I received a copy of this statement by Regent Cashin, which was released to the media this morning. Unlike most members of New York’s Board of Regents, Dr. Cashin is an experienced educator, who was a teacher, principal, and supervisor over a long career:
Dr. Cashin wrote:
“Statement by Regent Cashin
Monday, October 21, 2013
“I did not want this moment to pass us by without referring to what has been going on throughout the state. The Common Core has not had a successful implementation. The teachers have been telling us for years that parts of the Common Core are not developmentally appropriate. We did not listen to them. The Common Core is not a papal encyclical nor is it infallible. The best curriculum and the best standards are always pliable, more like a living document, rather than something that is static and fixed. We need to listen to our teachers and develop a committee of practitioners who can make appropriate changes in these standards.
“The second issue of grave concern to me is setting the cut scores for the upcoming Regents exams. We do not want to repeat what we did on the 3-8 exams that demoralized our students, teachers and parents by setting the cut scores too high. I suggest we take an average of the last three years of the Regents exams and set the cut score near that average. We have not listened to parents, teachers and our children. We need to start listening to them and acting on their input. Only then will we win them back.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is kind of like ‘ObamaCare’. Total boondoggle.
I recall meeting Ms. Cashin a few years at St. Johns University, where Diane was making a presentation ( she donated her fee, as I recall) as part of the Carol Gresser lectures. Ms. Cashin was in the audience. At the time, I believe she was a superintendent, or perhaps of a higher rank than that. She sat directly in front of me and I observed her reactions to Diane’s powerful points. I have always been skeptical of management, frankly, so I was quite prepared to stand up, if called upon, to say something that I thought I could reasonably expect to annoy Ms. Cashin. Not very mature of me, but as that irritating phrase goes, “it is what it is.” Anyway, Ms. Cashin was wildly enthusiastic and very firmly supportive of Diane’s truths. So much so, that at some point I got talking to Ms. Cashin, and it was so clear that she is on the same page as Diane, and proudly so, that I found myself hoping that Cashin would rise up, in more ways than one, and help re-direct public education policy onto a sane path.
May as well say, “…government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations shall not perish from this eath.”
I remember Ms Cashin when she was a superintendent in the New York City District where Breezy Point is located in Queens. It was hard for me to respect any DOE official in NYC,
but I was impressed with her and knew her to be different.I am glad she finally stepped forward
and may be responsible for the recent mea culpas, when elected officials started to attempt to unseat the Commissioner, such as Senator Jack Martins.
Thank you Ms. Cashin!!!!
I am continually amazed at how successful Commissioner King’s Fear and Intimidation Machine has been at pulling off this Common Core Coup. In any district I had ever worked, curriculum adoption was a lengthy and comprehensive process. Adopting new curriculum is an expensive process. Districts and departments would define their criteria, develop checklists, examine several programs using their checklists as a lens and piloting with smaller groups. What has stunned me is how many districts have tossed out these rigorously examined adopted programs overnight to swallow whole these untested, previously sight-unseen modules that the state has been cranking out. Districts that limited teacher copying quotas are suddenly cranking out mass copies of teacher scripts, instructional materials and endless student worksheets for homework and testing. No pilot. No consideration of alternative choices. Not even time to examine the materials. They show up on engageny and are adopted on the spot. This is simply astounding to me. Are Commissioner King and his minions at SED afraid that if these materials were actually subjected to “rigorous” scrutiny, that they wouldn’t pass muster?
Do you work in my school district? Because what you described is EXACTLY what is happening in my upstate New York district. To a tee. Man, you must be psychic or something. My administrators get down right nasty now if teachers question them or mention any research that makes us sound, oh I don’t know, intelligent. The Fear and Intimidation machine (mostly centered on funding) is quite powerful.
So setting cut scores sounds like an arbitrary action to me. If we had true criterion referenced tests this conversation would go away. Either the kid knows the concept or he/she doesn’t. What the current tests do is sort kids and setting cuts scores amounts to setting a arbitrary bar. Each kid should their own bar. This is no way to run a business.
wisdom!
Did I see that the Regents tests were referenced? Was that not a functioning system before the Common Core came along? (I am not from NY) What is the enticement to change systems?
The Money!
DUMP COMMON CORE. PERIOD.
AMEN.
Is that a light I see, a spark of realization that we, the teachers, have more insight into the failure that is the CCSS.
And dump King, Tisch and the rest of the Regents who support CC.
Of course Regents cut scores will yield a higher pass rate. Nobody in Albany wants a repeat of the June 2003 Math A exam where 2/3rds of students failed the exam.
High school tests are sacred. Only students in grades 3-8 are subject to unreasonably high standards.
I appreciate her position, but this is a pretty safe request. I hope there’s more than this simple public statement of common sense in her long-range plan to restore some sanity to the system.
Regents exams have not previously been aligned with CCSS. However, CCSS math (grades 9 and 10) and ELA (11) will kick in this this year. These new CCSS aligned tests will impact graduation as of the class of 2018. Watch those cut scores.
Reblogged this on CNY Teacher.
NYSED just sent out emails informing school districts across the state that they are officially SUSPENDING THE PARCC EXAMS for 2014-2015 and the future of New York state’s commitment to the PARCC exams is very much in doubt. The email cited reasons for the suspension including, cost to districts and technology logistics. Ding-dong the . . .
Alleluia!
Now if the cut scores on Regents exams will be better than the once passing suddenly failing now-gotcha (17 mc and 7 written response–the magic pass score for ELA 11) that went from 68 in January 2012 to 62 in in June 2013. When bright students had only five chances to score above 90 on high school ELA because there was no 90, 91, 93, 95, 98, or 99. Let’s not even begin to discuss math. So Cashin speaks out. Phillips and Rosa speak out. And the other Regents are?? The other assembly(men) and senators are? Thank goodness PARCC is suspended a year. Of course the newbies at NYSED just figured out that TEACHERS , not Pearson or McGraw Hill, used to write Regents exams in all subjects.
Apparently the suspension of PARCC tests was initiated by the Board of Regents.
Can’t agree more with the manipulation of cut scores. Total BS.
Patience, the implosion has begun.
Link please…
The Commissioner hinted last year that PARCC would not be the direction NYS went.
I went to school in the glory days when you got what you got and my lowest Regents score was an 85 in French, the rest were 90 and above. What happened? Are the tests harder? Is the curriculum inappropriate?
Or is it unreasonable to expect EVERYONE to get a Regents Diploma? Remember, it used to be just the brightest kids took the exams. The others got a high school diploma by passing their classes.
Maybe the entire system is out of whack, even without the Common Core. Get rid of the required exams and let all the students who put in the effort graduate from high school (then the dropout rate will fall).
It’s a win win for our children (and a lose lose for Pearson).
Thank you
It’s a start. I would suggest that someone in the NY community that has opposed the reform stance might want to find some way to quietly reach out to Dr. Cashin although I wouldn’t be surprised if she does some reaching.
This madness that is CCSS and the high stakes testing is just a thinly veiled effort to privatize our educational system. It is refreshing that someone who had a say in the adoption of the CCSS is now coming out and saying what educators have known all along. Better late than never. Hopefully, this is the beginning of an avalanche of the “powers that be” starting to speak out as well. As a teacher I can no longer do to children what is being required of me. I do not like the teacher I have become. Sadly, at the end of this year I will retire earlier than planned. I will leave the classroom and a career that I loved.
It sounds as Ms Cushin should take Mr King’s place. How incredible to have a vetted educator/administrator in charge.
Grades, cut points, test scores, blah, blah, blah. . . . It’s all mental masturbation that unfortunately effects the lives of the most innocent in society-the children. There is NOTHING THERE in this talk of grades, cut points, test scores as they are all part of a process that is so illogical and farce of human interaction that if the consequences weren’t so pernicious we would laugh them off the face of the earth. Tis one bad joke after another these practices.
Until all realize the futility of attempting to “QUANTIFY a QUALITY” that these feeble minded practices entail we will continue to cause harm. Read and learn why these attempts belong in the realm of nothingness in Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
May the spirit of DQdlM invade your mind, join the Quixotic Quest to rid the world of these insanely pernicious educational malpractices!!
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.
Too long. There must be an easier way to get it across. Feel like I am reading a term paper.
I agree, Joseph. There must be a shorter version of this summary of Wilson’s research, one that gets the point across and perhaps encourages the reader to look into it further themselves. I have read this all over the web, but I know many that just scroll past as it is SO long!
Joseph and Tracy,
Reading strategy 101: Read one paragraph at a time!
I invite you to read, at your leisure the whole shebang. And I challenge you to summarize it in less than what I have. There is a lot more in it than my summary touches on. And N. Wilson has read and helped me with fine tuning some of his ideas in my summary.
If you are teachers, it saddens me to think that you wouldn’t take the time to read about a dozen paragraph summary of one of the most damning critiques of the educational malpractices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of students but then again I’ve physically given a copy of the study to quite a number of folks and most didn’t read it. Same response as yours-too long.
I fail to understand how and why one wouldn’t want to know exactly how the shifting sands of these foundation of the Potemkin house of cards that are these nefarious practices.
So let me turn on the boob tube, open a beer and relax.
DEFINITION: Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal.
Above comes from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/04/09/what-is-leadership/
A great read!
We need people such as Ms. Ravitch and Ms. Cashin
Bright classy lady who was my supervisor for several years. If DeBlasio had the guts he’d appoint her School Chancellor!
Operative word being guts. Dr. Cashing wouldn’t have had her shining career while being a patsy or a pushover. Not many are willing to get in the ring and work with a strong champion. It takes guts.
In 2008, Cashin arranged for my low-income students from Far Rockaway to take a class in the commonalities between the Irish and African-American experience in America. The students received college credit for the summer course. Here’s the kicker: Cashin somehow got funding to take the entire class to Ireland for a week! How great is that? (It was especially great, as I, along with Dr. Cashin, was one of the chaperones!)
My children had the honor of attending elementary school and having a Principal named Dr. Cashin. Children comported themselves with respect; WHICH IS TOTALLY LACKING IN TODAYS CITY SCHOOLS. Students adored their principal. The proof of her success were the children. They simply learned, which led to high test scores naturally. There was no better environment for young children to be educated than under the leadership of Dr. Kathleen Cashin. It is because of her, after my children were of middle to college age, that I obtained my Masters Degree and became a Special Education teacher. It saddens me that she continues to be passed up when a new Chancellor is sought. NYC listen up, she’s not going to be around forever! Don’t miss the opportunity to have this distinguished woman, teacher, Principal, Superintendent, Regional Director, College professor, NYS Regent Board member lead your educational system the way it should be led. The condition of today’s educational system is disgraceful. Teacher morale is as low as it can get with many retiring and ” getting out.” Student performance academically, socially and emotionally is indescribable. The retention rate of new teachers and well qualified teachers is embarrassingly low. Dr. Cashin and her credentialed past, her committed, determined, no nonsense and caring approach is what our City needs!!!
Ivette Smorto-Cirino
Parent and Educator
NYCDOE