A statement today from FAIRTEST:
National Center for Fair & Open Testing
for further information:
Bob Schaeffer (239) 395-6773
cell (239) 699-0468
for immediate release, Tuesday, July 16, 2013
FLORIDA SCHOOL GRADES ARE “POLITICALLY MANIPULATED SCAM”
ASSESSMENT REFORM LEADER CALLS FOR END OF
“FAILED EXPERIMENT IN BOGUS ACCOUNTABILITY”
Today’s Board of Education vote to again change the state’s school rating system demonstrates that “Florida’s test-driven school grading system is a politically manipulated scam,” according to a national assessment reform leader. Bob Schaeffer, Pubic Education Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), explained, “When the votes of seven political appointees can instantly transform a ‘C’ school into one rated ‘B,’ it’s easy to see that the grades have no real meaning.”
Schaeffer noted that the state admits to having made more than 30 changes to its school rating system in just the past two years. He concluded, “The standards for letter grades are not even consistent from one year to the next, let alone educationally useful. It’s time for Florida to end this cynical, failed experiment in bogus accountability.”
Founded in 1985 by leaders of major education reform, civil rights and student groups, FairTest is based in Boston, Massachusetts. Schaeffer has lived in southwest Florida for 14 years while continuing to work for the organization.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
The only thing Florida and Fair have in common is that they both begin with the letter F.
Duh. That is all. (Full disclosure: I live and teach in Florida. I am almost embarrassed to acknowledge that information. SMH)
Florida proudly joins Louisiana as a state where public education has been transformed by right wing corporate reformers into the functional equivalent of the Twilight Zone taking place inside the Bermuda Triangle. HUZZAH!
The sad thing is, some states are using Florida as a model. Utah’s new grading system is based totally on Florida’s. I’m really looking forward to our schools getting these grades! (That last sentence was sarcasm).
Three years ago, the Republican nominee for Governor, billionaire Meg Whitman, claimed Florida’s educational system to be the model for her own policy, if elected,
(hankfully, she lost.)
” ‘For big, diverse states that have done a better job than California, all roads lead to Florida,’ said Whitman. ‘ That’s why I went down to visit (Jeb Bush) and his staff that pioneered this reform effort in Florida. And actually, that’s where I got these three ideas: (1) grading every single public school; (2) more charter schools; and (3) paying better teachers more.’ ”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Business/republican-candidate-california-governor-meg-whitman-time-reboot/story?id=9119553#.UeXgzVOsOEk
Arizona bought it too. The winger running the AZ Ed department loves Florida ideas and anything Jeb Bush says or does.
“. . . can instantly transform a ‘C’ school into one rated ‘B,’ it’s easy to see that the grades have no real meaning.”
Well, duh, “grades” whether for the students or for schools have NEVER had any “real meaning” if by “real meaning” one means pertaining to or purporting to describe a/some truth(s) about the teaching and learning process that goes on in public education. When your results are based on a process, educational standards, standardized testing and the “grading” of schools that is so rife with error as to render it completely invalid of course the results will “have no real meaning”. To understand why see Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 (in my never ending Quixotic quest to slay the educational standards and standardized testing dragon see below for a summary).
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms shit in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Duane Swacker: if by quixotic you mean “wild-eyed, impractical” or “to tilt at windmills” or “marked by rash lofty romantic ideas” — not at all.
You constantly remind the viewers of this blog that, in the words of one of those old Greek guys who no longer finds favor in EduExcellent Centres of Compliance, “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” [Plato]
And you are quite right in pointing out implicitly that the edufrauds and their accountabully underlings twist that same old Greek guy’s idea, “Man — a being in search of meaning” into “Other People’s Children — beings in search of meaningful worth as measured by the Holy Edumetrics of High-Stakes Standardized Tests.”
Currently unconfirmed that Pearson and ETS have deleted you from their short list, long list, and any list of potential hires.
I’m still shaking my head in disbelief. Are you able to confirm this rumor to a 98% chance of “satisfactory”?
🙂
No, KTA, I can’t confirm that I have been “deleted”! Other than the logical fact that, more likely than not-said with 100% surety, that I have never been on their lists to begin with, at least with my written consent. I have never consented to being on their list-100% surety. Although I could use some of their every increasing edu$$$ to help with the finances of this older fart Spanish teacher. Now if I could only figure out how to do that without just outright theft or deceit I would be okay.
Duane Swacker: I am quite alarmed [relieved?] to find out that the major purveyors of hazing guidelines, er, standardized tests are ignoring you, but [as that renowned Mexican superhero, El Chapulín Colorado {aka The Red Grasshopper}] used to say: “Calma, calma, que no panda el cúnico” [a bit of mixed up Spanish for “Calm down, calm down, don’t panic!”]. His stirring words that “no contaban con mi astucia” [“they weren’t counting on my cunning”] steel my resolve. I may fall flat on my face [even though “todos mis movimientos están fríamente calculados” {all my movements are coldly calculated}] but I will never forget, “como dice el viejo y conocido refrán” [as the old and well known saying goes] that
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” [Albert Einstein]
Go figure. That last guy doesn’t have a Spanish accent, does he? And he was a number/stats guy too!
But I think El Chapulín Colorado would have approved of him. And you.
Many thanks/muchísimas gracias for keeping it real.
Not Rheeal.
Keep posting. I’ll keep reading.
🙂
Here’s Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell on his A-F grading plan for public schools – modeled after the Florida grading system –– after it passed the state Senate on a party-line vote:
“With Senate passage, I’m pleased to see that this measure to bring accountability and transparency to Virginia public schools is on its path to being signed into law. I thank Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling for his tie-breaking vote in the Senate today to advance this measure and thank our legislators for supporting this tool to allow parents and teachers to better advocate for and improve the schools in their communities. This is a commonsense bill that will allow us to continue to improve the quality of education for all Virginia students, in all our cities and counties.”
Notice the outright lies. McDonnell says the grading plan is “commonsense.” He says it brings “accountability,” when students in Virginia are already tested in multiple subjects in grades 3, 5 and 8, and must earn 22 course credits and pass 6 Standards of Learning (SOL) tests in various subjects to earn a “standard” high school diploma, and must earn 24 course credits and pass 6 SOL tests for an “advanced” diploma. Student achievement data make up 40 percent of teacher evaluations.
McDonnell insists that his plan brings “transparency” to public education,but that too is bogus. All the test data is already required to be detailed and communicated in school report cards.
The Virginia Department of Education, headed by a long-time toady and staffed with people who couldn’t find their way around a classroom, says the purpose of all the testing –– which has now become even more “rigorous” –– is “to prepare students to compete in today’s global economy.” Apparently the folks at DOE still have no clue that “economic competitiveness” is, at best, a hollow argument for school “reform” and more testing.
I continue to point out that the U.S. already IS internationally competitive. And when it slips in “competitiveness,” it isn’t because of public schools (or a dearth of testing).
The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. It uses “a highly comprehensive index” of the “many factors” that enable “national economies to achieve sustained economic growth and long-term prosperity.”
The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies.
For example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
Last year (2011-12), major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.” The WEF did NOT cite public schools as being problematic to innovation and competitiveness.
And this year (2012-13) the WEF dropped the U.S. to 7th place, citing problems like “increasing inequality and youth unemployment” and, environmentally, “the United States is among the countries that have ratified the fewest environmental treaties.“ The WEF noted that in the U.S.,”the business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions” and “trust in politicians is not strong.” Political dysfunction has led to “a lack of macroeconomic stability” that “continues to be the country’s greatest area of weakness.”
Either the slackers at Virginia DOE don’t know this (very possible), or they don’t care (also quite likely), or they simply kowtow to the governor’s goofiness (a definitive). Or all three. Clearly, there is no genuine leadership there, and hasn’t been for quite some time.
And what about Bob McDonnell? He’s having some very serious ethical issues –– transparency and accountability issues –– of his own. McDonnell, his wife, and family members invested heavily in real estate as the market tanked. Since then, his wife has taken tens of thousands of undisclosed dollars and gifts from wealthy “benefactors.” And the governor has taken large sums too; thus far nearly $150,000 – uncovered in an ongoing investigation – has been traced to the McDonnell family. All unreported.
Common sense tells us that the governor and his wife were scamming the public. Common sense suggests that the governor should resign.
And anyone using even an ounce of common sense should know that McDonnell’s A-F school grading plan is just another gimmick that is mostly charade and very little substance.