Just a couple of hours ago, I posted a story about the Rhode Island State Senate’s decision to impose a three-year moratorium on the use of a standardized test as a high school graduation test. The vote was 29-5. The test is called the. New England Comprehensive Assessment Program and bears the appropriate acronym (NECAP, pronounced “kneecap”). The test was not intended to be a graduation test; it is a cardinal rule of testing that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.
But today, the speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, Nicholas Mattiello, said he opposes any change in the policy. He has the support of State Commissioner Deborah Gist and the State Board of Education, who want to keep the test.
Here is a modest proposal:
How about if Speaker Mattiello, Commissioner Gist, and the state board take the NECAP and release their scores?
Then, the House can decide whether NECAP is a necessary and useful.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why don’t some brave Democrats start taking these tests and report their scores. There is more poetic justice in charter supporters taking them but any halfway intelligent adult having difficulty will underscore the point. If they are accused of intentionally scoring low then they can challenge the charter supporters to beat their score.
So has Gist sold out to the deformers?
My understanding is that Gist has been with them from the very beginning. If someone is a state superintendent of education, you can pretty much count on them being in favor or The Movement.
Rhode Island Commissioner Gist is part of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. They like testing.
My first thought on your initial post, Diane, was that just passing the Senate meant it was a long way from passing. In Ohio, we had Senate Bill 229 — a bill which, though still quite bad, is an improvement on our current teacher evaluation system — pass the Senate unanimously. When it went over to the House, it was mutated into an even more severe anti-teacher evaluation system than we already have. This week, the House heard testimony from 18 speakers, 16 in favor of their bill (15 of those from StudentsFirst) and 2 opposed.
Washington state is the only place I’ve seen anything long-term encouraging from a state legislature. The parents of New York are the next place I look for hope. Ranking third, I see a tiny bit of spark from Governor Jindal in Louisiana.
Yes. Senator Lehner may be a reasonable contact even though Republican. She has responded in the past to my calls and I wrote her today on SB229. The box of rocks in the Ohio House are hopeless. Stebelton is very anti-teacher and term limited in December. Brenner said recently all public schools are socialism and should be turned over to corporations. These people run the education committee.
Btw, I think Bob Shepherd is onto something in noting that delays are not necessarily favorable for us in the long run. Though an injustice to those going through these shortsighted policies, the more immediate the idiocies become apparent to the public, the sooner we might begin undo what The Movement has established.
I have similar concerns about a moratorium, but then I started thinking about the death penalty moratorium that then-Governor Ryan implemented in Illinois in 1999. I thought for sure they’d come back a year or two later, claim they fixed the whole system and executions would start right back up. But the moratorium held for 12 years until the death penalty was abolished entirely in Illinois in 2011. Sometimes it takes a moratorium for people to realize how insane the system was in the first place and to realize they don’t want to go back to it.
A great point, Dienne. I think delays might allow some states to see damage done in other states. The Democratic candidate for Governor in Ohio (challenging a well-financed, well-known Republican incumbent) just came out with his stances on education policy, and he seems to be very much in line with our views. I wish the same could be said for our state legislators, who don’t seem to be accounting for anything outside our borders (unless you count Michelle Rhee’s influence).
I love your suggestion, Diane!
The people of Rhode Island should DEMAND that this happen.
Just make sure the test security for the legislators is tight!
This is one exam administration that I would happily volunteer to proctor. I would happily brush up on my proctology just for the occasion.
From the Rheeformish Lexicon.
Proctology. Test proctoring according to the regulations of the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth (C^4 MiniTru), what is taught in test administration “trainings” (“Sit up. Roll over. Good boy”).
I think asking bright and successful people to take a test is an interesting way to try and teach them a lesson about what it’s like to take a test. I think a better idea is to have an outspoken House Speaker/Reformer cooperate with a one year moratorium on a “reform” legislative push while he/she takes over the duties and pay of a classroom teacher in a lower SES community school.
Here’s a fantasy: some legislator or media outlet in RI will see this as a teachable moment and take the time to emphasize that the NECAP was NOT designed to be used for this purpose. If the RI State Superintendent was committed to using tests for graduation she should have pushed the legislature to spend the money needed to design, field test, and implement a test to determine if a student is worthy of a HS diploma. Instead she took an existing standardized achievement test and made it into a criterion referenced test. If she HAD done this the right way, instead of the cheap, fast, expedient way, politicians and philanthropists might have gotten the message that designing tests is complicated, time consuming, and expensive….
Gist was 100% imported reformer from the beginning, no doubt about that.
The resistance has done a good job of educating the public and the media about the issues with NECAP, and in fact, the requirement is shot through with holes at this point, so it will only harm students who cannot traverse the administrative wrangling involved in getting a waiver (i.e,, those already marginalized and disadvantaged). Holding onto this requirement is purely posturing at this point, and it is doing real damage to the lives of students in RI.
” it is a cardinal rule of testing that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.”
Of course USDE and states under the influence of USDE and Gates do not honor that principal. They uses scores on tests designed for students to conjure scores and schemes for rating teachers.
I think we should call, nation-wide, for all heads of state education depts and legislators be required to take their state’s tests and have their scores reported in rank order.
For more information see website: http://www.deborahmeier.com