Almost everything you need to know about “reform” in New York State is explained in this fable by Arthur Goldstein, who blogs at NYC Educator.
As usual, Arthur is very funny trying to decipher the mysteries of reform and the personalities of reformers.
Crazy Crawfish here writes a brilliant post about The Great Accountability Scam.
He is writing about Louisiana and the Recovery School District, but what he describes applies with equal force to every “reform” scheme in every state and even to Race to the Top.
What he explains is the destructive and failed theory of action that is the very heart of the corporate reform movement.
It goes like this: use test scores to fire teachers, fire principals, close schools, and shatter communities. Create a swath of destruction that falls hardest on poor children, their families and communities. Cover your tracks by declaring success where none exists.
His prime example in this case is Louisiana’s Recovery School District. It has been recognized in the media as a national model, but it is a failed experiment that has benefited its promoters, not students.
RSD is a prime exemplar of the Great Accountability Scam.
Here are his concluding thoughts (but open and read it all):
“What if all these resources we spent taking over school districts, firing teachers, and displacing children were used instead to improve the schools in which they already reside – dozens of these schools now lay shuttered and vacant statewide while the children are bussed to campuses clear across their communities. This is done to disguise how poorly we’ve served these children while we hope taking their temperature over and over and telling them to “get better” will finally work. What if instead of just testing children and holding them “accountable” we held ourselves accountable as a society and worked to improve their plight? All this testing and test prep is not helping our students catch up, and it may actually be bringing everyone else down as well. In Louisiana to disguise this fact John White has changed the “grading scale” and intends to change it yet again next year and every year we continue to employ him. John White will guarantee the scores go up, for what they’re worth, but our students will eventually tire of teachers just taking their temperatures when they show up for school, and who could blame them?
“Kill the RSD, and hand the schools back over to their communities where they belong. The RSD experiment we’ve forced on our children has failed, and miserably so. Instead of spending all that excess funding on bringing in out of state charters and temporary teachers, train the teachers we have, provide funding for universal pre-kindergarten, afterschool programs, restore music and the arts and provide tutors and recruit mentors from the community for children. There are thousands of people just waiting to help, if the state will back off and return to a support role instead of the tyrant it has become under Paul Pastorek and John White. Teachers are trying, but they can’t tackle this task alone.
“I suppose it comes down to whether you want a solution or simply someone to blame. Bobby Jindal just wants a talking point for his futile presidential aspirations; John White wants to help out-of-state vendors, so they can hook him up for a lifetime of perks and positions once he leaves Louisiana. If you are a citizen of this state, if you care about the students, the children, the teachers, your fellow citizens, our way of life and our future, then you need to kick these guys out and take back our schools. Kill the RSD and rescue our teachers and students before it’s too late.
“It’s about time we held our failing leaders responsible. RSD has been in place for almost 7 years and has mostly all new students, and every year it is vying for worst district in the state with two to three times the resources. In my book that deserves an F- and the creators of it should be held accountable.
In 2010, the Los Angeles commissioned a rating system based on test scores and published the individual names of teachers and their ratings. New York City did the same last year. To say this was controversial is putting it mildly.
Many researchers opposed it, as did Wendy Kopp and Bill Gates. If the purpose of the ratings is to help teachers improve, how exactly does it help to publish those ratings? Shouldn’t they be part of a discussion between principals and teachers? Right after the ratings went public in Los Angeles, a fifth grade teacher committed suicide. His name was Rigoberto Ruelas. Collateral damage, you might say.
John Ewing, the head of Math for America, called this thuggish use of data “mathematical intimidation,” and said that mathematicians have an obligation to speak out against it.
Nonetheless, both candidates for mayor in Los Angeles say they approve the practice.
Is there any evidence that the public releases in either L.A. or NYC improved teaching?
Please, someone, get some informed advisors for these candidates.
Tom Sgouros has written repeatedly about the inappropriateness of using NECAP as a graduation requirement for students in Rhode Island.
This is the same issue that produced the activism of the Providence Student Union.
Commissioner Deborah Gist insists that the critics don’t know what they are talking about.
In this post, Sgouros points out that the test-makers say clearly that the NECAP is not intended for graduation. He cited this sentence:
“NECAP is only one indicator of student performance and results of a single NECAP test administration should not be used for referring students to special education or for making promotion and/or graduation decisions.” (page 6)
Gist immediately pounced on the word “single” to defend her insistence on NECAP, saying that students who failed could take it again.
Get the importance of that word “single”? It is huge.
Then Sgouros made an amazing discovery. He did some internet digging and learned that the word “single” was added in 2011. It still does not appear in the guide for NECAP science.
Until sometime in 2011, the guide for NECAP said: “NECAP is only one indicator of student performance and should not be used for referring students to special education or for making promotion and/or graduation decisions.”
That seems straightforward and clear. But it was changed with the addition of that one word.
Sgouros concludes in a warning we should all heed:
“What we’re talking about here is dishonesty. This isn’t the same as simple dishonesty, or lying. This is intellectual dishonesty, and here’s the problem with that. The world is what it is. The facts of the world do not care about your opinion, or your triumph in some argument. Intellectual honesty is important in science because it’s the only way to get our understanding of the world to approach the world. Fudge your results, and you’ll find that your cure for cancer doesn’t work, that your miracle glue is really an explosive, or that your economic policy just makes things worse. This is why science is supposed to progress by scientists checking and criticizing each others results: that’s how you maintain intellectual honesty. Sometimes the disputes get personal or political and distract from the real aim, but the real aim is to get at the truth via intellectual honesty, enforced by the scientific community.
“The truth is that the NECAP wasn’t designed to be a graduation test, and this was obvious from the very beginning. It has been coerced into the role not because it was good for kids, but because it was cheaper than designing a dedicated graduation test. The features that make it a bad graduation test are objectively true facts about the test and its design. Neither editing technical documentation, committee-hearing filibusters, or cutting off public comment at Board of Education meetings will change those facts.
“I have no doubt at all that the commissioner can fend off challenges from the public over these matters, indefinitely. But reality will — as it usually does — have the last word. And children will pay the price. The question for Board of Education members, legislators, school administrators, teachers, and parents is which side they want to be on.”
Sgouros got a response from RIDE, but it was as nonsensical as the department’s claim that taking the same test again and again is the same as “multiple measures.” Sgouros is right. When people use the term multiple measures, they mean essays, projects, teacher recommendations, other evidence of satisfactory work, not a chance to take the same test many times.
;
;
This is an astonishing story.
In 2002, Arne Duncan began his infamous policy of shutting down schools in Chicago with low test scores.
Among the schools he closed was Dodge.
Dodge parents were outraged that their school was handed over to a private turnaround operator, but Duncan assured them it was for the best.
Fast forward to 2008, when President-elect Obama announced that he had picked Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
The event was held at Dodge Renaissance Academy, which the President praised as a “perfect example” of a turnaround school, an exemplar of Duncan’s great success.
Sadly, Chicago Public Schools is now closing Dodge Renaissance Academy as a failing school, along with Williams, another of Duncan’s “turnaround” schools.
What do you think this does to the children, the parents, and the community?
When is it okay to say that it is better to help struggling schools than to close them?
Jason Stanford writes a smart blog about education in Texas.
In this one, he explains that when the stakes get too high, bad things happen, whether in business or any other activity.
Most businesses are honest, most educators are honest. But it is wrong to tie a child or an adult’s future to standardized tests.
Stanford writes:
“Standardized tests have a valid role in education, but closing down schools or giving principals cash bonuses based on test results is new. That started when then-Gov. George W. Bush instituted a business mindset in Texas public schools and measured all schools by their tests scores. Enron did much the same thing with its stock price, gaming the system by hiding debt and booking future earnings. The stock price soared while the former pipeline company cratered. In Texas public schools, dropouts rose, preparing for the tests ate up more than half the schoolyear, and scores rose. Bush proclaimed it the “Texas Miracle.” Many of the schools he cited as proof of his miracle were later investigated for cheating, including Wesley Elementary in Houston, where the principal coached teachers “to administer a test the Wesley way,” which meant walking around the classroom and standing behind a student until they chose the correct answer. But by then, achieving miraculous gains on test scores had become a national goal.”
If we opened our eyes, he says, we would realize that what we are doing now is wrong. It is not working. It doesn’t help students and it doesn’t improve education. It is actually pretty dumb to put so much weight on bubble tests.
You think it can’t happen here?
You think your state is immune?
Read about the war on public education in Texas and think again.
Some part of this radical agenda is being promoted in almost every state.
Yours too.
This comment was written by Bonnie Lesley of “Texas Kids Can’t Wait”:
“I worry a lot whether public schools will continue to exist in some states. Our organization, Texas Kids Cant Wait, has felt overwhelmed at times this legislative session about the sheer number of privatization bills, all either sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick or by someone close to him. We have been battling a big charter (what is in reality the gateway drug to privatization) expansion bill, a parent-trigger bill, opportunity scholarships, taxpayer savings grants, achievement district, “FamiliesFirstSchools”, home-rule districts, vouchers for kids with disabilities, online course expansion, numerous bills to close public schools and turn them over to private charter companies, and on and on. A friend said it is as if they threw a whole bowl full of spaghetti at the wall, believing something would stick.
Every one of the ALEC bills we have seen introduced in other states has been introduced in Texas this year.
The privatizers have also held hostage the very popular bills such as HB 5 to reduce testing significantly unless their privatization bills advanced, and advance they have. So lots of folks are playing poker with kids’s lives and futures.
What keeps many of us fighting 20 hours a day and digging into our own pockets to fund the work is our understanding that these bills are not the end game. We’ve read the web sites, beginning with Milton Freidman’s epistle on the Cato Institute’s website, that lay out the insidious plan we are seeing played out. We have also read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book, Shock Doctrine.
First, impose ridiculous standards and assessments on every school.
Second, create cut points on the assessments to guarantee high rates of failure. (I was in the room when it was done in the State of Delaware, protesting all the way, but losing).
Third, implement draconian accountability systems designed to close as many schools as possible. Then W took the plan national with NCLB.
Fourth, use the accountability system to undermine the credibility and trust that almost everyone gave to public schools. increase the difficulty of reaching goals annually.
Fifth, de-professionalize educators with alternative certification, merit pay, evaluations tied to test scores, scripted curriculum, attacks on professional organizations, phony research that tries to make the case that credentials and experience don’t matter, etc.
Sixth, start privatization with public funded charters with a promise that they will be laboratories of innovation. Many of us fell for that falsehood. Apply pressure each legislative session to implement more and more of them. Then Arne Duncan did so on steroids.
Seventh, use Madison Avenue messaging to name bills to further trick people into acceptance, if not support, of every conceivable voucher scheme. The big push now as states implement Freidman austerity budgets to create a crisis is to portray vouchers as a cheaper way to “save” schools. The bills that would force local boards to sell off publicly owned facilities for $1 each is also part of the overall scheme not only to destroy our schools, but also to make it fiscally impossible for us to recover them if we ever again elect a sane government. Too, districts had to make cuts in their budgets in precisely the areas that research says matter most: quality teachers, preschool, small classes, interventions for struggling students, and rigorous expectations and curriculum. See our report: http://www.equitycenter.org. Click on book, Money STILL Matters in bottom right corner.
Eighth, totally destroy public education with so-called universal vouchers. They have literally already published the handbook. You can find it numerous places on the web.
Ninth, start eliminating the vouchers and charters, little by little.
And, tenth, totally eliminate the costs of education from local, state, and national budgets, thereby providing another huge transfer of wealth through huge tax cuts to the already-billionaire class.
And then only the wealthy will have schools for their kids.
Aw, you may say. They can’t do that! My response is that yes, they most certainly will unless you and I stop it!”
I did not go to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Francisco, so was not aware of what is described in this post. Jennifer Jennings says that Arne Duncan was booed when he spoke, and she apologized to Secretary Duncan for the behavior of her fellow researchers.
Why was Secretary Duncan booed, and should AERA (or anyone else) apologize for the booing?
Booing is the behavior of the powerless. Educators are angry–and Jennings knows this–because of the top-down, authoritarian way in which Duncan has imposed policies that are bad for children, ruinous for teachers, and harmful to the quality of education. Jennings also knows that Duncan holds all the power. Educators may write blogs, opinion pieces, books, and research studies, and they will be completely ignored by Duncan. To say the least, he is uninterested in dialogue and unwilling to change his hardened belief that his policies are successful, no matter what anyone says.
In New York City, our mayor proudly announced that the public should hold him accountable for improving the public schools. After he spent $100 million or so to win a new term, someone in the press asked Mayor Bloomberg how the public could hold him accountable. He answered: “They can boo me at parades.”
How can we hold Secretary Duncan accountable?
He is silent as teachers and principals are fired based on test scores. He is silent as beloved schools are closed because of test scores. He is silent as cities turn their public schools over to entrepreneurs. He is silent as for-profit businesses take over public school districts and as for-profit charters proliferate. He is silent as more and more states adopt vouchers to send public money to religious schools. He is actively abetting the misuse of testing. He is actively supporting the forces of privatization.
We know now he will not change course. The only question is whether public education will survive Arne Duncan.
I condemn his misguided and harmful policies, not the researchers who used the only means of protest available to them. What he is doing to our children, our teachers, and our schools is far more offensive than booing. Will Arne Duncan ever apologize to the children, parents, and educators of America for what he has done and continues to do?
I usually agree with Matt Di Carlo. He is one smart guy.
But not always.
That’s okay. Friends can disagree and still be friends (I proved that by blogging with Deborah Meier for five years).
I think that value-added methods of using test scores to rate teacher quality are “junk science.”
Now, granted, I am but a historian, not a social scientist, but I do read lots of social science. I noted that the National Academy of Education and AERA held a briefing on Capitol Hill and issued a joint statement warning about the pitfalls of VAM. Here is a salient point from their report: “With respect to value-added measures of student achievement tied to individual teachers, current research suggests that high-stakes, individual-level decisions, or comparisons across highly dissimilar schools or student populations, should be avoided.”
Edmund Gordon, one of our nation’s most eminent psychologists, recently led a commission to study assessment practices. He concluded that the overemphasis and misuse of standardized testing to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable is not only ineffective but “immoral.”
I would say that “immoral” is an even stronger condemnation than “junk science.”
Campbell’s Law suggests that the use of high-stakes testing degrades education. Threatening to fire teachers if their students’ scores don’t go up does not produce better education. It produces worse education. It promotes narrowing of the curriculum. It promotes cheating. It encourages teachers and schools to avoid the neediest students.
Teaching is so much more than test scores. To think that teachers may be defined significantly by the rise or fall of the test scores of their students requires a belief in the intrinsic value of standardized tests that I do not share. We may learn something from wide assessments with no-stakes, like NAEP. But using these flawed instruments to fire teachers and close schools is–in my judgment–wrong. They were not designed for those purposes. And the first rule of psychometrics is that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.
All things considered, the term “junk science” seems appropriate, as does Dr. Gordon’s phrase: ineffective and immoral.
One reason parents flee public schools, if they can afford it, is to escape the dead hand of testing that now strangles learning. The sooner we can put testing in its place as a diagnostic tool for teachers to assess what they have taught (not as a Pearson-designed 14-hour ordeal), the sooner we will restore the rightful purposes of education and the dignity of the teaching profession.
Carol Corbett Burris has been one of the leaders of the battle against the Néw York State educator evaluation system, which was developed after the state won a Race to the Top grant of $700 million. Burris helped created the principals’ rebellion against test-based evaluations of teachers and principals.
She also was recently selected by her peers as New York’s Principal of the Year. She is principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center.
Here Carol explains why she is disappointed by Teachers College’s decision to honor the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, whose policies Carol and her colleagues oppose.
I quoted TC’s press release earlier today, in which it saluted Merryl Tisch for her leadership in tying teacher evaluation to test scores. It applauded more for her support for judging education schools by the test scores of the students of their graduates. To ice the cake, the press release heralded Tisch’s willingness to permit museums and other non-traditional institutions to grant masters’ degrees. Odd that TC would like that.
But I mention the press release because I have heard that the press office is revising it to remove any reference to the state’s zealous devotion to standardized testing. It may have disappeared by now.
Carol Burris writes:
“As a proud TC grad, I am saddened. It appears to be one more more betrayal of the progressive ideals on which the college was founded. The fact that the press release hails her work in evaluating teachers by test scores (opposed by most TC scholars) and data that ties schools of education to public school results, confounds me. What does TC stand for? I guess in the future we can expect TC student teachers to be placed in Scarsdale so that the school gets good ratings. Which of the following statements make her worthy of the award?
–M Tisch saying that if educators are not prepared for CCSS they are –”living under a rock”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/27/26newyork_ep.h32.html
–M Tisch saying in NYT that now that teachers are evaluated under APPR, the public will not dislike them so much
–M Tisch donates 1 million, along with Bill Gates and charter schools, to fund the Fellows who have pushed the corporate agenda and test score evaluation policies.
http://www.cityandstateny.com/cash-flow/
I feel most sorry for the idealistic young teachers who worked hard for their degrees. They understand what is happening.”
