people for the ownership of a cosmopolitan and sophisticated living and working space recaptured for their own purposes and in their own style.
The cycle of greed is tied up in those tests and the insidious lies which are their results.
They do not reflect Truth.
I am an advocate for the challenged learners and I see how hard they work. The potential for some of them may not be at the need or standard of the value added crowd and fan club, but they deserve the same chance and the supports necessary to bring them to their potential and survival for themselves and the rest of us. That, Mr. Duncan, is what we as a nation have worked towards and believe in.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/dont-let-rhee-cheat-the.fb27?source=c.fb&r_by=6414286
A closer look at some of New York’s released Common Core 2013 math test questions for Grades 3-8:
http://ccssimath.blogspot.com/2013/08/nyseds-released-2013-exam-questions.html
This is just plain stupid. How much longer will this stupidity continue? Test til doomsday, then what? The quality of education is going down the tubes.
Excellent point to call out Arne Duncan. He and the Common Core imposers are supporting a program full of lies.
They lie when they say that the Standards are internationally benchmarked.
They lie when they say that they are state generated. They had their origins from Gates money and manipulation of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, going back to 2007 and 2008.
The story of deception and manipulation is told in The Common Core and Gates’ Education Commercialization Complex
with analytical and factual inspiration from your site and others’ such as Susan Ohanian. As you said, standards are quite valid; but states would do well by contrasting these standards (and the resulting educational practice) against their previous standards and pedagogical norms.
Let us practice critical thinking and question these Standards. As things are developing, as documented in your post, children are taking a hit as are teachers that are judged by their test scores.
This was my exact response in 2011 (http://tyrrellseducation.blogspot.com/2011/03/regents-responsibililty.html) when the same rhetoric was being used to discuss the results of the 2010 elementary exams in NYS. I wouldn’t have been teaching the 16 + years I have if I failed 70% of my students!
Dear New York students, teachers and parents,
as well as any other students, teachers and parents in other states who are also going through this,
I am sorry about the misuse of testing that you are having to endure as the new school year begins.
If we all band together, forcefully and relentlessly insisting that the crazy practices that seem to have taken over the education world today MUST STOP our voices will eventually be heard and we WILL prevail! We MUST prevail! But it is going to take EVERYONE of us to win this fight. Every little thing that each one of us does, whether it’s opting out of the test, supporting an education friendly candidate, running for office our self or educating our self about the reformers and sharing our knowledge with others adds up. Stay strong and best wishes for the new school year!
Alabama teacher
Alabama, once again I must shout the word EXACTLY. You are EXACTLY right–EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE. Just remember the Garfield teachers. 12 teachers at Curie H.S. in Chicago did the same in 2002 (& under Arne’s tenure). Yes, WE can, and we WILL
take back our schools!