This is one of the best columns I have ever read by Marc Tucker.
He writes what everyone knows other than President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Governor Cuomo, and a few dozen other governors.
Tucker writes that test-based accountability is a failed policy.
“In my last blog, I pointed to the data that shows that, after 10 years of federal education policies based on test-based accountability, there has been no perceptible improvement in student performance among high school students (which, when you get right down to it, is what really matters) as a whole, or when the data are broken down by different groupings of disadvantaged students. There is little doubt—whether test-based accountability is being used to hold schools accountable or individual teachers—that it has failed to improve student performance.
“That should be reason enough to abandon it. But it is not. The damage that test-based accountability has done goes far deeper than a missed opportunity to improve student achievement. It is doing untold damage to the profession of teaching.
“Anyone who has been paying attention has by now seen many videos of widely admired teachers explaining to the camera why they are giving up teaching and why they would not recommend that their children, nieces or nephews choose teaching as their career. The narrative is always the same. They have loved teaching because it has enabled them to make a real difference, one child at a time. They talk about the children consumed by anger or alienation who they reached with kindness and care and whose life was turned around as a result, and the student who discovered in music something they could do well and take pride in, and another whose interest in science was kindled by field trips that departed from the official curriculum and included material not on the test but which enabled the student to see the wonder of science all around her and who went on to win the country science fair and another who sat silent in class and never turned in any homework until the teacher was able to unwind the nature of the problem in a horribly abusive family situation and get social services to rescue the student….
“These are teachers whose entire professional life has been marked by pride in their work and their ability to use their accumulating professional experience to make large differences in the lives of their students. But they cannot take it anymore. It makes no sense at all to them to measure all their accomplishments by student scores on tests of low-level English and mathematics literacy when they want them to understand where political liberty came from and what it takes to sustain it. Reducing everything they have tried to do for their students to scores on low-level tests of two subjects makes a mockery of their work. Using the scores from this very narrow slice of student accomplishment to mark their school with an A or B or C or, worst of all, a D lumps together the school just beginning to turn around under a brilliant new leader with the school on the other side of town that has been sliding downhill under listless leadership for years….They know that the value-added methods now in vogue can label an individual teacher excellent one year and a dunce the next….
“Test-based accountability and teacher evaluation systems are not neutral in their effect. It is not simply that they fail to improve student performance. Their pernicious effect is to create an environment that could not be better calculated to drive the best practitioners out of teaching and to prevent the most promising young people from entering it. If we want broad improvement in student performance and we want to close the gap between disadvantaged students and the majority of our students, then we will abandon test-based accountability and teacher evaluation as key drivers of our education reform program.”
Read the whole article, including the parts I had to leave out, since I am not allowed to copy the article in full.
.it is a bracing dose of common sense.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
An absolutely dead-on summation of where we are and the damage that has been done. He’s right– if test-driven accountability were simply failing to do what it promised to do, that would be enough. But while it’s failing to deliver on its promise, it’s also eating away at the foundations of American public education. It really is way past time to stop.
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“. . . it’s also eating away at the foundations of American public education.”
That’s what it’s meant to do! It’s serving its purpose!
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Diane, I read Marc Tucker’s post with great interest. I wonder if he’s the same man from Vanderbuit University I met many years ago when I was working in White Plains, New York. He was good friends with my superintendent, and I was introduced to him as the man who created VAM. He was spreading the word that VAM was a highly researched and effective piece of research. Am I wrong?
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Dear Nancy,
Yes, you are right. The snakes are racing for higher ground. Marc Tucker, NCEE, and Carnegie have been deeply involved and deeply funded in this entire standards agenda for years. They had done original research with the University of Pittsburgh called the New Standards Project back in the early 90’s. The accountability system that was being designed included an IEP system for every student, linked to each teacher, linked to curriculum, linked to the principal, superintendent, school , school district, state….all revolving around meeting exact and distinct standards now called common core. Testing is the key to the accountability for each level. It is Demings TQM. This is also why each state had to design their longitudinal data system. Accountability.
I’m thinking that the reason ‘ole Marc is making these remarkable statements is to make teachers, principals, and superintendents think that he is on their side. He’s not. His VAM design is to break the back of public schools and teachers, so that contract schools (charter schools) will take their place. He doesn’t want meddling school directors or good teachers who love children to get in the way of his agenda. He wants teachers to be contracted also, to be sure that they bend to the accountability agenda. They will be paid well, eventually, but will no longer be the teachers that we hold so high as educators now.
The history of this agenda is told in documents from the Department of Labor 1992, called the SCANS reports, Secretaries Commission for Achieving Necessary Skills, Learning a Living, Page 61 in this report categorizes each partner in this endeavor including ACT, the College Board, and the GED’s. In fact, it was ACT who benchmarked Common Core Standards, not David Coleman. ACT worked with the CCSSO and the National Governor’s Association to establish Common Core. The copyright was done to assure the system was standardized for the ’50 state strategy’. That was the plan to nationalize education. I have these docs if anyone is interested. Just email me.
Thank goodness for history and google. We can follow the people and organizations who want to destroy our basic democratic institution..our public schools.
Marc Tucker is one of those people.
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I think I love you ! Thank you for validating me with such a wonderfully extensive and informative response. This is why I’m working on making the documentary, Going Public,which will follow the money and the personalities who have skin in the game. Can I contact you again ? If so, how ? In gratitude, nancy@goingpublic.org.
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Coleman is a useful idiot in this process. Tucker is one of the chief architects. To even THINK about the true architect of this plan to destroy public ed as one who is enlightened, is naive if not down right foolish.
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There were two “promises” connected to test-based accountability, the publicly-stated one, and the real one.
The ostensible purpose was to disaggregate test data, purportedly to bring transparency and accountability to schools enrolling large numbers of minority children, so as to eliminate “the achievement gap,” (itself a politically loaded term that is used to control debate). This was the carrot that brought in support for NCLB from groups such as the NAACP.
But that was both a con and a Trojan Horse. Once garnered, progressive support for this fundamentally reactionary law was used as a pretext to justify high stakes testing as a weapon to attack the public schools, their teachers, neutralize (and eventually destroy, preferably with captive leadership cooperation) the unions, turn tests into curriculum and thereby monetize student data.
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But it was always bound to turn into an obsession with tests. Always. There was no other way this could ever turn out.
They can’t base every decision, every talking point, every marketing push on test scores and then claim it’s not all about test scores. Every time they open their mouths they’re contradicting their own claim.
They’ve expanded the reliance on test scores each and every year I’ve been watching ed reform. Now it doesn’t just rank students, it ranks teachers and schools and state and federal policy. It’s self-perpetuating because test results determine where resources go.
I was reading Governor Cuomo’s task force recommends and it’s more lunacy. They’re now planning on determining how much time is allotted to test prep, as a percentage? How do they plan on enforcing this? I can’t imagine. They’ll need a regulator with a stopwatch in every classroom.
They took “responsibility” out and replaced it with “accountability”. “Accountability” is external. It’s imposed from outside. As managers, that means they will be directing and then monitoring every action of schools, teachers and students. Even if they wanted to do this (and they strike me as people who DO want to do this, unfortunately, because they start with the premise that everyone is a slacker) they won’t be able to. It will be ALL they do. They won’t have time for anything else.
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“That which can be measured, can be managed (i.e. controlled).”
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Excellent article.
Is there any way to change the minds of leaders like President Obama and Secretary Duncan, or are they too invested in their current policies?
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“Invested” being the operative word.
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Oh it isn’t that they don’t know. It’s just that they have a different goal — the Destruction Of Public Education (DOPE).
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The Audacity of DOPE?
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! not ?
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Just say “No!”
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LOL. Too true.
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That is a good mantra to work into the mainstream:
“Test based accountability is a failure.”
From there, almost every aspect of Corporate reform can be refuted.
It’s an excellent foundation mantra.
Bottle that!
Say it over and over.
What do you think of charters? “Test based accountability is a failure.” Therefore. . .
What do you think of VAM? “Test based accountability is a failure.” Therefore. . .
What do you think of choice? “Test based accountability is a failure.”Therefore. . .
I’m totally serious. This is an excellent starting point for any of those questions.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/de-blasio-fake-war-charters-article-1.1718314
Good piece on some of the kids who are already in the public schools where the charters want to co-locate. I didn’t know they were disabled kids in the public school co-locations.
Another embarrasing media failure, where they only reported one side of the story. This one baffles me, because obviously there are two sides to this. The thing is CALLED co-location. How could they miss the “co” in that and only report the charter side?
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We seem to value an approach to education similar to that used by Consumer Reports to rate and rank consumer products from cars to electronic goods to even food. Set up a rubric and evaluate the products by that rubric; determine a score based on that rubric and rate/rank the products based on the score which may or may not actually reflect the actual quality of that product.
If it works so well with consumer products, how could it not work with consumer-based education / teaching?
Again, I would suggest the agricultural model better reflects the nature of teaching / education. The farmer / gardener can do everything right to produce an environment conducive to his / her plants growing, but the many variables outside his / her control can have unanticipated and undesirable effects on the outcome.
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Tucker’s discussion that these checklist-type evaluations (such as Danielson or Marzano) are demoralizing to teachers really struck home. My district just started using a variation on the Marzano evaluation this year, and I have NEVER seen the morale in my school lower. It’s terrible. I tried to explain that to our assistant principal, who thinks the evaluation is wonderful, but she was having none of it. I don’t think she taught more than a couple of years and she doesn’t seem to understand that those of us who are passionate about what we do are really devastated when we get low scores because of a tiny snapshot in a 20 minute walkthrough. Students and teachers are so much more than a checklist.
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A quick math lesson for all you secondary administrators out there.
One 40 minute period represents 0.5% of the school year for any individual subject area teacher (thats for a typical full year, 40 week course).
To observe us for one period and think that you can draw a valid conclusion about a finely tuned program in math, science, english, history, or foreign language is absurd. Marzano and Danielson be damned. How absurd you ask?
Well ist like a film critic writing a complete review after watching only 0.5% of the movie! With a typical movie running for two hours or 120 minutes, that would involve writing and publishing a review after watching only 36 second of the entire two hour movie. 36 seconds and a complete opinin is formed. Seriously?
Look I know administrators have extremely full plates and spend most of their day just putting out fires. But please dont take the observation and evaluation aspect of your job any more seriuosly than a movie reviewer who only has time to watch 36 seconds of a two hour film. Not once has any principal ever asked me to describe the end result of countless decisions and trial and error implementations that have become my finely tuned academic program.
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I remember being accused by a supervisor in a observation review session of having an answer for everything. I was speechless. Wasn’t I supposed to have an answer for what I was doing? It doesn’t mean my practice couldn’t be improved. It just meant I thought about what I was doing!
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Did anyone else here suffer mental whiplash upon hearing this from Marc Tucker? Isn’t this the same guy who wrote Surpassing Shanghai, and the infamous “Letter to Hillary”?
Wasn’t he one of the Judas goats that led us into this mess? It’s like hearing R. J. Reynolds proclaim that cigarettes are hazardous to your health.
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Scott,
You are right. You remember the ‘ Hillary ‘ letter, too. Please see my reply to Nancy above. The historical documents prove where this agenda was designed to destroy the traditional public school in America, and that’s what’s happening now if we don’t act soon.
The Carnegie plan, Privatizing the education system, will be heightened if federal “choice” is allowed to be passed in the Re-Authorization of ESEA. Stalled in the Senate, the Republican amendments already passed in the House including how Title I funds will ‘follow the child’ to any private or religious school. Of course, if you have a TQM system that links everything and everyone, the funds must ” follow the child”. This will assure that ALL schools become “government ” schools. Common Core will follow those funds straight into every private and religious school with those stipends in their backpacks. This will also totally collapse public schools as we know it as the exodus out of public schools will deplete public revenues as we see our money be a tsunami into other schools. Charter schools were the way to finally dissolve our representative local neighborhood school with no elected boards, taking taxpayer money without our voice and without our vote. This is why parents and teachers have NOT been able to stop this train. We must also stop CHOICE that the Republicans are strongly supporting.
Hopefully, the reason Marc is writing this type of paper is because we are starting to make a difference with teachers declaring that testing is hurting students, that VAM is unfair, that Charter schools are reaping benefits that are unfair to the public schools….we can can on and on to the outcrys of injustice.
Hopefully, it’s not too late.
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Yes, he’s deceptively trying to inoculate himself against the growing backlash to testing-as-curriculum.
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I think if EVERYONE who reads this blog and/or is aware of this problem writes/emails the president we might start getting these ideas across. There needs to be a concerted effort to let the politicians know we do not agree with these policies. We did it when they wanted to enact PIPA and SOPA with the internet community. We bombarded our state representatives and those in charge with emails, day after day and it worked. It was shot down. They do listen but you have to have an group that sounds louder than money!
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Are you kidding me?? The Marc Tucker who wrote the letter to Hillary Clinton who spelled out his plan to reform education into the German model? The same one who is behind Common Core & trying to sell it to unsuspecting parents? The one who thinks workforce development is good for OUR kids? The elitist who thinks the STATE should decide where my children fit into the workforce at the expense of liberal arts?
He’s NOW pretending as if he opposes high stakes testing??
Give me a BREAK!
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I agree with all who are suspicious of Tuckman. I hear there is a presidential election in 2016, and now is not to early for Tuckman to “look the innocent flower but be the serpent under it” in regard to education policy. Don’t know about you, but I won’t be fooled by democrats or republicans again. beginning in New York State.
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Tucker. Sheesh, obviously I am a bit distressed by March snow.
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Great to see all of these historically informed comments.
I am awating a direct apology from Marc Tucker.
He is not a convert. Diane is and is far more informed about the dangers of the current corporate take-over of public education than Tucker.
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Yes. But, It does make me nervous that Diane is videoed with some of the promoters like Marc Tucker. He’s been involved in this standards based education agenda with NCEE and Carnegie since the beginning.
He’s not pretending. He’s propagandizing his next step. He’s trying to give the impression of caring, when, in fact, he will be giving everyone a new song to dance to….Equitable education (Title I funds following the child), imbedded assessments in the students IEP ( so that every child meets Common Core and every teacher teaches Common Core), more Charter Schools ( he calls them contract schools, to replace the need when public schools collapse when federal choice is legislated), and he supports choice in education (Federal choice is the Re-Authorization of ESEA, Title I funds will follow the child to any private or religious school. Therefore ALL schools become government schools and ALL the government school must do Common Core.) This will nationalize education.
He and Carnegie is the agenda.
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I guess I inadvertently answered the question about why Tucker came out with this article. Once the curriculum catches up to an individual capsule for a career pathway (small letter iep) for a personalized education plan, the tests will be embedded in the curriculum. So, testing will begin to subside. But the teachers will still be evaluated on how the children score on these tests. But, because the tests are adapted to be sure the kids answer correctly or continue trying, the scores will be much better. The child will not be allowed to move on, until the answers are correct. So it won’t seem like there is a lot of testing, but the accountability will be built in.
So, the reason FERPA was unlocked and expanded by Obama without Congressional approval, was to allow the third party contractors, curriculum developers, and test makers to assess the PII on individual students for data mining and research to create individual learning modules for students to meet Common Core. ( inBloom, Pearson) it’s just a matter of time that Marc was talking about.
The Danielson and Marzano teacher VAM models just force the compliance. Poor teachers. They are caught in this crossfire. Poor kids. They won’t have a chance.
This is how nationalizing education works. Everyone elected must be thrown out. Do not put caps on charter schools. Force a standardized curriculum, standards, and testing.
Put choice in place, so parents think they have a choice, but will not have a voice in charter (public) schools without an elected board that MUST do Common Core, let all those Federal choice stipends in Title I drift into private and religious schools so they too become public schools, change the definition of Title I to any child not meeting Common Core……do you get my drift???
This is Marc Tucker’s agenda.
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I read these posts every day. I am impressed with the scope of knowledge and university-based intelligence and information which the posters exhibit.
If we are going to have a revolution, it has to be user friendly.
If we are advocates for public education, we need to keep our message(s) clear and we need to remind parents that they are taxpayers and they actually have power.
One of the most hopeful exhibitions of grass roots disgust is the “Opt Out of Tests” groups that you see emerging from public schools across the country……parents/guardians in the trenches with their children who say, “I don’t care what your data says, my child is not going to take that test.” and “You will not make him/her sit and stare into space.”
We all have a place in this movement, but we need to encourage and embrace the folks who show up in their Safeway produce department uniforms who drop off and pick up their kids.
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Elaine,
You are so right. The opt-out of testing is the most important element to the entire agenda. TQM must have all data, on everyone, to do all the configuring that needs to be done for compliance. Opting out for a parent is the strongest and loudest noise that representative government can voice. But, many must help to skew the numbers.
As a parent advocate in the 90’s when OBE (old common core) was being implemented, this was our boldest move. We also demanded to view the tests. Of course, this was when NAEP was researching affective domain items which are now called “grit”.
Of course, they are going to try that again. Page 2
Click to access tab11-saturday-board-policy-discussion.pdf
But all of our parents and teachers are out there now keeping a watchful eye on the government. I am trying to help the Newark parents as best I can against OneNewark.
Go Team!
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