Eleven national civil rights groups issued a joint statement to President Obama and Secretary Duncan calling for an end to the regime of test-based accountability.
Their statement was reminiscent of a similar one objecting to Race to the Top in 2010. At that time, Secretary Duncan did his best to bury the groups’ objections.
The statement was signed by:
Advancement Project, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Opportunity to Learn (OTL) Campaign, National Urban League (NUL), NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), National Council on Educating Black Children (NCEBC), National Indian Education Association (NIEA) and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC).
Their statement includes recommendations to improve the needed supports and services for children.
Number one is “1. Appropriate and equitable resources that ensure opportunities to learn, respond to students’ needs, prioritize racial diversity and integration of schools, strengthen school system capacity, and meaningfully support improvement.”
Among the needed resources are:
“Qualified, certified, competent, racially and culturally diverse and committed teachers, principals, counselors, nurses, librarians, and other school support staff, with appropriate professional development opportunities, including cultural competency training, and support and incentives to work with students of greatest need; and
Social, emotional, nutritional, and health services”
They write:
“The current educational accountability system has become overly focused on narrow measures of success and, in some cases, has discouraged schools from providing a rich curriculum for all students focused on the 21st century skills they need to acquire. This particularly impacts under-resourced schools that disproportionately serve low-income students and students of color. In our highly inequitable system of education, accountability is not currently designed to ensure students will experience diverse and integrated classrooms with the necessary resources for learning and support for excellent teaching in all schools. It is time to end the advancement of policies and ideas that largely omit the critical supports and services necessary for children and families to access equal educational opportunity in diverse settings and to promote positive educational outcomes.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh please edit the title.
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I didn’t even catch that….very funny….is there positive teating?
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Shouldn’t ask me that Linda-ha ha!
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Well, so much for the civil rights issue of our time when the civil rights organizations no longer agree with test and punish. What now Arne, Bill, Obama and the rest of the edutourists?
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The push-back should have started 15 years ago when the Bush Administration perverted and deliberately high-jacked and perverted the catch phrase of the Children’s Defense Fund: “Leave No Child Behind”, in order to divert attention from the issue of poverty and set up public schools for failure.
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Linda… I am afraid that “corporate ed” reformers are delighted. Why? Region after region takes a first response to this hideous testing climate by delaying any consequences for students first. So students do not fail to graduate if they don’t pass the test. This is likely to make an already low pass rate even lower. Students already sick of being over-tested without point now have no consequences on these useless tests. Let us look at who this does actually hurt? It hurts teachers WHO ARE STILL BEHOLDEN TO EVALUATIONS TIED TO STUDENT TEST SCORES. Perfect storm for “ed reformers” needing to weed out public school teachers to make way for privatization of public schools.
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The HST graduation requirements that are cropping up in many states are hitting students now. In New York State, the class of 2015 has to pass 5 Regents, math, science, ELA, Global History & Geography and US History in order to graduate. I know of students who have taken these regents, 3, 4 or 5 times to pass and others that have dropped out in the beginning of their senior year because they just cannot do it.
Most of the talk is on the 3 to 8 grade testing, but HST for graduation is hitting HS students, especially those with special needs, very hard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exit_examinations_in_the_United_States
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Obama has no reason to change his ‘tune’. Engendering such a massive policy revision would demand Obama and/or Duncan taking responsibility for their policy debacle. Given the mid term elections and the host of domestic and foreign policy issues that Obama must juggle, changing educational policy, regardless of the merits of such change, is not a high priority. Moreover, Obama believes in the failed policy and has no commitment to public education. Finally, Obama has but two years remaining in his presidency. Drawing attention to a failed education is not what he wants to be part of his presidential history. for all the aforementioned reasons, Duncan will continue to sit atop Department of Education. Public Schools, teachers, students and parent will continue to endure Duncan’s “Reign of Error” ( with credit and apology to Diane)
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I think you are probably right and it makes me so sad.
Some leader will build their career path on calling BS on all this. The question is who and when? I’m fine with it being the momentum for a new leader. I just wish it would come sooner rather than later.
The article I read a while back about no politician wanting to be the one to say “there is no such thing as no
Child left behind in the way it has come to be understood and implemented.” What’s so wrong with speaking the truth? It’s like we all really do believe in Santa Clause an nobody will be real. Or an adult.
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Well said.
Exactly right: they may even try to up the stakes before they exit the stage.
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John a,
AGREE! Think: $$$$$ and payback time. Obama chose Duncan. Egads…he even had Rahm as Chief of Staff. How much benefits will this bunch receive from us lowly tax payers?
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Only the Rheeform-y rhetoric says its privatizing, charterizing, segregating, union busting, teacher bashing agenda is the civil rights issue of our time. Even they don’t believe what they say; they are soulless empty shells with large bank accounts provided by their non-profit-for-profit salaries and engagement fees, while they “selflessly” work on behalf of the kids. Bite me.
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What difference
can a David make?
Silver coins clink on the concrete
Falling from Goliath’s pockets,
Like a stream after a storm.
Yet dreams shake out of my ears.
Freedom rings
With hope
Of tomorrow
When the
Billionaire boys club
Goes back to playing video games
And
Leaves my classroom
To me
And my kids.
We create.
We let words
D
R
O
P
Off our pencil points
And
It doesn’t matter if they are number two
Because we are bubble-less.
Our words are spaceships
Roaring to the places beyond imagination,
Where no one measures us
Or compares us
To the other dreamers
Who are caged
Like us.
David slayed Goliath.
And the keys are coming to the zoo
Where they experiment on the gentle creatures
They claim to care about.
You may say I am a dreamer
But I am not the only one.
Dreams shake out of my ears.
Freedom rings
With
hope.
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Here’s hoping too.
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TAGO, Danielle
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They all should have done it at the very moment Obama announced his “Race to the Top Competition.” They all should have invited Obama to a conversation out behind the woodshed.
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AMEN, Ed!
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At issue: Does the demand of “qualified” and “competent” teachers remove the invalid use of “testing” to measure teacher quality?
Someone should ask them.
At issue: Does the statement defining a continued lack of equitable resources imply a need for “more choice” provided by vouchers and charters?
Someone should ask them that, too.
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Because the money flows to many of these organizations, have they really changed their minds, learned something educational or are they losing supporters so they have to say something. Do they really mean to support this statement with action????
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I have the exact same question. My answer is NOT very encouraging.
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Where does the organization, Color of Change, stand on CC$$?
The organization recently initiated a petition that asked Microsoft to release employee pay data. The rationale for the request stated that Microsoft hires 4 times fewer minorities than expected, based on population percentages.
Gates, as the self-appointed savior for student career advancement, could have used his company to set up a pilot program, proving the effectiveness of his ideas, which would be shown in the employment statistics. If Color of Change numbers are correct, why did Gates miss such a convenient opportunity to showcase his vision?
If pay data shows that, not only, are women underrepresented at Microsoft but, that, they are also underpaid, it will be a warning. Common Core’s real intent may contrast sharply with its stated purpose.
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“If pay data shows that, not only, are women underrepresented at Microsoft but, that, they are also underpaid, it will be a warning.”
Yes, a warning to the women who work there that their karma is not good and they prolly need to visit a karmapractor to get it adjusted (according to Microsoft’s new CEO)
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“The Pay-raise Karmapractor”
If pay has got you down
And you really need a raise
There is a place in town
That Nadella’s come to praise
For women at Microsoft
Where gender is a factor
It’s really worth the cost
“The Pay-raise Karmapractor”
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“karmapractor”, clever turn of phrase!
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At least not the hind one.
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So glad to see this.
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Op-Ed: Connecticut, a Jim Crow state? By: ANN POLICELLI CRONIN | September 16, 2014
Unless Connecticut changes direction in what has been packaged and sold as “education reform,” its achievement gap, the largest in the nation, will be exacerbated.
All of Connecticut’s children are harmed by the narrow and inappropriate content of the Common Core Standards and by the amount of instructional time lost to preparing for and taking standardized tests to measure acquisition of that content.
Connecticut children of color,already hurt by poverty and racism, however, suffer the most. Current “education reform” will further marginalize them as Jim Crow laws of the past marginalized African Americans in southern states.
The content of the Common Core standards was established by employees of testing companies. The content is simply what those employees determined can be measured on standardized tests.
ALSO READ
Op-Ed: Withdraw from the Common Core Current education policy, which started with No Child Left Behind, then went into overdrive with Race to the Top and now Common Core and SBAC testing, has turned our schools into test prep factories, sucking the joy out of teaching and learning.
Op-ed: Common Core raises question: Who is in charge of education?
The Common Core standards were built on the foundation of No Child Left Behind, which has been a complete failure in many ways.
For example, not one educator with expertise in teaching students how to develop as thoughtful readers and effective writers chose the 188 random skills to be taught in grade 9 and 10 English courses, or the 192 random skills for grades 11 and 12. Also, no field studies were done to determine if those particular skills lead to achievement in college or careers.
The tests to assess mastery of this arbitrary content are meaningless hurdles whose function is to produce scores by which schools, teachers, and students are ranked. The more a school focuses on teaching the narrow and inappropriate content of the Common Core, the more its students will be harmed.
Connecticut schools vary widely in their adherence to the Common Core. None of the private prep schools, which specialize in preparing students for college, teach or test the Common Core. Many school districts with affluent parents and a history of good test scores pay lip service to the Common Core and continue with their own curricula.
However, the school districts with a history of low test scores teach exclusively to the Common Core tests because so much rides on raising those scores and not being identified as failing schools. Teaching to the test means those students are not taught to be engaged readers, motivated writers, critical thinkers, and thoughtful questioners as their peers in schools of the more privileged are taught to be. Impoverished students of color are often taught to simply be takers of standardized tests.
All this test preparation, however, is not likely to help students, disadvantaged by poverty and racism, score well. The “cut score” or passing grade on the Common Core aligned tests has been arbitrarily set so that approximately 30 percent of the test takers pass and 70 percent fail.
Scores on all standardized tests, such as the SAT and Connecticut’s CMT and CAPT, correlate with the family income of the test takers. Children living in poverty are disadvantaged in so many ways that even stringent test prep will not produce scores equal to their more advantaged peers. A large proportion of the 70 percent of Connecticut students who fail the tests will come from homes affected by poverty and racism.
The Common Core tests are given in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 11. How will failing tests year after year affect children’s sense of themselves and their belief that schools are places for them to learn and grow?
How will it feel to come to school each day and look at the data wall in their classroom which posts each child’s scores on practice Common Core tests given throughout the school year and recognize their failures?
When they are 16, will they take the 11th grade test or drop out of school beforehand? If they stay in school and are not among the 30 percent who pass the test, what will the schools do with the students who fail the test and, therefore, do not qualify to graduate? Keep testing them?
What will Connecticut as a state do with large numbers of teenagers who give up and drop out of school? What are those young people without high school diplomas to do with their lives?
Connecticut’s students of privilege have the opportunity of receiving a private or public school education not restricted to the Common Core which prepares them to be future participants in society and the workforce who can innovate, collaborate, and communicate effectively. Students in schools intent upon raising test scores, however, have little opportunity of acquiring those necessary skills.
How can Connecticut turn this around and keep from becoming a Jim Crow state dividing those who are well-educated from those denied a productive education?
First, we must reject the misguided “reform” of the Common Core and its accompanying tests. As parents, we must opt our children out of those tests, and, as educators, we must reduce instructional time given to teaching the narrow and inappropriate Common Core content and preparing for Common Core tests.
Secondly and most importantly, as educators we must offer an alternate vision about teaching and learning, one grounded in well-documented knowledge about how children and adolescents grow and learn, and design ways to assess the achievement of real growth, real learning.
Connecticut has the resources — the educators, the research institutions, and the knowledge — to lead the country in creating real reform for children of all races and all incomes. Let’s begin.
Ann Policelli Cronin is a consultant in English education for school districts and university schools of education. She has taught English, been a district level administrator for English programs, taught university courses in English education, been assistant director of the Connecticut Writing Project, and won state awards for her teaching and national awards for curriculum design.
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“Tests away…”
Drone the teachers
Drone the schools
Drone the unions
Drone the pools
Drone the libraries
Drone the sports
Drone the music
Drone the arts
Drone the clubs and
Drone the play
Drone the recess
“Tests away…”
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In St. Louis today….the Post Dispatch had an editorial….this is a major, supposedly liberal newspaper. The state commissioner has quit….some of the things she has done just this year…..took over the Normandy school district, after the Missouri transfer law bankrupted it……and fire 45 percent of the teachers. She tried to change the definition of accreditation and was blocked from doing so. The PD had a major editorial about how all people should cooperate in choosing the right person to replace her. I responded to this: “The politically trumped-up challenge to the state’s Common Core standards, an exercise in futility” by posting this story, and Bob Shaeffer’s list….it took 8 posts to list all the “trumper uppers” to emphasize their oft stated mantra that opposition to common core is just from crazy right wingers. there was another thing I posted about…..
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-search-for-next-education-commissioner-should-be-open-deliberate/article_b7dd580e-95aa-5757-b08a-f121db8faa9d.html
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the actions taken by the state board are mostly window dressing….a limited circle of unnamed people will make nominations, and public input is invited to be shared at the state website with the people who have no intention of changing anything….almost like saying your first amendment rights to weigh in on what we will do are going to be honored….well….thanks…..I nominated someone in response to this exchange by the post dispatch editorial board….”“The next state education commissioner shouldn’t be someone from the (resigning commissioner) Nicastro years,” wrote Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel President Andrea Flinders.
the pd responded:
That’s hogwash. The Board of Education should choose a candidate who, like Ms. Nicastro, is willing to listen to the best ideas regardless of the source.”
I nominated a person named Diana Bourisaw, a superintendent who was way too popular with slps teachers, and was booted out, by the charter enthusiasts who successfully demanded a state takeover and appointed school board……I was going to post one of her last actions…a letter to the state board telling them to not let Texas Can install a charter in St. Louis…..they ignored her advice, and the charter folded a couple months after she was replaced, stranding hundreds of kids without a school with 8 weeks left in the year. I found an article from focus Midwest which revealed some of the amazing things Bourisaw dealt with….it took another 6 responses to post it….http://focusmidwest.com/2009/07/02/charter-schools-arent-making-the-grade-study-says/ While I was doing so….Dr. Bourisaw, as she does everyday, posted a recommendation for people to read an education article on her facebook page……..it was this article about the civil rights groups.
She is very much a person Missouri needs for commissioner of education, but I seriously doubt her name will be mentioned.
One other thing…..this major newspaper, owned by Lee Enterprises last I checked…..had 14 responses to their featured editorial regarding the demands from educators to be more open in choosing the new Commissioner….all 14 were from me. I have to wonder….was their horribly written editorial taken seriously by anyone as much as my commentary?
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” to emphasize their oft stated mantra that opposition to common core is just from crazy right wingers.” I need to change “emphasize” to “ridicule”, or maybe even
emphatically ridicule.
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