Archives for the year of: 2014
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Laura H. Chapman: Test Scores Are Not Objective

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
21

Reader and arts consultant Laura Chapman cites an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that reminds us that test scores are not objective.

Panels of experts and non-experts make a judgment about what is “proficient,” what is the “cut score for other labels. It is a judgment. The person in charge can adjust the cut score to make the tests harder or easier. If he wants to show that kids are really dumb, he will choose a very high cut score. If he wants to show that kids are improving under his amazing leadership, he will drop the cut score, and more kids will pass. The public is easily hoodwinked. The scores are Bunkum.

Chapman comments:

Today, the Wall Street Journal reports on the results of NY state tests (page 2, weekend).
http://online.wsj.com/articles/test-scores-are-no-sure-guide-to-what-students-know-1405122823?tesla=y

The headline is amazing: “Test Scores Are No Sure Guide to What Students Know: Results Say More About the Way Test Makers Decide to Measure Children’s Knowledge”

The graphics show performance trends in math and English, grades 3-8, before and after the new CCSS tests in math and English. Big drop in ”proficiency.”

Then the author of the article, Jo Craven McGinty, tries to explain how the new cut scores for “proficiency” are determined.

“A panel of 95 teachers divided into math and English groups (45.7 in each group?) were given “the test the students took in order of difficulty from easiest to most difficult.” Each teacher was given the task of dropping a bookmark on the test to indicate a level of performance with enough correct answers to qualify for a Level 1 “proficiency” or Level 2 (and so on). This process was repeated four times to arrive at final cut scores, meaning something like a consensus on “the threshold for each performance level.” Of course, with four iterations of the process, teachers may develop a bit of fatique, and like a hung jury may produce a 2/2 vote on the cut…No details here, but “cut” is a good name for te score.

The article is intended to convey the gist of the process, not the technicalities. For example, the teachers are not asked to determine the “order of difficulty” of the tests. That has been pre-determined, likely through statistical methods for item analysis. Teachers are setting cut scores for judgments about “good enough” or “ not good enough” for given label. The labels and cut scores function much like the old fashioned A-F rating system. As one expert said, the idea is to “send a message to kids about what is good enough.”

I think this not the primary purpose of the new testing regime. The real purpose is to reinvent the tests and scoring scale (cut scores) so fewer students appear to doing well in school and to condemn prior tests as too easy.

According to more than one expert in psychometrics, the term “proficient” is not much more than a human judgment about labeling a performance on a test.

That process is not objective, and it becomes even more complex when test items go beyond requests for fill-in-the-bubble answers. One expert is quoted in the article: “People believe they know what these labels mean. It has nothing to do with how well kids are doing. It is a way of making a judgment about how performance is going to be labeled.”

And this is the protocol that makes test scores “objective measures.” Give me a break.

Categories Testing

NY Commissioner John King Compares Supporters of Common Core to Tuskegee Airmen

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
76

There is something about corporate education reform that encourages chutzpah. Chutzpah is a Yiddish word for arrogance. Reformers think they are on the front lines of the civil rights movement. They think that making tests harder helps kids who are already struggling. They think that if the failure rate for black and Hispanic kids goes higher, these kids are getting the help they need. Please don’t ask me to explain the logic behind their train of thought. I suppose their inflated opinion of themselves leads the corporate reformers to reach absurd conclusions.

Take New York State Commissioner John King. His teaching experience is limited to three years in a no-excuses charter school where poor kids were expelled for minor infractions. Having been chosen to lead the Empire State, where only 3% of children are in charters, he has decided that the Common Core standards are his heroic mission. He has compared himself to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And just a few days ago, he said that the advocates for the Common Core were like the all-black World War II unit called the Tuskegee Airmen.

Please don’t ask me to explain the logic. There is none. In the first administration of Common Core testing, 95% of children with disabilities failed. More than 80% of African-American and Hispanic children failed. These tests have passing marks designed to fail most kids, and the burden falls most heavily on minority children. Instead of help and reduced class sizes, they get more tests. What part of this scenario would be supported by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr? What part is similar to the bravery of the Tuskegee Airmen?

It makes no sense. But then, Common Core makes no sense. It was underwritten by one man, Bill Gates. It was imposed by making it a condition of Race to the Top. The tests were federally funded (an act of dubious legality). It eviscerates state and local control of education. It sets poor kids, black kids, Hispanic kids, and those with disabilities on a road to failure. What part of this terrible scenario resonates with the civil rights movement?

The only thing Dr. John King has in common with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is his last name. The current Dr. King should have the decency to refrain from comparing himself to a man who distinguished himself by his humility, his compassion, his decency, his astonishing intellect, and his genuine concern for those who had the least. He sought equity. He fought for unions, good jobs, good housing, fair wages. In my reading of Dr. King’s work, I never once encountered a passage in which he said that what black children need most is testing.

Categories Common Core, New York

Peter Goodman: A Report from Inside the AFT Convention

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
50

Peter Goodman regularly blogs about education in New York. He is close to the UFT leadership in New York City and thus has good sources. Here is his update from inside the AFT convention.

Reading this, I conclude that the AFT will not call for Arne Duncan’s resignation. This is the first time in my memory that the AFT was less militant than its larger brethren and sisters in the NEA.

It appears that there will be a floor debate about the Common Core. The Chicago Teachers Union is opposed to it. If my reading of the tea leaves is right, the New York City delegation is prepared to shoot that resolution down too. CTU is the outlier in this convention, battle-scarred and ready to fight. The NYC delegation has the numbers to vote them down.

Readers of this blog know my views. Arne Duncan is the most anti- teacher, anti-union Secretary of Education in the history of the Department. He was the guy who said that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans, having swept away public schools and teachers’ unions (forget the death toll). He was the one who cheered the firing of the entire staff of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. He was thrilled when the Los Angeles Times posted teachers’ (inaccurate) VAM ratings. He required states to adopt VAM ratings, which Randi wisely called “a sham” in her speech to the convention. He spoke admiringly of the Vergara decision. He should not be Secretary of Education. He should be Ambassador to some very small nation, where he can’t do much damage. Or teach basketball.

As for Common Core, I agree with CTU. Teachers don’t need scripts. They don’t need “standards” written by a committee that included not a single classroom teacher. They need class sizes they can manage. Their schools need equitable funding. They need tenure to protect them from political reprisals. They need due process and speedy resolution of complaints. They need respect. Common Core does nothing to alleviate the poverty in which nearly one-quarter of our children live. It does nothing to restore the art teachers, librarians, nurses and counselors who have been laid off. It does nothing to address the root causes of poor academic performance: poverty and segregation. It will die no matter what the AFT does because, frankly, it doesn’t matter.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Unions

Rhee’s StudentsFirst Pulling Out of Minnesota

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
21

In this era of duplicity and double-talk, we may never learn the real reason, but one thing is sure: Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst is closing down in Minnesota. It is laying off its single employee. It claims 29,000 members in the state, but it is impossible to verify that number since people often sign deceptive petitions on websites that ask if they support great teachers.

“Earlier this week, StudentsFirst confirmed that it is scaling back operations in Florida to focus on political battles elsewhere. In coming days, it is expected to announce that it’s eliminating staff members in other states — a move a national group spokesman said Wednesday he could not confirm.

“Obviously we can’t predict the future, but we will continue to support our reform partners,” said spokesman Ross McMullin.

“Denise Specht, president of Education Minnesota, said she’s not surprised StudentsFirst is scaling back.

“National education franchises like StudentsFirst struggle to find an audience in Minnesota because they sell policies developed far away by people who don’t know our schools,” she said. “So they push ideas that appeal to wealthy donors around the country, but don’t quite fit in Minnesota, which has some of the best schools and students in the nation.”

Florida is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the privatizers, so perhaps StudentsFirst is superfluous there. If they are cutting staff elsewhere, that’s good news. Maybe Rhee is yesterday’s news.

Categories Minnesota, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

Joyce Murdock Feilke: What Are We Doing to the Children?

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
27

A comment from a reader, Joyce Murdock Feilke, in Texas:

“As a mental health professional in Texas schools, I can relate to this teacher’s comment: “The students are beginning to “check out”.

“Dissociation is how children often cope with stress which they are developmentally unprepared to process. When it becomes chronic in their daily environment, it can lead to mental illness, since it impacts their social and emotional development.

“The age inappropriate focus on performance and data with age inappropriate material and methods related to high stakes testing, has created an authoritarian environment of fear, intimidation, and boredom for children in elementary schools. This performance based reward/punishment environment is the same punitive classical conditioning (behaviorism) that is used to “train” dogs and zoo animals.

“I have observed the increasing symptoms of emotional desensitization in children in Texas elementary schools and spoken up and written articles about it for the past two years . After a time in this environment, many children will begin to look more like prisoners of war than normal healthy children. They lose vitality, spontaneity, and the ability for imaginative play. They have difficulty with scientific thinking and using higher level thinking skills. They become obedient and submissive to authority, and function more robotic. The symptoms of traumatic stress: Regression, Dissociation, and Constriction, are similar in PTSD, BOS, and “Battered Child Syndrome”: In these children’s daily school environment, it is not “post” as after acute trauma, but it is “chronic”, and has high potential to cause permanent psychological damage in the form of personality disorders (mental illness).

“What many of us in Texas schools originally thought to be soaring rates of High Functioning Autism (HFA), which also has symptoms of regression, dissociation, and constriction, is now thought to be stress related rather than HFA. For young children who still have a developing brain, being forced to function in a chronic state of hyper vigilance and/or hypoarousal or hyperarousal, will become “hard wired” into the personality. It changes their brain chemistry. CCSS is creating Anxiety Disorders and Depression that many children will suffer for a lifetime.

“Few politicians or “reformers” have listened to the voices of mental health professionals or educators who are warning about the potential for psychological harm in this CCSS (and Texas STAAR) environment. After writing numerous professional articles and reports for state legislators, only to have them ignored, I wrote the same message in the rhyme of Dr Suess: Here is my warning about CCSS and Texas STAAR, which I will keep repeating until someone listens:

Categories Childhood, Testing, Texas

Teacher: No Time For Teaching, Only Testing

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
55

This teacher laments the explosion of testing in school, which has reduced or eliminated time for play, recess, and activities. This is the brave new world of Common Core and PARCC:

H/she writes:

“The Common Core and PARCC will ruin education as we know it..And, of course, it is all part of the overall plan. My school starts PARCC this next school year. My 2.5 hour paper and pencil test (in only one subject).. will be replaced by three (3) two hour “tasks” in February. (My students will have to sit down at a computer THREE times at 2 hours each in February.) I’m not done yet….In May my students have to sit down at the computer for two (2) hour tests on the computer. My 2.5 hour paper and pencil test is now replaced by 10 hours of testing for only one subject. My students will also do the same amount of testing in three (3) other subjects. My students now will be completing 40 hours of testing on a computer in a given year. Oh, and my students are only 11 and 12 years old. They yearn to go outside and play kickball and basketball at recess. But, they have no recess. They only have 10 extra minutes after they finish lunch to play outside.

“I was blessed to teach in the what I now know were the “good ole days” of yesteryear. I dearly miss and mourn for those years. I was able to teach through fun and meaningful learning activities! We had TIME! (: As I go through my files over my almost 30 year career in the same subject and grade level, I don’t begin to get the material taught and covered as what I used to. I have thick files of learning activities that I never get to anymore. The curriculum director at our school has already said that he has no clue how he will get all that testing done for all of our kids. He said there is a 4 week window in February and April/May, so students will be gone at different times in my classroom. It will be a nightmare.

“It’s a shame that Pearson has to take away the childhood of our children, so they can earn their millions. I teach children. They are children. They love to run, play, draw, make faces, jump up and down, play tag, tease each other, hide, run around, make jokes, and enjoy being a child. With all of these hours of testing, I will not have time to teach anymore. The test preparation for a 2.5 hour test was bad enough, but this is totally ridiculous. Then, take the time to read over the Common Core and you will laugh to yourself. In Language Arts, they will be teaching adverbs to 3rd graders, with not much more emphasis on it after that. I think they know the Common Core will be the bullet that finally kills all public education in the U.S. The kids will not score well on this silly curriculum, which will be recorded on the teacher’s evaluation . . .and teachers will be let go. Yes, it’s all a part of the sad overall plan. It’s evident that the Common Core was created by people who knew very little about the developmental stages of our children. No one ever mentions Piaget anymore. It’s all so sad. But, Sasha and Alieah don’t have to follow these communist socialist education rules. Do they?”

Categories Childhood, Common Core, Pearson, Standardized Testing

Where Is Governor Cuomo’s Running Mate?

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
12

A blogger has been looking for Governor Cuomo’s running mate. It seems she is a strong supporter of gun rights but not a friend to immigrants. The trick for Cuomo is to let her talk in conservative districts upstate but keep her under wraps in New York City and the liberal suburbs.

Perdido Street School writes:

“Where in the world is former US Rep. Kathy Hochul?

“The one-time Buffalo-area congresswoman known for her strong support of gun ownership rights and her fervid opposition to giving state privileges to illegal aliens has all but disappeared from public view since Gov. Cuomo picked her in May as his running mate for lieutenant governor.

“Key state Democrats told The Post that Cuomo has ordered Hochul “kept under wraps,’’ in the words of one, to prevent her more conservative views from upending his re-election campaign among liberal New York City Democrats, especially Hispanics.

“No extended interviews, no press conferences, no TV or radio appearances, no nothing. It’s like she’s under lock and key,’’ said a senior elected Democrat.

“Hochul, who received a top rating from the National Rifle Association when she ran for Congress and strongly opposed former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s efforts to grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens when she was Erie County clerk, was chosen by Cuomo as part of his aggressive effort to win over Western New York voters.”

Categories Cuomo, Andrew

A Mom in Utah: Next Year We Opt Out of Abusive Testing

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
27

A comment from a Mad Mom in Utah. When the parents wise up and act in concert to protect their children, the toxic reform hoax will collapse.

She writes:

“I live in Utah and I have a third and fourth grader that completed the AIR SAGE test this last school year. Yes, those test are just as long as reported for my children. These tests were given over a number of days and my children suffered from high anxiety on these days and they were exhausted. After the testing was finished I asked them how they felt about it and they said they didn’t really like it because it was long and hard (there is no ceiling). I also heard from my children that some kids in their classes cried or just put their heads down and quit, which is interesting because some of the questions were supposed to get easier if they get a wrong answer on a harder question.

“I spoke with a retiring third grade teacher in another district to see if her experience with SAGE was similar and she said it was awful for the children. She said the tests lasted up to 10 hours for some children because of the essay section. Although, she said she had two students finish the essay in 10 minutes and then they hid under their desks.

“The crazy thing is that in Utah State Code R277-515-4 Educator Responsibility for Maintaining a Safe Learning Environment in Section B4 it states educators “shall take action to protect a student from any known condition detrimental to that student’s physical health, mental health, safety, or learning”. But right after this section, in B5, it states their duty on administering all of this testing. So, which is it Utah? Because I can attest that this testing is doing more harm than good for our children. Should educators administer the tests and remain silent (which I think they are being told to do) or should educators share their experiences so we can learn from them and hopefully do better?

“Shame on those in the position of power in my state for making this happen. And shame on me for allowing my children to be the guinea pigs. I know better; but I was curious. They won’t be taking SAGE tests next year.

“Thank you to all of those that have stood up and have been brave! You have educated me and reminded me that I too can be brave. I have a voice and it is time to use it.”

Categories Parents, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Students, Testing

Why Taking Notes By Hand Is Better Than Taking Notes by Laptop

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2014 //
62

We have been told that buying a laptop or a tablet for every student is a civil rights issue. Vendors of new technology might find it awkward to make such a claim for their products, but “reformers” do not.

Lest the inevitable technology boosters complain that I am spreading doubt, let me iterate and reiterate that I love technology. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge its drawbacks.

An article in Scientific American warns, “Don’t Take Notes with a laptop.”

Why? Students using a laptop tend to transcribe the teacher or professor’s remarks verbatim.

“Obviously it is advantageous to draft more complete notes that precisely capture the course content and allow for a verbatim review of the material at a later date. Only it isn’t. New research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer demonstrates that students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more. Across three experiments, Mueller and Oppenheimer had students take notes in a classroom setting and then tested students on their memory for factual detail, their conceptual understanding of the material, and their ability to synthesize and generalize the information. Half of the students were instructed to take notes with a laptop, and the other half were instructed to write the notes out by hand. As in other studies, students who used laptops took more notes. In each study, however, those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops.”

Why the difference?

“Writing by hand is slower and more cumbersome than typing, and students cannot possibly write down every word in a lecture. Instead, they listen, digest, and summarize so that they can succinctly capture the essence of the information. Thus, taking notes by hand forces the brain to engage in some heavy “mental lifting,” and these efforts foster comprehension and retention. By contrast, when typing students can easily produce a written record of the lecture without processing its meaning, as faster typing speeds allow students to transcribe a lecture word for word without devoting much thought to the content.”

Categories Technology, Computers

Politico: AFT Opens Up Common Core Debate

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2014 //
90

Stephanie Simon of politico.com reports that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has invited members to debate the Common Core standards at the organization’s convention in Los Angeles.

Until now, Weingarten and the AFT have strongly defended the standards. But she has been reconsidering their value over the past 15 months. In April 2013, she said in a major speech in Néw York City that the standards should be separated from high-stakes testing because there had been inadequate preparation for them—little or no professional development, materials, or other necessary tools. In Néw York state, implementation of Common Core testing was hurried and slipshod. The passing marks were set so high that 70% of students failed–failure by design.

The Common Core standards have recently been in free fall. The Gates Foundation–which paid over $2 billion to write and promote the Common Core–has called for a moratorium on using the results for punishing teachers. The Chicago Teachers Union flatly rejected the Common Core standards. State after state have dropped the standards or the tests or both.

Now Weingarten is inviting members to weigh in.

Simon writes:

“The American Federation of Teachers will open its annual convention Friday morning with a startling announcement: After years of strongly backing the Common Core, the union now plans to give its members grants to critique the academic standards — or to write replacement standards from scratch.
It’s a sign that teachers are frustrated and fed up — and they’re making their anger heard, loud and clear.

“The AFT will also consider a resolution — drafted by its executive council — asserting that the promise of the Common Core has been corrupted by political manipulation, administrative bungling, corporate profiteering and an invalid scoring system designed to ensure huge numbers of kids fail the new math and language arts exams that will be rolled out next spring. An even more pointed resolution flat out opposing the standards will also likely come up for a vote.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/american-federation-of-teachers-common-core-108793.html#ixzz37B0IG6ju

Categories Common Core, Resistance, U.S. Department of Education, Unions
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