Paul Thomas reacts here to Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on high-stakes testing associated with the Common Core and to Jennifer Jennings’ apology to Secretary Duncan for being booed at AERA.
He warns that moderation and civility are not appropriate responses to extreme conditions.
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!”
In one of his characteristically thoughtful and provocative essays, Anthony Cody ponders Randi Weingarten’s call for a one-year moratorium on the high stakes associated with Common Core testing. Randi praised the Common Core standards lavishly but warned that they would fail if high stakes are attached to them before teachers and students are prepared to master them.
Cody does not agree. He maintains that the Common Core testing will have even higher stakes than NCLB. Not only will there be more testing, but teachers and principals will be fired, schools will close, communities will be harmed–as Common Core raises the bar and failure rates grow.
How does raising the bar help those who can’t clear the bar now?
As Cody writes:
“We have this entire project based on the premise that raising the bar will bring up those on the bottom, and make them better able to compete. In fact, when you raise that bar, you create huge obstacles for those at the bottom, and in effect, rationalize and reinforce their own sense of worthlessness, and society’s judgment that they are subpar. You further stigmatize these students, their teachers and their schools, based on their performance in this rigged race.”
He concludes that a moratorium on high stakes test is insufficient:
“We must move beyond not only the bubble tests, but beyond the era of punitive high stakes tests. Only then will we be able to use standards in the way they ought to be used – as focal points for our creative work as educators. I would be glad to have a year’s delay for the consequences of these tests, but I think we need to actively oppose the entire high stakes testing paradigm. The Common Core standards should not be supported as long as they are embedded in this system.”
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.”
Teachers College, Columbia University, will honor Merryl Tisch at its 2013 Convocation.
As Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, Tisch has launched the state’s most demanding regime of high-stakes testing in history. Teachers College specifically congratulates Tisch’s leadership not only in tying test scores to teacher evaluations but in tying test scores to the school of education that prepared the teachers.
The press release notes these accomplishments:
“TC alumna Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents. Tisch will speak at the first master’s degree ceremony on May 21st, which starts at 9:30 a.m. As Chancellor, Tisch, a former first-grade teacher, has championed public education as “the greatest civic and civil liberties issue of our time.” She galvanized the state’s bid to receive federal Race to the Top funding, helping persuade teachers unions and other players to commit to increased charter school development and creation of a system that substantially based a teacher’s performance evaluation on students’ test scores. She has spearheaded creation of a statewide data system that ties student performance to specific teacher input – and to the school of education that prepared that teacher. On her watch, the state has provided annual $2 million grants to low-performing schools that have a demonstrated plan for turn-around. And she has expanded teacher preparation beyond the standard range of players and perspectives, leading the way in accrediting new preparation programs housed in museums and other non-traditional venues.”
The last sentence of he press release means that the Board of Regents is willing to let non-traditional providers–like museums and perhaps KIPP and TFA–award masters’ degrees instead of stodgy traditional places like Teachers College and other university-based programs.
Some TC students and faculty are dismayed ad have suggested that they might organize a protest.
The president of Teachers College, Susan Fuhrman, is a member of the board of directors of Pearson, the testing behemoth. Personally, I think this is a conflict of interest, but that’s just me.
To see a different side of Teachers College, once proud bearer of the progressive education banner, read this article by the distinguished psychologist Edmund Gordon, who says that the current misuse of standardized testing is “immoral.”
Dr. Fuhrman, Chancellor Tisch, pease read what Professor Gordon wrote. Then look in the mirror.
PS: I received a 2011 alumnae achievement award from TC. When I learned that Cathie Black–the recently named Chancellor of the NYC public schools–had been invited to deliver the keynote at the event, I declined to attend. Her resume proved that neither education nor experience was necessary. she was a refutation of all i thought TC stood for. She was fired before the event.
A reader sends this comment:
While Business fails in Education, Education is certainly good for Business:
1) Quick Turnaround Teachers are funded by Walton, Dell, Gates….http://www.teachforamerica.org/support-us/donors
2) Corporate-funded CCSS http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/idUS157777+01-Feb-2012+BW20120201
3) Backed by corporate-advertising http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM_G4Y7SX3g
4) Opening new corporate marketing channels http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/56868-scholastic-new-technology-programs-aimed-at-the-common-core.html
3) in corporate-funded charter schools http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/mediacenter/top-five-grantees
4) advocated by corporate-funded “front men” http://www.ctunet.com/blog/memphis-district-to-lose-212-million-to-charter-schools-by-2016
5) so corporations can steal children’s data without parental consent http://educationnewyork.com/files/FERPA-ccsss.pdf
6) So they can create more “personalized products” http://www.classsizematters.org/new-york-state-inbloom-inc-fact-sheet/
7) And them move on to PERPETUATE “corporate-takeover-of-education” policies http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2012/01/john_white_appointed_chief_of_louisiana_schools.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB
All we need now is for TV shows and Movies to start incorporating the benefits of Common Core into their character’s personalities. Actually, the whole takeover of education is almost like a movie script itself!!
Louise Marr sent this from her book:
**********£*******
“Every spring, the Philadelphia public school students take the standardized tests, or PSSAs. (Starting in 2013, the district has switched to a different test called the Keystone Exams.) These tests are a huge part of how schools are evaluated and rated. It is from these scores that Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) is determined. There is a big push to prepare the eleventh graders for the tests from the beginning of the year to test day, usually after the first of the year. This particular year at Vaux, the students took the test over a course of several days. They were divided into several different classrooms for three to four hours in the morning, with two teacher proctors per room. All eleventh graders take the test, even the SPED students. Schools across the country take statewide tests very seriously, because of the implications that they present. In the five high schools where I have taught, there has been a common atmosphere at test time: the school is quiet and rules must be strictly enforced. In the classroom that I proctored at Vaux, it was sometimes a challenge to maintain the serious atmosphere.
There were five students in the room I proctored. Four were SPED students. One was MMR, and read at first grade level. He was given the same test. After a few minutes, he put his head down, because he did not understand the reading. Teachers are not allowed to help, only to say, “Do the best you can.” He didn’t even bother to ask.
Takierrah and Courtney were working on their tests, until Courtney looked up and caught Takierrah looking at her.
“Stop looking at me!”
“You’re ugly, I will f*** you up.” “I can’t stand your black ass.” “You’re black too!”
“No, I’m light-skinned.”
“You’re still ugly.”
“I’m cuter than you.”
“Get outta my face.”
“I’m not in your face, because if I was, I would f*** you up.”
They did manage to settle down without a physical confrontation,
but this scene made a huge impression on me. These tests would be used to evaluate the progress of our school. They were obviously way above the comprehension level of the Special Education students, yet the students were not given any accommodations at all. When I asked an administrator about this, she just shrugged, “That’s just the way it is.”
From the book, “Passed On: Public School Children in Failing American Schools”
by Louise Marr. Chapter 3: No Longer a Special Education
This teacher was accustomed to teaching poor minority kids how to pass the tests. She was really good at it.
But she was shocked to discover that her own children’s school–in an affluent neighborhood in Brooklyn–had succumbed to the same pressures.
Testing, as she realized, had found her and her children. There was no escape. She concluded:
“As I reflect on why I was (am?) so shocked that testing had found me, I recognize that I honestly believed that my children were immune to high-stakes testing given our race and class privilege, and as much as I consider myself an educator for social justice, I was completely okay with that. That makes me feel dirty and ashamed. But we are not immune and our privilege can’t save us. It is here, it is everywhere, and if your kids are in the public schools, it seems you can’t hide from it. We can only fight back.”
Michael Weston shares the news from his school, where testing takes precedence over teaching.
He writes:
May 3, 2013. It actually happened at Freedom High School today. The Unthinkable. Beyond the Pale. This afternoon, 7th period, we had an AP Testing pep rally. Yes, a testing pep rally. I had heard rumors of such things, but had a hard time believing them. Today I saw.
Hillsborough County Florida is one of those districts that has stuffed AP classes full with any student who a) wants to take one, b) can be cajoled to take one, c) is involuntarily signed up for one, or d) is placed under extreme pressure to take one.
This is all in the name of increased rigor of course. Apparently “increased rigor” is “New English” for Superintendent bonus. Yes, the number of AP tests taken is in her contract as a bonus provision.
Students lose instructional time taking these tests.
Students lose instructional time when their teachers have to proctor these tests.
Students lose instructional time when classes are under half full because OTHER kids are taking tests.
The list goes on.
For the last 4 weeks we have been FCATing. Two weeks ago started Florida End of Course Exams (they continue for some weeks) and Monday begins AP testing season.
Now – students lose learning time to a TESTING PEP RALLY??? REALLY?
Florida teachers should file a class action law suit or union grievances that this level of attention to testing creates a hostile environment for teaching.
Parents should likewise take action, as this level of attention to testing creates a hostile environment to learning.
