Archives for the month of: August, 2013
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How Should Schools Be Graded?

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2013 //
23

Mike Petrilli of the right-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute thinks that policymakers are wrong to judge schools by proficiency rates. In a thoughtful article called “The Problem with Proficiency,” he argues that it makes more sense to grade schools by whether their students show “growth.”

He offers the example of a school where the proficiency rates (passing rates on state tests) are very low but the improvement each year is impressive.

In his hypothetical, he offers this example:

Our school—let’s call it Jefferson—serves a high-poverty population of middle and high school students. Eighty-nine percent of them are eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch; 100 percent are African American or Hispanic. And on the most recent state assessment, less than a third of its students were proficient in reading or math. In some grades, fewer than 10 percent were proficient as gauged by current state standards.

But, he adds, at the same school “every year Jefferson students gain two and a half times as much in math and five times as much in English as the average school in New York City’s relatively high-performing charter sector. Its gains over time are on par or better than those of uber-high performing charters like KIPP Lynn and Geoffrey Canada’s Promise Academy.”

Now, how would you rate this school?

Gary Rubinstein recognized that Mike Petrilli was responding to the poor showing of many charter schools in New York City on the recent Common Core tests. He wrote a post called “Petrilli’s Desperate Attempt to Save Democracy Prep’s Reputation.”

Matt Di Carlo has often pointed out the problems inherent in grading schools by changes in proficiency rates. In his most recent article, he argued that:

In general, it is not a good idea to present average student performance trends in terms of proficiency rates, rather than average scores, but it is an even worse idea to use proficiency rates to measure changes in achievement gaps.

Put simply, proficiency rates have a legitimate role to play in summarizing testing data, but the rates are very sensitive to the selection of cut score, and they provide a very limited, often distorted portrayal of student performance, particularly when viewed over time. There are many ways to illustrate this distortion, but among the more vivid is the fact, which we’ve shown in previous posts, that average scores and proficiency rates often move in different directions. In other words, at the school-level, it is frequently the case that the performance of the typical student — i.e., the average score — increases while the proficiency rate decreases, or vice-versa.

Critics of the New Orleans “miracle,” on the other hand, have frequently complained that charter champions keep talking about student test score “growth” in the Recovery School District but refuse to admit that the RSD is one of the lowest-performing districts in the state of Louisiana.

Petrilli’s article provoked an extended online discussion among about 50 think tank denizens and policy wonks in D.C. and beyond, who went back and forth about what accountability should look like, how to measure it, etc.

For my part, I find myself alienated from the conversation because I see less and less value in our multi-billion investment in testing and accountability.

This was my contribution to the online discussion, which many in the conversation, no doubt, thought to be from Mars:

I have two children and four grandchildren. I care about them. I care about their health and their well-being. I love them. I don’t care how they compare to others their age in other cities, states or nations on standardized tests. I never had that information about my two grown sons, and they turned out to be wonderful, responsible people who lead good lives. I don’t want to know that information about my grandchildren. It is irrelevant to their lives. I don’t want them graded and rated by anyone other than the teachers who know them and understand their potential and their character. 
**************************************************************************************
Could I be more plain? I don’t care if my two grandsons–one now entering second grade, the other not yet 1–have higher or lower scores than children their age in California, Florida, Iowa, Finland, Japan, Korea, or any other place you can think of. I don’t think their parents care either. They care that their children are healthy; are curious about the world; are loved; learn to love learning; are kind to their friends and to animals; and have the confidence to tackle new challenges.
How did we allow ourselves to get swept up in this national game of “Survivor” or “The Hunger Games” or “America’s Best Students” or “America’s Best Schools” or whatever you want to call it.
Let’s all read Walden, read poetry, listen to good music, visit a museum, look at the stars, and think more about what matters most in life.
Let us see our children not as global competitors, but as children, little human beings in need of loving care and kindness.
Tests have their place in education, but they should be used to help children, not to define them or to “grade” their school.
We are so far off track that it will take a generation to reclaim our human and professional values about how to raise and educate children.
Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Students, Testing

BATS to Michelle Rhee: You Are Not Leading a Civil Rights Movement

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
50

I received the following letter from two BAT teachers who heard that Michelle Rhee is planning to speak in Birmingham and intends to portray herself as “a civil rights leader” in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is well-known that Dr. King worked closely with labor unions–not against them–to improve the lot of working men and women.

It may have been forgotten by now that when Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, he was there to help sanitation workers who were trying to organize a union.

Dr. King understood the importance of building coalitions, not setting group against group, parents against teachers.

The BAT teachers wrote the following commentary about Rhee’s pending visit to Birmingham:

 

 

Why Alabama Doesn’t Need Michelle Rhee

     by BATs – Marla Kilfoyle and Terri Michal

 

The corporate reform agenda Michelle Rhee represents is NOT about Civil Rights!

 

Michele Rhee does not promote educational equality for the African American community. She and her StudentsFirst organization profits while schools in predominantly urban minority communities are being closed around the nation. It is beyond comprehension that Rhee would speak during any celebration of the Civil Rights movement and that she be considered to speak at the 16th Street Baptist Church where 4 young girls were murdered in a bombing spurred by hate and prejudice. Let’s consider what Rhee has done to further civil rights – nothing. In fact, Rhee along with Rep. Jay Love and Charlotte Meadows (a former StudentsFirst Lobbyist) helped to push for passage of the Alabama Accountability Act which opened the door for Charters in the state. The problem is that these charters are not designed to elevate the poor and/or minority.  In fact the Southern Poverty Law Center is currently challenging the law because it contends that transfers are inaccessible to Alabama’s poor families.  Low income parents can’t afford private school tuition even with the new tax credit but to make matters even worse, it siphons off money that should be spent on resourcing and assisting failing schools in these communities and transfers it to the private sector.

 

Let’s look at the effects Michelle Rhee and her Corporate Reform agenda has had in other urban communities around the United States:
INCREASED ACHIEVEMENT GAP IN D.C. 

The most disturbing effect of Ms. Rhee’s reform effort is the widening gap in academic performance between low-income and upper-income students, a meaningful statistic in Washington, where race and income are highly correlated. On the most recent NAEP test (2011), only about 10% of low-income students in grades 4 and 8 scored ‘proficient’ in reading and math. Since 2007, the performance gap has increased by 29 percentile points in 8th grade reading, by 44 in 4th grade reading, by 45 in 8th grade math, and by 72 in 4th grade math. Although these numbers are also influenced by changes in high- and low-income populations, the gaps are so extreme that it seems clear that low-income students, most of them African-American, generally did not fare well during Ms. Rhee’s time in Washington. Washington’s high school graduation rate is the lowest in the nation. Rhee closed more than 2 dozen schools.*

CHEATING AND BUDGET SCANDAL THAT DEMEANS STUDENTS AND TEACHERS IN D.C. 
March 2011 USA Today reported on a rash of ‘wrong-to-right’ erasures on standardized tests and the Chancellor’s reluctance to investigate. With subsequent tightened test security, Rhee’s dramatic test scores gains have all but disappeared. Consider Aiton Elementary: The year before Ms. Rhee arrived, 18% of Aiton students scored proficient in math and 31% in reading. Scores soared to nearly 60% on her watch, but by 2012 both reading and math scores had plunged more than 40 percentile points.*
One of the first things that happened during Rhee’s time in D.C. was that she announced that there was a multi-million dollar shortfall in the education budget. Shortly thereafter, she fired 241 D.C.P.S teachers, citing the need to make huge budget cuts. After the firings, the monies were suddenly found. Rhee and her CFO, Noah Webman, said that the problem with the missing millions was “accounting mistake.” Once the lost money was restored to the education coffer’s books, Rhee went on a hiring spree, filling many vacancies with….you guessed it!…Teach for America teachers. Later, Webman said, under oath, in a hearing with the DC city council, that he and Rhee had devised the “accounting error.” Currently, one of the teachers fired is pursuing a fraud charge against Rhee. This past April, a DC judge has said that there is evidence enough for the case to move forward.*  Furthermore, Rhee’s history as Chancellor of D.C. has left children, predominantly children of color, in a school district that has the lowest graduation rate in the country. 
DID NOT PROVIDE STABLE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTS FOR OUR MOST VULNERABLE CHILDREN
Ms. Rhee appointed 91 principals in her three years as chancellor, 39 of whom no longer held those jobs in August 2010. Some chose to leave; others, on one-year contracts, were fired for not producing results quickly enough. Several schools are reported to have had three principals in three years.*  Child psychiatrists have long known that, to succeed, children need stability. Because many of the District’s children face multiple stresses at home and in their neighborhoods, schools are often that rock. However, in Ms. Rhee’s tumultuous reign, thousands of students attended schools where teachers and principals were essentially interchangeable parts, a situation that must have contributed to the instability rather than alleviating it.*
FINANCING PUBLIC SCHOOL CLOSINGS AND PRIVATIZATION OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Rhee flies around the country donating money to politicians. She does not promote educational equality for the African American community. She and her StudentsFirst organization supports charters and voucher systems. This educational agenda has supported the closing of urban schools, predominantly in African American communities (Chicago, Philadelphia), instead of providing resources to keep these community schools open as Beacons of Light for kids that live in these neighborhoods. 
*CITATION
John Merrow – “A Story About Michelle Rhee That No One Will Print” http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6490

 

The bottom line, our urban communities CANNOT be improved by closing our schools, firing our teachers, and diverting funds to private organizations.  They also CANNOT be improved by hiring Teach For America teachers, who are usually underqualified and unprepared to teach to the whole child, or through increased testing. (Testing IS NOT teaching!)  What can help? Programs like The Leader In Me* that debuted at A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina and is now being implemented worldwide or Alabama’s own Better Basics* program that is currently implemented in only 43 schools in central AL despite its successes. We invest more than 8 million dollars a year in Alabama on testing alone…Isn’t it time we invest in our STUDENTS?

 

*CITATION

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Schools:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1861074,00.html

Better Basics:

http://betterbasics.org/programs/

 

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was thrust into the public eye when, in 1963, a bomb exploded killing four innocent black girls.  The members of the black congregation were targeted because of the color of their skin.  This was a turning point in the civil rights movement.

 

Now, 50 years later, Michelle Rhee wants to be a part of a panel discussing civil rights and education that is taking place in the church .  Michelle Rhee knows nothing of civil rights. This must be stopped.  Please contact Rep. Terri Sewell at (205) 254-1960 Twitter @RepTerriSewell and Mayor William Bell at (205)254-2283

His Executive Secretary’s email is kelli.solomon@birminghamal.gov It seems they have no twitter account.  There is NO direct way to get in touch with the mayor.  Governor Bentley may be contacted by twitter @GovernorBentley  and by phone  (334) 242-7100

 

Marla Kilfoyle  is a teacher, an activist, and one of the founders of the Badass Teachers Association. She lives in Long Island, New York.

Terri Michal is an activist, the founder of SOS Support our Students and an Administrator at Badass Teachers Association. She lives in Huntsville, AL. You can contact her at somewhere_itn@hotmail.com

Categories Alabama, Rhee, Michelle

Chancellor Tisch Promises Higher Test Scores Next Year

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
40

The head of Néw York state’s Board of Regents Merryl Tisch says everyone should calm down about the collapse of test scores across the state. Next year, she promised, the scores will go up.

You can count on that, because the state commissioner can lower the cut score if he wants to avoid another embarrassment like this year.

What you can also count on, sadly, is the humiliation that 70% of the children in grades 3-8 will feel when they learn from their teacher that they failed the state tests. The numbers who failed are even higher among children who are black, English language learners, and students with disabilities.

This year, the state decided to align its categories with NAEP, not understanding that NAEP proficient is set at a very high level–not a “passing” mark at all– and that the only state where as much as 50% of students reached proficient on NAEP is Massachusetts,  after 20 years of NAEP testing. Apparently New York is content to tell the majority of its students that they don’t deserve high school diplomas or the chance to go to college.

Consider this: the proportion of students who “passed” under the new Common Core baseline was only 31.1% in total. (Last year it was 77.4%).

Among English language learners, only 3.2% “passed.” (Last year it was 11.7%.)

Among children with disabilities, only 5% “passed.” (Last year it was 15.5%.)

Among black students, only 16.7% “passed.” (Last year it was 37.2%.)

Among Hispanic students, only 17.7% “passed.” (Last year it was 40.0%).

Among white students, only 39.9% passed. (Last year it was 85.9%.)

But not to worry, litttle children. New York and the Common Core will make you global competitors.

How do we know? We don’t. Forget about critical thinking. Don’t ask for evidence. Take it on faith. This is, after all, faith-based policy.

Categories Common Core, New York, Testing

Education Bloggers Are the Best!

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
23

Ken Previti was puzzled that the U.S. Department of
Education paid someone to “monitor” what I wrote. Here
is his response to the latest effort to discredit my criticism of
corporate reform.

Why should the government monitor
critics? How does it feel to know that the U.S. government is
watching you and monitoring what you write? At the time, I heard
rumors about it, but I didn’t believe it. Now I feel as though I
was on Nixon’s famous Enemies’ List. It is a distinction I wear
with pride. I am praying for the strength and health to stand up for those of you who spend their your days in our nation’s schools, doing the hard work of educating children.

Thank you for having my back. Your protection means more to me than you will ever know.

Categories Ravitch, Diane

Petition: It Is Time for Commissioner John King to Go!

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
6

This petition was written by supporters of public education in New York State called the Coalition for Justice in Education.

They object to King’s insistence on high-stakes standardized testing, especially the Common Core testing that recently led to a collapse of student scores across the state.

They seek a commissioner who cares about public education, cares about the quality of education–not just test scores, and cares about children.

I agree, which is why I wrote a post calling on John King to resign.

He may have the confidence of the Board of Regents, but he has lost the confidence of the parents and educators of New York State.

If you agree with their petition, sign it.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, New York, Support for public schools, Testing

Indiana Governor Pence Defiles Democracy: LINK ADDED

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
40

Last fall, educator Glenda Ritz trounced Indiana state superintendent Tiny Bennett, who outspent her 10-1.

Ritz collected more votes than newly elected Governor Mike Pence.

Ritz is a Democrat, meaning that Pence and the legislature want to nullify her election. Controlling the state board of education was not enough.

Pence announced today the creation of a new state agency–the Center for Education and Career Innovation–ansorbing some of the functions of the Department of Education and reducing Ritz’s authority.

This is disgraceful. Democracy is not war, where one side obliterates the other. Democracy requires a respect for the rule of law and the will of the people. When your side loses, you accept the loss and try to win next time.

Mike Pence, in his lust for power, has spit in the voters’ eye and showed his contempt for democracy.

For shame.

Categories Indiana

NC Gov Gives $$$$ to Young Aides, $0 for Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
46

It pays to be on the
governor’s campaign staff in North Carolina. Governor
McCrory gave jobs paying more than $80,000 to two of his
20-something helpers, barely out of college. Each
of the kids got a raise of $22,000-23,000 after a few
months in state government. Teachers must work 15 years to make
$40,000. Teachers in North Carolina are among the worst paid in the
nation. Teachers got no raises.

Categories Budget Cuts, North Carolina

NEPC Urges Caution on CREDO Study of NOLA Charters

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
11

The National Education Policy Center urges caution when reading the CREDO study of charter schools in New Orleans. Governor Bobby Jindal has already taken CREDO as evidence for the success of privatization.

NEPC says not so fast. In addition to technical issues in the study, the critics make the following observations:

“Even setting aside these concerns, the effect sizes reported for New Orleans—let alone for the state as a whole—are not impressive in terms of absolute magnitude. Differences of 0.12 standard deviations in reading and 0.14 in mathematics indicate that less than one half of one percent of the variation in test scores is explainable by membership in a charter school.

“The study’s methods raise concerns that the findings could easily be misinterpreted to inflate pro-charter conclusions. In context, there’s little to crow about: the results from Louisiana and New Orleans are not much different from the uninspiring national results; the results for the state’s suburban charter schools showed negative gain scores (somewhat less growth in charters than in the comparison schools); and the small positive results reported for New Orleans are confounded by the devastating aftermath of a unique disaster.”

An even more serious challenge to the study was posed by New Orleans-based “Research on Reforms,” which complained that the Louisiana Department of Education will not release student data to independent research organizations.

It wrote: “As long as the Louisiana Department of Education can determine to whom to release student records for research purposes, the reports produced thereof, such as the CREDO report, are nothing more than biased evaluations.”

“The Department of Education (DOE) maintains that it has the discretion to release de-identified student-level records to selected researchers, and that it has the discretion to deny the same student records to other researchers. And, for the past few years, that is what the DOE has done. CREDO received the student records, and, Research on Reforms, Inc., who submitted a public records request for the same student records, was denied. As long as the DOE gets to select its evaluators, i.e., its researchers, the impact of the state-takeover and the charter school movement will never be objectively evaluated.

“Specifically, the Department of Education (DOE) released de-identified student-level records to CREDO for the school years 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11 and denied the student level records for the same school years to Research on Reforms, Inc. (ROR). Thus, ROR sued the DOE in October 2012 for violation of Louisiana’s Public Records Act. The matter is now in Civil District Court.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, National Education Policy Center, New Orleans

Gary Rubinstein: No Excuses for Democracy Prep

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
8

Gary Rubinstein here
analyzes the unimpressive showing by Democracy Prep on
the recent disastrous Common Core tests in New York State. He takes
apart the effort by Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute to rationalize the poor performance of the
much-ballyhooed charter chain. Gary writes, “The hardest
thing about trying to have an intellectual debate with ‘reformers’
is every time they start to lose, they try to change the
rules. First they say “poverty doesn’t matter”
and when it becomes clear that it does, they start saying “Well, it
matters, but we still need to make schools as good as possible and
standardized test accountability is the best way to do that.”
First they deny that charters have a self-selected population that
is easier to teach, and then when you prove them wrong, they say
“Yes, it’s true, but it is a good thing.” Less than a
year ago, Arne
Duncan gave Democracy Prep $9.1 million to open new
schools in poor communities. But if you look at the scatterplots
that Gary constructed, it is clear that Democracy Prep is an
average school, no better than the typical New York City public
school. So why did the U.S. Department give Democracy Prep $9.1
million to open more average schools with high attrition rates in
Harlem and Camden, New Jersey?

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Education Reform, New York City, Testing

A Hero Superintendent in Long Island Says: “To Hell with These Scores. They Do Not Matter”

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2013 //
48

William Johnson is the superintendent of public schools in Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York.

He is an experienced educator.

He can tell the difference between education and miseducation.

For his willingness to speak truth to power, to defend the children and staff in his care, he is a hero of American public education.

When he saw the scores generated by New York’s Common Core tests, he blew his stack.

He said to a reporter:

“Never at the end of the day could you, as a result of what you saw with a child’s actual performance on these tests, know what they know and what they don’t know,” Johnson said in April.

The data that the tests provided the district, Johnson said, is “uninterpretable and unusable.” He gave an example: in eighth grade, Rockville Centre students take the algebra Regents exam, which is usually administered in ninth grade. This year, about 95 percent of students passed it. The eighth-grade state math exam is supposed to determine how prepared students are to take algebra, yet only 39.5 percent of them passed that exam.

“To hell with these scores,” Johnson said. “They do not matter. They’re not informing us in any way; they’re not giving us any new information. In fact, what they’re doing is serious damage. Kids who had a [Level] 3 last year and ended up with a [Level] 1 this year, how do I tell them they can’t read, when in fact we know they can?”

The story says, “Last year, an average of about 81 percent of Rockville Centre students passed the state exams, which are given in grades 3 through 8 in English Language Arts and math. This year, with the new tests the state gave, the passing rate in Rockville Centre plummeted to 48 percent. The state average was slightly over 30 percent.”

In response to the sharp drop in the district’s scores, Johnson said:

“Our conclusion, after reviewing this with my staff in the central office and talking to a number of colleagues, is that we’re just going to put it on a shelf someplace and just leave it there,” said Dr. William Johnson, the district superintendent. “We’re not going to use this information to make any kind of determination about what kind of services we need for children, and we’re not going to use it in any capacity whatsoever to make informed decisions about our staff.”

 

 

Categories Common Core, Honor Roll, New York, Testing
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