Writing in Huffington Post, historian and teacher John Thompson reviews the dismal failure of high-stakes testing and the inability of its advocates to face reality.
He deplores our current testing regime, which has cost billions of dollars and produced little of value to anyone:
The obvious problem is that Duncan, with the assistance of the Gates Foundation, has already coerced states into changing their laws. By now, I bet, most states would love to toss value-added evaluations into the ash can of history. What lawmakers need is a fig leaf to allow them to undo a rash mistake without getting blamed for having leaped before they looked into the merits of using test score growth to evaluate educators.
The bigger problem, I suspect, is that it would be hard to create a fig leaf huge enough to provide cover for Arne Duncan and Bill Gates, the architects of the sham which is vams for teacher evaluations. Whether or not it was Gates behind the scenes pressuring him to do so, it was Duncan who coerced states into linking the individual teachers’ test score outcomes and their evaluations. He’s not likely to admit to the foolishness of this overreach.
But we Democrats should not simply lay the blame on Duncan and Gates. To a greater or lesser degree aren’t we all guilty of trying to look tough so that Republicans can’t paint us a liberal wimps?
And that leads to another thought experiment. What if we abandoned the blame game of the last 15 years? What if reformers who say that hate the use of tests to punish agreed to stop using tests to punish? What if we worked for a real civil rights movement of the 21st century? What if we dared to say out loud that Americans should invest in schools where all children get the education that they need and deserve?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I haven’t the $lighte$t idea why Arne won’t recognize the failure of high-$take$ te$ting.
LikeLike
You’ve got the right $tuff!! $uperintendent material!
LikeLike
Dienne,
Always a pleasure to read your comments-just the right amount of intelligence, snark and wit .
LikeLike
That is so funny! thanks!!!
LikeLike
And jeopardize all that $tudent $ucce$$?
😱
Ya got’s to be kiddin’…
Any hope for self-correction? I wouldn’t be holding my breath or waiting until a proverbial hot spot freezes over.
An LATIMES editorial of today picks favs for the Board of Education.
Link: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/endorsements/la-ed-end-school-board-20150208-story.html
First paragraph of their support for a pro-charter zealot:
[start quote]
District 3: Tamar Galatzan. This endorsement comes with misgivings. First elected to the board in 2007, Galatzan was at times such a reflexively pro-Deasy vote that she neglected to ask key questions about problematic proposals. That includes the proposal to spend half a billion dollars on iPads for every student, which she continued to support for far too long.
[end quote]
The above was preceded by an editorial board display of Olympic-class verbal gymnastics: the “troubled iPad program and the unworkable MISIS system for tracking student data.” Then in the paragraph above the over $1 billion iPad fiasco has been halved to “half a billion dollars.”
So they don’t want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. And they admit she has her slight imperfections: she was so reflexively pro-Deasy [former LAUSD Supt.] that she wasn’t as much on the case of the [now pared down] iPad and MISIS disasters.
Folks, this is simple projection and self-defense. The Gordian Knot they are trying to unravel is their own “reflexively pro-Deasy” stance—with worse consequences, since they are running the major print MSM outlet in Los Angeles and over and over and over again they played down the predictable disasters that their “Reformer Du Jour” aka John Deasy was plotting and scheming and setting into motion.
So the moment when the LATIMES editorial board could show a little thoughtfulness, be even a little objective about the consequences of their own action and inaction, turned out to be nothing but the same old same old.
They survey the wreckage of a terrible and avoidable accident and bring out the gendarmes that keep telling us: move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.
Arne Duncan and the LATIMES editorial board are on the same page.
The same one that puts a color code on ROI/MC [ReturnOnInvestment/MonetizingChildren]: black ink, good; red ink, bad.
And they are always and forever trying to keep the self-styled “education reformers” in the black.
😎
LikeLike
Arne can’t recognize his own failures and certainly can’t accept responsibility for Obama’s failed education policies. He uses moms, local public schools, hurricanes and unions as his scapegoats as he puts his foot in his mouth every time he speaks.
LikeLike
There is blame for the dismal failure of high stakes tests to improve education but it has nothing to do with their authors’ hold on reality. The purpose of high stakes tests has nothing to do with education and everything to do with money and power and the destruction of public teacher unions–and to distract from the need to do much more about poverty.
LikeLike
There was an earlier post by a teacher/software debugger who had written a thoughtful and insightful letter to Secretary Duncan and in that letter referred to the Emperor’s New Clothes.
All that has been written about the failure of NCLB and RttT has been by those “innocent, honest and open children”, though in this case, knowledgeable, caring educators, parents and even students, crying out that in fact, the emperor is not wearing any clothes – that the suit he has been sold and is selling is not real.
It may be in fact that Emperor Duncan remains ignorant of those observations and warnings or more disturbingly, is proud of his naked ignorance.
LikeLike
“The obvious problem is that Duncan, with the assistance of the Gates Foundation, has already coerced states into changing their laws. By now, I bet, most states would love to toss value-added evaluations into the ash can of history. What lawmakers need is a fig leaf to allow them to undo a rash mistake without getting blamed for having leaped before they looked into the merits of using test score growth to evaluate educators.”
I disagree they were “coerced”- this is capture, not coercion. but I do agree they will need a fig leaf because so many influential and well-connected people backed this in both Parties that it’s now a matter of putting individual credibility and careers at risk by dissenting or changing direction.
Can you get a job in DC or state government education policy circles without parroting the ed reform gospel? I don’t think so.
LikeLike
“…our current testing regime, which has cost billions of dollars and produced little of value to anyone”
That’s the point of it all. Who’s raking in those billions? Who cares what the results are? If anything, this whole Profiteer movement has two goals: 1.) profit-making by slashing tenure and “expensive” veteran teachers and benefits, force states and districts to hand over millions in taxpayer funds to testing and educational publishing companies, bring for-profit charter companies in to manage districts that will enrich their upper management only, and 2.) Dumbing down of children so they’re turned off to learning and literacy thereby making them more passively accepting of every bit of information, including their lot in life which won’t be much.
LikeLike
Yes…I am related to these peoplehttp://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2015/01/michigan_state_study_finds_cha.html….but this is a high quality study, by people who know a lot about education and politics……DEMOCRATS NEED A REALITY CHECK, AND THEY NEED IT SOON. What they have been doing, grateful that education is one issue that Republicans do not bother with criticizing them for, except for tea party opposition to common core, which BLIND LIBERAL MEDIA PEOPLE often use to discredit ALL opposition to testing…..the central truth is that republicans are getting their PHONY points across…..1. public school teachers are dominated by ruthless union thugs..2. they will stop these ruthless union thugs from ruining schools if we give them everything they ask for in vouchers, unaccountable charter schools, and accountable ones if they are allowed enough cherry picking..LIES!……….WAKE UP DEMOCRATS, demand the president start behaving like a democrat on education policy and make sure you do not nominate anyone…..who will not stand up on behalf of public education and against this increasing corporate domination…..
LikeLike
We might find out some interesting stuff from this trial out of Michigan:
“Ingersoll is scheduled to go on trial Tuesday, accused of steering $934,000 in loan funds for the renovation project into his own bank account, and sought to use the money to repay Grand Traverse. He is also charged with failing to pay federal taxes on the money. His wife, Deborah Ingersoll, and brother, Gayle Ingersoll, are also charged in the case, which will be heard by U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington at the federal courthouse in Bay City.”
The tragic part of this is, the one and only reason this came to light is because they defrauded a bank. If they had continued to defraud the people of Michigan without involving a bank they’d still be in business 🙂
They don’t even bother to pay construction workers on the books, and it’s 100% public funds. They must have been VERY confident no one at the state level in Michigan was regulating.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/02/07/charter-schools-steven-ingersoll-grand-traverse-academy/23054725/
LikeLike
Thompson misses the point entirely. The Obama administration fundamentally élitist and corporatist. They are not liberals in the sense of using government to maintain a middle class and provide some degree of economic fairness. Instead, they are the winners in the great Meritocracy. They side with the other winners like the rich and powerful, like Bill Gates. They beleive their mission is to create the world in their image, which means a world in which they and their children are always on top, and everyone else—the losers—struggles under the Iron Heel.
Read The Rise of the Meritocracy if you really want to understand these people.
LikeLike
Pretending that they are having a meaningful discussion about education is pointless – we know their goals carefully cloaked so as to call “foul” if they are called on them.
I am done discussing education with non educators who clearly have no interest in real education. Fighting back, not discussion is what we need.
Battles like this in the paraphrased words of Orson Scott Card are us vs the enemy and the only rules are what we can do to them and what we can stop them from doing to us (communities)
This is clearly how they subscribe to brutal meritocracy and social Darwinism.
There is no other explanation I can devise that makes the pieces fit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree with moosensquirrels on this point.
One need only ask… why did Obama pull a bait-and-switch back in 2008 (letting his supporters believe that he was listening to Linda Darling-Hammond in her role on the transition team) and then nominate Duncan to be Secretary of Education?
Arne has neither the intellectual capacity nor the education experience to understand what’s happening in schools/communities as a result of his policies. He’s doing what he was hired to do – to help the corporatists dismantle public education.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorting students by birth year is junk science, which Obama promised to eliminate. Their elitism is inconsistent with Duncan’s alleged Society of Friends upbringing. Hyde Park in Chicago is elitism on steroids. Pres. Obama please give us Linda Darling Hammond as you promised.
LikeLike
“What if we dared to say out loud that Americans should invest in schools where all children get the education that they need and deserve?” Teachers have been saying this for years. No one is li$tening.
LikeLike
Axelrod, Pres. Obama’s strategist, who is now back at the University of Chicago, was interviewed this morning on the right-turned CBS. He and his wife were very proud of his accomplishments.
It’s a shame that the interviewer didn’t ask him about the sell-off of public education, to corporatists and privatizers nor, about how the past 6 years have led the public to lose hope for change. He even, in a stroke of genius, mentioned unions fondly, as if both parties weren’t the hand maidens of multinational corporations.
LikeLike
That’s curious. The University of Chicago was the home of the economist Milton Friedman, the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets and of disaster capitalism, and that has produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.
Perhaps he returned for a refresher course on what Naomi Klein described in her book by the same title, Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine
Maybe it is more than coincidence.
LikeLike
Yes, when the Chicagoans took over D.C., their worst sin was to take away hope for change, as demonstrated by the low voter turnout in the last election…. another win for the oligarchs.
Ohio’s Secretary of State was quoted in a recent article. discussing the importance of a single vote. He then illustrated his point by listing local elections determined by a few votes. The punch line…….the state has egregious gerrymandering and the secretary of state has on-going efforts aimed at repressing the vote. But, the hypocrisy must have gone over the reporter’s head because he didn’t follow-up with a question. Likely, a Columbus Disgrace reporter.
Politicians should be denied the right to participate in Memorial Day parades, since they dishonor the sacrifices made for the nation.
LikeLike
“You made it personal. We are not the enemy.”
http://m.timesunion.com/tuplus-opinion/article/You-made-it-personal-We-are-not-the-enemy-6068440.php?cmpid=fb#comments
LikeLike
It wasn’t a waste of billions of dollars for those who profited from it. So obvious, yet they get away with it. Makes one sick of life, the chronic struggle of the decent against the greedy and vicious.
LikeLike
Somewhat off-topic, but this is a must-read Peter Greene article(*) regarding his attempt at the PARCC. If you need a good laugh, a good cry and a good scream, all at the same time, this is for you: http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/02/sampling-parcc.html#comment-form
(*) as if there’s any other kind of Peter Greene article.
LikeLike
Great link that shows the idiocy of decontextualized reading! It will be even harder for students in the future to read non-fiction if we narrow the curriculum so much that it is void of meaningful content.
LikeLike
For our PARCC ELA practice in December, I invited parents into our third grade classroom to observe and support. Six parents showed up. All six left with aching heads and hearts.
LikeLike
Their continued insistence on high stakes testing, VAMs, charters, etc. in the face of scientific evidence of inefficacy puts Duncan, Gates et. al. in the same league with lots of others who let ideology trump facts: climate change deniers, Obama birthers and flat-earthers.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The obvious problem is that Duncan, with the assistance of the Gates Foundation, has already coerced states into changing their laws.
LikeLike
The Deformers try to make this an issue about either choice or Civil rights based on “THE FACT THAT MOST STUDENTS ARE FAILING THE NEW NATIONAL STANDARDIZED TESTS AND ARE NOT READY FOR COLLEGE AND CAREERS! For the wealthy, they want and are getting A FREE PRIVATE EDUCATION for their children where they use to pay thousands of dollars. Now tax dollars are paying the costs. For the non-wealthy, their children’s neighborhood schools are being closed in the name of Civil rights, and changed into Charters with TFA staff who are there for the WRONG REASONS. If they are concerned about Civil rights, then why is it that I am not hearing them addressing the increasing gaps in earnings between groups of people and the resulting consequences on these families or addressing the related issues of poverty and school success? Someday a wealthy person will buy a TV station who will present the 99% side of each issue so we will begin to have a real dialogue about solutions to these issues. Unfortunately, Theodore Roosevelt’s do not come along very often and until then, we will be regressing to the 1890’s at an increasing pace. Hold on, it will get a lot worse before it starts to get better.
LikeLike
Simple answer…Dark money has given him the bully pulpit
and The Growing Shadow of Political Money affects every thing, but nothing so much as public education… this is because there are sixteen thousands districts in 50 states and this makes it sooooo easy to talk to a clueless, confused and stressed public about a complex subject like LEARNING TECHNIQUES
It is easy to bamboozle em’, so they do.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
and they subvert the national conversation by making it about teaching nor learning, and portraying ‘teachers’ as trained civil servants, instead of the professionals they are.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
LikeLike
“trained civil servants”
Larry Quinn, a Buffalo School Board member, didn’t even treat a Buffalo policeman with that amount of respect. He motioned him over, as if he was wait staff. Reminds me of Kasich describing a police officer as a moron.
LikeLike
Duncan acknowledges the failure of high-stakes testing, that’s the point of it. Everything that’s set up and rigged by the arm of Big Business in this is a pretext to privatize for the half-a-trillion dollar a year market Rupert Murdoch identified back in 2003. Piece o’cake. And they’ll get it all, folks. I don’t want them to. It took me 7 years of hardship to finally land a great career that’s going to be eventually stripped from me because of profiteers. But it’s just another item in a long list of social crimes that began in 1980.
LikeLike
It’s time to look ahead. Obama/Duncan is over. Will Hillary be any better? I’ve heard that even Elizabeth Warren has said reformy things. Let’s not forget those “friends” Andrew Cuomo and Cory Booker, not to mention Rahm. And there are an awful lot of Republicans elected in Congress and in the states. Jeb Bush? Scott Walker? It all makes one shudder.
If corporate power is the problem, then we must confront that power by any means possible. Thoreau, anyone? Time to re-read the classics and then act!
LikeLike
Elizabeth Warren Is supporting the draft reauthorization of ESEA that keeps high stakes tests in place on the grounds that “we” need to know how the ESEA dollars are being spent and returns on those investments.
LikeLike
Maybe David Sirota, of the Campaign for America’s Future, can be persuaded to run.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
LikeLike
The answer may lie in the fact that the Arlington, VA public schools, where his own kids attend, have rejected the Common Core federal test-and-punish agenda. He has no chance to glimpse, first hand, the frustration of young students who are being tortured on a daily basis by the de-facto test prep conditions that pervade most other schools.
LikeLike