Archives for the month of: November, 2012
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Should Computers Grade Essays?

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2012 //
17

Todd Farley is the scourge of standardized testing. His book, “Making the Grades,” is a shocking exposé of the industry. Todd spent nearly 15 years scoring tests, and he knows the tricks of the trade.

In this article, he skewers the latest testing craze: machine-scoring of essays.

Having demonstrated the fallibility of humans who score essays, Farley is no more impressed by computer scoring. As he puts it:

“…the study’s major finding states only that “the results demonstrated that overall, automated essay scoring was capable of producing scores similar to human scores for extended-response writing items.” A paragraph on p. 21 reiterates the same thing: “By and large, the scoring engines did a good [job] of replicating the mean scores for all of the data sets.” In other words, all this hoopla about a study Tom Vander Ark calls “groundbreaking” is based on a final conclusion saying only that automated essay scoring engines are able to spew out a number that “by and large” might be “similar” to what a bored, over-worked, under-paid, possibly-underqualified, temporarily-employed human scorer skimming through an essay every two minutes might also spew out. I ask you, has there ever been a lower bar?”

Farley quotes the promoters of automated scoring, who say that the machines are faster, cheaper and more consistent than humans. Also, they make money.

He concludes: “Maybe a technology that purports to be able to assess a piece of writing without having so much as the teensiest inkling as to what has been said is good enough for your country, your city, your school, or your child. I’ll tell you what though: Ain’t good enough for mine.”

One of the responses to Farley’s post came from Tom Vander Ark, who is a tech entrepreneur and a target of Farley’s post.

Vander Ark wrote: “The purpose of the study was to demonstrate that online essay scoring was as accurate as expert human graders and that proved to be the case across a diverse set of performance tasks. The reason that was important is that without online scoring, states would rely solely on inexpensive multiple choice tests. It is silly to suggest that scoring engines need to ‘understand,’ they just need to score at least as well as a trained expert grader and our study did just that.”

A reader of this blog saw this exchange on Huffington Post and sent me this comment:

“Diane–we use an automated essay scorer at my school, and I have seen coherent, well-thought out writing receive scores below proficient, while incoherent, illogical writing (with more and longer words, and a few other tricks that automated scorers like) receive high scores. The students who suffer the most are the highest level students, the verbally gifted writers who write with the goal of actually being understood, “silly” as that may be.”

“In fact, all standardized testing penalizes the brightest students–those who think outside the box. Standardized testing is the box.”

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, Testing

Teachers: Please Advise This N.C. Mother about Common Core

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2012 //
66

I received this comment from a mother in North Carolina. Her daughter is in first grade, where the school is implementing the Common Core math curriculum. Her daughter is confused, and so is the mother.

I am reaching out to the teachers who read this blog. Can you help her? What advice do you have? What has been your experience?

I have found your page looking for more info. on the common core curriculum. My 1st grader goes to school in N.C. and they just switched over this year to the common core. I absolutely hate it. They are doing algebra in the 1st grade! What happened to teaching the basic’s first? Every night that we do her math homework she and I get so frustrated that we could both pull our hair out. She doe’s not understand it and I don’t even know how to explain it to her so she will understand.Because she is having a really hard time catching on I asked her Teacher what we could do at home to help. She gave me her envision’s math book, and told me that not all thing’s in the math book apply to the new curriculum. She marked the Chapters that did. Do you know that out of 20 chapters in the book only 4 were marked. So tell me how these children are supposed to learn anything at all when their text book’s don’t even teach the new curriculum in them. Doe’s anyone know if there is anyway that we can get this curriculum changed. I was told by another teacher that it would not be possible because within 10 years it will be nationwide.

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, Parents

When Basketball Adopted the NCLB Rules

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2012 //
15

A reader sent this wonderful analogy, which was published today in Undernews:

No high school basketball player left behind

All teams must make the state playoffs and all must win the championship.

If a team does not win the championship, it will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their basketballs and equipment will be taken away until they do win the championship.

All players will be expected to have the same basketball skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. No exceptions will be made for lack of interest in basketball, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents.

All students will play basketball at a proficient level

Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in basketball, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don’t like basketball.

Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th games. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad basketball players.

– Author unknown

 

http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2012/11/no-high-school-basketball-player-left.html?utm_source=pulsenews&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+prorevfeed+%28UNDERNEWS%29

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

How to Avoid Hurting Kids and Schools in Fiscal Crisis

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2012 //
3

Leonie Haimson has some excellent ideas about where to make budget cuts and how to raise revenues to protect children in the looming fiscal crisis.

Haimson is executive director of Class Size Matters in New York City and has long been the city’s leading parent activist. Her ability to analyze research and budgets is astounding. Her courage in fighting for students and parents is unmatched.

Leonie Haimson was among the first people to be placed on the honor roll as a champion of public education. She was one of the original founders of Parents Across America.

She is a tireless and effective advocate who makes a difference in improving the lives of children.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Merit pay, Parent Groups, Parents, Race to the Top, Students, Washington State

Are Colleges Spending Too Much on Administrators?

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2012 //
11

John Hechinger has written an important critique of administrative salaries in higher education.

His article focuses on Purdue, an outstanding university known for its engineering programs.

The university has a long list of administrators who do supervision or marketing and are paid far more than full professors.

Makes you wonder if the university–and Purdue is typical, not unusual–has its priorities right.

One good thing about Purdue that comes out in the article is that, unlike so many other universities, it does not rely on adjunct faculty.

Mitch Daniels, about to leave the governorship, will assume the presidency of Purdue. As governor, he became known nationally for privatizing and outsourcing public education and undercutting teachers’ professionalism. We will see what his Purdue agenda may be.

As a show of good will, he could start his tenure in office by cutting his own salary in half (that figure is not mentioned in the article but is surely a higher figure than the highest-paid administrators).

Categories Budget Cuts, Higher Education

Two Big Legislative Victories in Florida

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2012 //
4

Kathleen Oropeza of Fund Education Now is one of the state’s leading education activists.
She reports here on two crucial races for the State Legislature. In one contest, public education advocate Mike Clelland narrowly beat the future leader of the House, even though the Republican incumbent had a 12-1 funding advantage. In the other race, elementary school teacher Karen Castor Dentel handily beat her opponent, who ran a disgusting ad comparing her to convicted sexual predator Jerry Sandusky.

Kathleen writes:

On Election Day, Floridians stared down deliberate suppression and waited long hours to vote. These patriots didn’t just stand in line, they stood for democracy. In fact, Florida voters repeatedly chose authentic underfunded citizen-candidates over incumbents flush with PAC millions. The most powerful example is District 29 which many assumed would remain the property of the designated 2014 Speaker of the House Rep. Chris Dorworth. Challenger Mike Clelland, an attorney and former fire-fighter did his homework, studied the issues and walked his district every day convincing voters to give him a chance. He spent $70,000 on his campaign. His support came in hard-earned $10s and $20s sent by fellow firefighters and citizens who believed in him. In contrast, Chris Dorworth was given over $1 million dollars to keep his seat, including $300,000 the week before the election.

By early Wednesday morning, after hours of ups and downs, Mike Clelland was still standing on a tiny stack of 37 votes. An audible gasp could be heard as Dorworth’s party realized that the years of planning, the millions invested in campaigns and their strategy to transform him into a powerful Speaker of the House was dead on arrival. Provisional ballots were counted and regular ballots were counted again. Almost a week later on Monday night, Clelland defeated Dorworth by 146 out of nearly 74,000 votes cast – 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent. After more than 2 decades of blatant pay to play politics, just enough voters of every political stripe took down one of the most highly groomed future leaders in recent Florida history.

In a similar upset, District 30 went to Karen Castor Dentel, a 4th grade teacher, mom and the daughter of former Florida Secretary of Education, Betty Castor. Dentel solidly defeated Rep. Scott Plakon, the sponsor of Florida’s Amendment 8, an ALEC effort to rescind the “no-aid” language found in 30 state constitutions so religious schools could be funded by tax dollars. Amendment 8 failed.

Overall, politicians placed 11 wordy constitutional amendments on Florida’s ballot. Florida voters of every party saw the political agenda behind these initiatives and voted no on 8 out of 11 amendments.

Across the state voters repeatedly chose to put balance back into Florida politics. Though both houses are still under single-party rule, they no longer have the absolute power of the supermajority. Democrats picked up 5 House seats with Republicans still in a 76-44 majority. In the Senate, Democrats picked up 2 seats with Republicans out numbering them 26-14.

Clearly, Florida voters have more work to do. Still, Election Day sent a clear message: Florida voters are awake and watching now. It is imperative that the common sense Republicans, Democrats and Independents make the choice to reach across the aisle and work together for the people back home. Those who don’t will face the voters in 2014. Thanks to what happened in District 29, that promise now has some teeth.

Kathleen Oropeza
FundEducationNow.org

Categories Florida

Michigan Plans to Expand Power of Emergency Manager Covington

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2012 //
21

Last week, voters in Michigan repealed the state’s draconian emergency manager law, which allowed a hand-picked appointee of the governor to abolish public education in financially stressed districts. In two of those districts, the emergency manager turned the children over to for-profit charter chains.

To compensate for the repeal, the Legislature in Michigan plans to expand the powers of the Achievement Authority Chancellor. The Achievement Authority is a non-contiguous district into which the state will cluster all low-performing schools. It is currently headed by John Covington, who was trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. Covington previously served as superintendent of Kansas City, where he proposed to close half the district’s public schools but resigned on short notice to take the higher-profile job in Michigan. Soon after his departure, Kansas City lost its state accreditation.

Under the new law, if it passes, Covington will have a free hand with the state’s lowest performing schools.

He will be the czar of the largest school district in the state of Michigan.

What will Covington do? Stay tuned.

The new law will wipe out all rights that employees previously had:

(B) A COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT APPLICABLE TO EMPLOYEES
16  WORKING AT THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BEFORE THE IMPOSITION OF THE
17  ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL INTERVENTION MODEL SHALL NOT APPLY TO PERSONNEL
18  AT THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AFTER THE IMPOSITION OF THE ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL
19  INTERVENTION MODEL.

20  (C) AN EMPLOYEE WORKING AT THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AFTER THE
21  IMPOSITION OF THE ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL INTERVENTION MODEL WHO WAS
22  PREVIOUSLY EMPLOYED BY THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OTHER THAN THE STATE
23  REFORM DISTRICT THAT PREVIOUSLY OPERATED THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SHALL
24  NOT ACCRUE SENIORITY RIGHTS IN THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OR ACCRUE
25  CREDITABLE SERVICE UNDER THE PUBLIC SCHOOL EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT ACT
26  OF 1979, 1980 PA 300, MCL 38.1301 TO 38.1437, WHILE WORKING AT THE
27  PUBLIC SCHOOL AFTER THE IMPOSITION OF THE ALTERNATIVE SCHOOL

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Michigan

Pedro Noguera’s Good Agenda Going Forward

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2012 //
11

Pedro Noguera, my colleague at New York University, took my place as blogging partner with Deborah Meier at “Bridging Differences.”

In his latest column, Pedro says that it is not enough to recognize that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have failed. It is necessary to shape a new agenda.

Pedro offers these three elements to a new agenda.

1. “The federal government should call for the creation of a comprehensive support systems around schools in low-income communities to address issues such as safety, health, nutrition, and counseling. This should include the expansion of preschool and after-school programs and extended learning opportunities during the summer.” Since the federal government is unlikely to fund what is needed, states and localities should develop public-private partnerships to make it happen.

2) “The federal government must support a new approach to assessment that focuses on concrete evidence of academic performance—writing, reading, mathematical problem-solving—and moves away from using standardized tests to measure and rank students, teachers, and schools.”.

3) “The federal government needs to call upon the states and school districts to undertake careful evaluations of struggling schools to determine why they are failing to meet the needs of the students they serve before prescribing what should be changed. Instead of simply closing troubled schools such a strategy would require a greater focus on enrollment patterns (i.e. have we concentrated too many “high-needs” students in a school?) and ensuring that schools have the capacity to meet the needs of the students they serve rather than merely judging them under the current accountability systems.”

I heartily agree with Pedro’s diagnosis. If children are not healthy, if they are hungry, their ability to learn is negatively affected. The value of preschool and after-school programs is well-established. In state after state, these programs are being cut, while testing is expanded. I would go even further, as I do in my book, and say that class-size reduction must be part of the new vision, especially where the children with the greatest needs are enrolled.

The problem here is that we can’t get federal or state policymakers to change course unless they recognize that the present course–the strategy of high-stakes testing, accountability, choice, and school closings–has failed. I note that Pedro does not mention the Common Core standards, which has now become the linchpin of federal school reform.

Going forward, I think, requires that we persuade President Obama that Race to the Top is not working and must be replaced by a new vision. Pedro has well described the outlines of that vision.

But we can’t assume that the President will change course until he recognizes that four more years of the Bush NCLB strategy won’t help our children or improve their education. Twelve years is enough. It’s time to think anew.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, US Education

Charters Expand Despite Lack of Evidence for Their Success

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2012 //
24

Joy Resmovits has a good article at Huffington Post describing the growth of charter school enrollments and the absence of adequate oversight.

Currently, about 5 percent of all American students are enrolled in these privately managed schools. In some urban districts, the proportion is much larger. The districts with the greatest number of students in charters are New Orleans, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Kansas City, and Flint, Michigan. In 25 districts, at least 20 percent of students attend charters.

With the support of a bipartisan combination of President Obama, Congress, conservative governors, and rightwing groups like ALEC, these numbers are sure to grow. And the privatization of one of the nation’s most essential public services will continue.

The article mentions that local school boards “argue” that charters reduce their funding. That’s not an argument, that’s a fact. When students leave to attend charters, the public schools must lay off teachers, increase class sizes, cut programs. The more charters open, the more the public schools decline, especially when they lose their most motivated families and students. This is not simply a matter of transferring money from Peter to Paul, but crippling Peter to enrich Paul.

If charters had a stellar reputation, the logic might be on their side. But there are few studies that show charters outperforming public schools even on the crude measure of test scores. With only a few outliers, most studies show that charters do not get different results when they have the same kinds of students.

Chester-Upland, Pensylvania, schools may be an example of what happens when well-funded charters (funded by the district’s own revenues) grow as the host dies. The CU schools have been under state control for nearly 20 years. The local charter is not only thriving but providing handsome profits for its founder. Meanwhile the public schools, having lost half their enrollment to the charter, are dying. A state emergency manager just issued a lengthy report with high benchmarks for future success.

The plan calls for school closings and sets goals for academic gains. The bottom line in this plan for recovery is that the public schools will be extinguished if they can’t meet ambitious targets:

““If the district fails to meet certain scholastic performance goals, such as federal annual progress targets, by the end for the 2014-15 school year, the plan calls for the schools to be run by external management operations such as charter schools, cyber charters, and education management companies.”

Is this the future of urban education in the United States? Will this be the legacy of the Bush-Obama education program?

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), On-Line Education, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Race to the Top

Researcher: Is New Orleans a District in “Academic Crisis”?

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2012 //
3

Research on Reforms, a research group in New Orleans, reviewed the latest state test scores and school grades.

The author of the report and one of the founders of the organization, Charles Hatfield,  can’t understand why New Orleans has been treated by its champions as a national model.

Here is his overview of the state data:

Recovery School District in New Orleans:  

National Model for Reform or District in Academic Crisis?

The 2012 achievement results for the RSD-NO show that after 7 years of operation, it still ranks among the lowest of the 71 Louisiana school districts; 83% of its schools were labeled with a “D” or “F”; and 79% of its students attended schools labeled as a “D” or “F”.

Is this the type of school district that should be elevated as a model for other cities? ROR thinks not!

Read the complete report by going to http://www.researchonreforms.org/html/documents/Paperon2012SPSk.pdf.

 
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, New Orleans
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