Read these letters written in response to the New York Times’ terrible editorial favoring the test score debacle and the collapse of scores across the state.
But why listen to educators and parents? What do they know as compared to an editorial writer who sits in an air-conditioned office and ponders every day?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I see the climate changing. It used to be that most responses to education articles like the one in the times had to do with those lazy teachers, out of control pensions, horrible unions, and the crappy public school system in general. Now, the responses seem to be decidedly against the ALEC/GATES/BROAD/OBAMA driven policies. Is the tide turning? I’m usually a pessimist by nature, but I can now see a little light at the end of the tunnel.
Those posts still appear but are seeming more hollow everyday. Parents need to awake and understand what is going on. As yet, most have not even heard of Common Core or the tests. Deploying the tests quickly without comment or review is by design to instill them into education before parents realize what is happening.
Before people even knew what was happening
Exactly. When I speak to local groups of noneducators, which I do fairly often, and tell them that there are new national K-12 standards, most have no clue that this is so. There was no national debate on these, and the standards certainly were not well vetted by experts in the respective fields that they cover (composition and rhetoric, literature, grammar, speaking and listening, thinking skills, etc). And then, of course, one would expect that if new tests were going to be given based on new standards, that there would be new curricula, also, based on those standards that was taught BEFORE the new tests were implemented. But in New York, of course, that was not so, and it was not so in other states as well, I understand (e.g., Kentucky).
Someone said that this implementation was an example of Fire. Aim. Ready. That’s pretty accurate.
As teachers, WE barely knew what was happening with the CC. In my state, it was discussed on a Friday and passed the next Monday, in the summer. I’m pretty politically active, and I didn’t even know what had happened until afterwards. Did the same thing happen in other states?
Oddly, my state office of education keeps insisting that there was “public input.” before the passing of the CC. Nothing could be further from the truth. I expect the “public” was someone’s mother in law or something.
“I see the climate changing. It used to be that. . . ”
Well, it used to be that those “bad” scores only affected the lower socio-economic schools in which many of the students were of color, English language learners and/or from less than desirable home conditions. Now that the edudeformers have overstepped the bounds of propriety by suggesting (through these nefarious and false test scores with arbitrarily set cut scores) that those suburban and upper socio-economic status schools are also less than desirable in academic “achievement” people of means are starting to get pissed off. They don’t like having their kids and by extension, themselves, called STUPID. They had the wool pulled over their eyes in regards to the true intent of the edudeformers, that of privatizing and profitizing (for them and the hedgucrats) the monies formerly dedicated to the public schools.
I agree!
Do what I did:
Don’t advertise in and don’t subscribe to the NY Times any more . . . .
First, teachers should be some of the highest paid people in our culture. If you think education puts out some outstanding students each year, yet where is the payoff? You can say that they should be in it for the satisfaction but they do have families and they worked hard.
I see it like this. We have major league sports like baseball for example, the players earn for past production and managers earn millions for leading talent. Teachers lead talent but teachers give something more precious than the ability to make money. They inspire us to know not just facts but to be aware of the world and take care of it too.
Success is not just degrees, discoveries or op-ed pieces because behind all of that are teachers. Teachers actually make it possible for students to get to college and the ball player the ability to understand some very ordinary things which teach them to be better citizens.
We should be out there advocating for teachers because it will be they who change this world for the better. A future where hope and security can be largely achieved and those who fall, can get the help we need. Greed is immoral especially where there is so much suffering.
By the way, I am a conservative and a non-teacher. But what Mr Ader gave me in the 5th grade, was something no championship can ever do. That to inspire through action is the way the world is a better place to live. For those who say they did it, well their god put them there. They did not will that to happen. To be born where there is freedom and hope. And even at that, god chose them arbitrarily.
what Mr. Ader gave me in the 5th grade
Love that! And all of us have these memories of great teachers. That’s why, when one corrects for socioeconomic level scores on the international tests, our students perform at or near the top, but if one listened to the “reformer” crowd, one would imagine that our schools have totally failed and need some “creative destruction.” Unfortunately, newspapers print that “the schools have failed” crap uncritically or because they have been influenced by those powerful “reformers.”
Too many people want to turn their backs on tragedy and pretend it is sad and then watch TV. Teachers often spend their own money on supplies. These are our regular heroes.
In New York, the framing of test results and the purpose of new standards and tests is going to be a cautious endeavor. Powerful people cannot either lose face (even though they have), or be deterred from a larger (but private) agenda (though they hopefully will). Right now it’s all smiles, “don’t worry”, “this is all brand new-a baseline”, “it’s a starting point”… But never forget that:
1) A brand new starting point will be here once again when NY state moves to the through-year PARCC assessments, virtually invalidating the current, airplane being built in the sky, work in progress, already invalid “test-to-eliminate” system.
2) The “achievement gap” is only the most recent front-runner in the reform justification vernacular (following poor test scores on a world-wide comparison, public schools as threat to national security, greedy public workers salaries/pensions and the call for “shared sacrifice” (from anyone other than the wealthiest…), and that has morphed into a “it’s good for YOUR children.
3) This brand new, invalid, frequently ridiculous, ever-changing system is not a system for all-it targets select groups: citizens depending on public schools to help empower them against free market lies and exploitation will be trained according to the needs and fears of the market; gifted educators are at this very moment printing and unpacking forests worth of paper presented as the holy grail of gap-closing instruction (to be followed verbatim), including asinine language like “gist”, unnatural vocabulary (like “periphery” for 3rd graders) and references to activities that aren’t fully explained or supported by the grail. In other words, it will depend on those gifted educators for sensible delivery, not the script.
4) Despite the newness, the burdens, the shared awareness that measures are sure to change…our education commissioner, our governor, our regents, our BOCES, the additional commissions set up, the no-bid contract testing companies have all conspired to make teacher evaluations happen now…before a meaningful system is in place.
Heads:
Scores increase, we’re responsible, we did it in spite of teachers with greedy unions.
Tails:
Scores went down, we set a new bar, we’re telling the truth that teachers have been hiding from your children for decades. We had the courage to do what those teachers would not do and fairly evaluate where students are.
——
At what point do teachers get a way to “win” in this conversation and to be successful?
Teachers don’t get a voice at all. That’s the point. The deformers have no respect whatsoever for teachers and their expertise. They want to put teachers on scripts. It’s sickening.
Heads: Despite the ever spinning wheel of fabulous education mandates from non-educators, and ridiculous non-pedagogy that has 3rd graders responsible for material that belongs in high school, presumptions that many hours isolated and silent is a real world assessment condition that will help close the gap with private school trust-fund dandies, scores rise-proving once again that dedicated hard-working public school teachers are willing to give their all for everyone’s children despite lack of funding and respect.
Tails: Scores drop, and drop big time because of an agenda driven by those who have sucked the private economy dry and hope to do the same with the public sector- undermining the one institution charged with empowering citizens with the critical thinking and historical perspective/philosophical skills to determine their own future, and the basic skills to build upon in choosing a career.
Great post!
From: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon
“The New York City Department of Education says that only 26 percent of the city’s students passed the English portion on a recent standardized test. But on the bright side, they’re too bad at math to realize how bad that is.”
By the “they’re” I’m assuming you mean the folks at the NYC Dept of Ed, eh!!
Yeah, I laugh at child abuse too. Oh, wait, no I don’t.
http://reclaimreform.com/2013/08/09/call-it-what-it-is-child-abuse/
I was calling it child abuse a year ago. Thank you for the validation.
Here’s a nicely written piece by a superintendent in upstate NY.
My favorite paragraph:
Our community is sophisticated enough to recognize a canard when it experiences one. These tests were intentionally designed to obtain precisely the outcomes that were rendered. The rationale behind this is to demonstrate that our most successful students are not so much and our least successful students are dreadful. If you look at the distribution of scores, you see exactly the same distances as any other test. The only difference is that the distribution has been manipulated to be 30 to 40 percent lower for everybody. This serves an enormously powerful purpose. If you establish a baseline this low, the subsequent growth over the next few years will indicate that your plans for elevating the outcomes were necessary. However, it must be recognized that the test developers control the scaled scores—indeed they have developed a draconian statistical formula that is elaborate, if indecipherable, to determine scaled scores. I would bet my house on the fact that over the next few years, scores will “improve”—not necessarily student learning, but scores. They must, because the State accepted millions and millions of dollars to increase student scores and increase graduation rates. If scores do not improve from this baseline, then those ‘powers that be’ will have a lot of explaining to do to justify having accepted those millions.
http://vcsd.neric.org/superintendent/superintendent.htm
I nominate Dr. Snyder for the “honor roll.”
Seconded! I read her entire statement yesterday; she’s the superintendent of the Vorheesville district in NY. Her pep talk is on their page.