A district court judge in Baton Rouge ordered State Superintendent John White to release information about setting cut scores.
Veteran educator Mike Deshotels posted this on his blog:
“Breaking News: On Thursday, August 28, Judge Bob Downing of the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge ordered State Superintendent John White and the LDOE to produce detailed information about the setting of cut scores for the Mastery level student ratings for the 2014 Spring LEAP test that was designed to be more aligned with the Common Core standards. The LDOE had already released the minimum percentages of correct answers used for the setting of Basic level ratings just before the lawsuit demanding this information was filed. John White was found to be in violation of the public records law for refusing to release the score setting percentages on the 2014 LEAP test and for failing to produce the written communications with the testing company relating to the setting of cut scores. The LDOE was also required to pay all court costs and attorney’s fees necessary to the prosecution of my public records lawsuit filed to extract this vital information from White, the LDOE, and the testing company. This post on The Louisiana Educator Blog had already analyzed the drastic lowering of the minimum percentage of correct answers on some areas of LEAP apparently designed to imply that Louisiana students were doing just fine on the new CCSS aligned tests. Apparently manipulation of test scores to produce predetermined results has now become standard operating procedure in the implementation of Common Core. The video referred to above shows how scores were set in New York to create the perception of failure of the entire New York state system.”
It is striking and sad that judges are now deciding basic education issues or that people have to appeal to judges to get basic information that ought to be available to the public.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Apparently manipulation of test scores to produce predetermined results has now become standard operating procedure in the implementation of Common Core.”
This reveals the real goal of the Common Core agenda—to make Common Core look good while making public schools look bad.
The goal is to get rid of the democratic public schools that are transparent to the public and replace them with opaque, private-sector, for-profit schools that are operated by corporations controlled or owned by billionaire oligarchs.
By getting rid of the public schools, these oligarchs also get rid of those pesky Bill of Rights protections that watch over children, parents and public school teachers.
In today’s Los Angeles Times, a letter writer had this to say in support of Superintendent John Deasy:
“Deasy is to be congratulated and valued as an educator and administrator. He is not allowing union leaders, teams of parents, teachers and numerous special interests to continue sharpening the district’s pencils.”
To me this sums up the educational “reform” movement: the Corporate 1% (represented by John Deasy et al) will make all the decisions, thank you, because the rest of us (parents, teachers, other citizens), are not qualified.
Well, as we can see from the judicial actions in Louisiana, once the public catches on to this shameful grab for power and tax money, they will take action. These corporate leaders are now starting to fall like dominoes.
“Fever Pitch”
Teachers in a flurry
Are sharpening their pencils
But Deasy needn’t worry
Till they sharpen their utensils
An iPad will be handy
To fend the teachers off
It really is a dandy
For shielding, so don’t scoff
It’s a real indictment of ed reform leadership how there is absolutely no trust between them and the people they’re supposed to be serving.
If you keep on landing in court, you might want to take a look at your management approach. What is the problem with just following the sunshine law in that state? Why can’t they release information? It’s as if they’re annoyed by all this debate over what is a huge program that affects millions of children.
I don’t even oppose the Common Core and I thought the sales job was disgusting. It was 100% fear-based and manipulative. I recall when they rolled out the national security team. I thought the smoking gun was going to turn into a mushroom cloud again.
Are they incapable of selling this without using fear and threats? Just give him the correspondence. He shouldn’t have had to sue for it in the first place.
“I don’t even oppose the Common Core”
You should Chiara, you should!
I like “close reading”, I admit, I’m a fan 🙂
I hate the tests (expense, lack of transparency and enormous potential for rip-off, branded products) but I don’t mind what I’ve read of the standards, and I’ve now read quite a bit.
Obviously I have a huge trust issue with ed reformers, so there’s that too. I’m fairly confident they’ll manage it in the most horribly punishing, dismissive and disrespectful manner possible.
But the thing ITSELF is not bad, IMO. I agree with you-all on most things, but not that.
Meanwhile, the Common Core fight in Ohio continues. It’s the Tea party lawmakers versus the Republican lawmakers.
I have no idea why either group cares at all what is taught in Ohio public schools, because of both parties had their wish, there wouldn’t be any public schools at all.
I’m flattered by all this sudden concern, but since the second this political battle is over they’ll be returning to either bashing public schools or selling them, I don’t care which side “wins”. I’m rooting for injuries.
Google graciously agrees to pay pittance that amounts to rounding error on allegation that they robbed children:
http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/09/google-will-refund-at-least-19-million-for-kids-in-app-purchases/379633/
We have a special criminal statute in my state for ripping off the elderly. Maybe we need one for stealing from 2nd graders. You wouldn’t think you’d need one, but apparently the complete ethical collapse in the business sector continues unabated 🙂
“We are not alleging that there was malicious intent here on the part of Google or intent of any kind.” — FTC
No, of course not. No intent. (It was just a random action by software run amok. Software does that you know, goes off and does its own thing when no one is keeping an eye on it.)
Just as there was no malicious intent or intent of any kind in Google’s connection to millions of personal wireless networks worldwide (collecting IP addresses, emails, passwords, Internet search histories, medical records and other personal information ) as part of the Street View system.
You gotta just love Google CEO Larry Page’s motto “Don’t be honest…I mean evil”
here’s my motto: “Don’t use Google”
“We are not alleging that there was malicious intent here on the part of Google or intent of any kind.” — FTC”
They don’t want to upset “Google”- the corporate person. That would be unkind and very, very divisive.
Regulators now make gentle suggestions to the entities they oversee. It’s more of an advisory role than anything icky and adversarial.
I was looking for the phrase “best practices”, because that’s the catch-all get out of jail free card these days.
Keep after them MIke, keep after them!!