This just arrived as a comment on the blog:
Not only have I opted out my child, but I sent back her scores with the following letter to John King:
October 1, 2013
Dr. John King
Commissioner of Education
89 Washington Ave.
Albany, NY 12234
Dear Dr. King,
Enclosed please find my daughter’s recent ELA and Math NYS scores. I am returning them to you because they are invalid. The scores on these tests are invalid for a multitude of reasons, including poor test construction, cut scores that were not developed until after the tests were administered, lack of oversight and transparency in the construction of the tests and the scoring process, and most importantly, they are not reflective of my daughter’s aptitude or knowledge.
In my opinion, you should be ashamed of yourself for submitting New York State’s students and dedicated teachers to this farce. These tests are a sham.
I refuse to accept that my daughter, who was on the honor roll for the entire year last year and received awards at her school for outstanding effort and academic achievement, is suddenly in need of AIS and considered as performing below proficiency as a result of a faulty test. I also refuse to believe that her teachers did not properly educate her last year or prepare her to progress to the next grade level.
Your education policies are abysmal. Common Core is nothing more than a way to channel much needed money away from Public Education into the pockets of Big Business. Your tests are an affront to hard-working and dedicated teachers and a blatant attempt to privatize education.
You may keep your scores. They mean nothing to my daughter or myself.
(Western NY Parent)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BRAVA! Let us know what he says in reply!!!!! (ha ha ha)
Great letter, except the “In my opinion” really interrupts the flow of the well deserved tongue lashing. Picture your mother or your grandmother wagging her finger under your nose and telling you you ought to be ashamed of yourself when you had it coming – I’m betting she never said “in my opinion.”
Agreed. Great letter otherwise. All our protest and action letters need to be less passive. The strongest conviction is required. I often have to catch myself saying, “I think…” or “OK?” It weakens and sometimes negates everything else connected to it. Words. Details. Semantics. Matter.
an ounce of action, is worth a ton of theory!
this battle can only be won in the streets!
I invite any and all parents who are sending the scores back and who will be opting out their children to use my summary of Wilson’s work as a reference as to why you choose to do what is best for your child(ren). Use it word for word, I just ask that Noel Wilson be acknowledged for his work. Here it is:
“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 logical 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 crap 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.
I’ve just about got this memorized, Duane! One or two ore postings ought to do the trick! Thanks! It is good information/knowledge to know.
And please pass it on!!
Thanks!
Thanks Duane, and the last paragraph is vital info. Sets the stage for a lifetime of development, or not.
Ellen,
Not only the internalization (whether in a negative or “positive” fashion) that all do as we grow but also I contend that the practice of “grading” of sorting and separating students is not only unethical but it is state sponsored discrimination since there are rewards and/or sanction bestowed upon the students. Should the state (public schools) be promoting a practicd that is inherently discriminatory. Are not innate intellectual capabilities out of the control of the person in the same way as gender or skin color? And is it not true that some students will never be able to reap the benefits/rewards that are based on those practices.
I think that somewhere along the way these practices should be fought in the courts as a civil rights issue.
Wow, this is fabulous! I wasn’t aware of this work, which makes completely explicit and irrefutable what most of us who have actually engaged children in learning know intuitively: there is simply no process that can meaningfully describe with a number what happens when a human mind is engaged with ideas. Thank you!
Jeff,
You’re welcome!
And please pass it on to all who are willing (and even if they’re not willing) to read and learn. I ask that you read Wilson’s work itself as every time I read it I get something more out of it. Also another thing to keep in mind:
Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan (Viet Nam) did when he noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
Beautifully said, Duane.
Professor John Seddon also uses that phrase, “you can’t do the wrong thing righter”. He is a systems analyst who has critiqued Sir Michael Barber’s “Deliverology” that the Common Core was based on. Did you know that Sir Michael Barber and David Coleman both worked for McKinsey & Company?
http://vimeo.com/11896519
So well-said!!! “Doing the wrong thing righter” is the *best case,* most generous reading of the Common Core. And it gets
to the heart of why I find it so offensive. As Diane pointed out months ago, process matters; the anti-democratic, reform-from-above model used to foist CC on us is wrong, so debates about its merits are beside the point. You can’t do the wrong thing right.
Thanks again!
Wonderful letter!!! Hope they start listening.
King won’t ever see the letter, nor will Cuomo, who has Pearson backing his run for President in ’16 or ’20. They have “Yes Men/Women” who intercept all the negative comments sent their way. They’re all political hacks with no sense of what is right. The sad thing is I voted for Cuomo and Obama who brought in “Chicago” Arne Duncan. Combined they are destroying what is arguably the most successful education system in the world, either for political gain or corporate profit.
Now just take that realization of “the sad thing is I voted for Cuomo and Obama” one more step and realize you have also voted for regionalism and a United Nations takeover of the U.S.A. because that is the ultimate agenda of the puppets of the oligarchy.
McKinsey and company is a firm that specializes in providing consultants to big business. Jeffrey Skilling was the youngest partner at McKinsey before he became the CEO of Enron. A new book, “The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business,” provides details about many of the largest corporate debacles in U.S. history. The reason I bring it up is because Sir Michael Barber, who invented “Deliverology” (which CC is) and is now the head of Pearson, as well as David Coleman, producer of the CC, both came out of McKinsey.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-global-consulting-giant-mckinsey-evil-2013-09-25?pagenumber=1
It all comes back to Bil Gates, who funds everything from the NGO’s at the UN to the CC and sustainable development. Connect the dots and realize we are not in Kansas any more. Democrats are not what we thought they were. Politicians work for corporations. The oligarchs want to control the world. Free thinkers in the USA are mucking that up. The ultimate purpose of the CC is to disseminate government propaganda and end freedom in the USA.
Thanks Dawn for these links. Excellent info, particulary pertinent is educationalchemy. Watching Coleman spin the facts on Education Nation, one could not miss the slime.
MSNBC host Perry is a sellout. She made it so easy for him it was embarrassing to watch.
Parents have the power – I applaud them using it!
An interesting aside to the parents letter to put it in the larger context of the social justice that is building to resist the privatizers agenda to destroy public education or at least being able to siphon off significant profits with almost total disregard for the negative consequences that fall on the students.
I just came across this and it seems we might be in the ripening/take off stages of counteracting the edudeformers:
Movement Action Plan-From Wikipedia
The Movement Action Plan is a strategic model for waging nonviolent social movements developed by Bill Moyer, a US social change activist. The MAP, initially developed by Moyer in the late 1970s, uses case studies of successful social movements to illustrate eight distinct stages through social movements’ progress, and is designed to help movement activists choose the most effective tactics and strategies to match their movements’ current stage.
The eight stages[edit]
Moyer describes the eight stages as:
Critical social problem exists
Prove failure of official institutions
Ripening conditions
Take off
Perception of failure
Majority public opinion
Success
Continuation
Any thoughts??
Good for this parent and any others who have taken a stand in regards to teir child’s education!