Believe it or not, the Public Editor of the New York Times–the newspaper’s ombudsman–published a letter by teacher Heidi Reich about the flaws of the Common Core. This was amazing and gratifying to see because up until now the “newspaper of record” has failed to print a single story critical of the Common Core or that reflected the views of informed critics, especially teachers. Instead the Times has tried to sell the line that only crazed Tea Party extremists and a handful of leftist extremists question the wisdom of these wonderful national standards.
Heidi Reich’s letter explains the state’s failure to provide support, resources, and guidance for teachers, whose jobs will be tied to test results. She ends her letter in the Times on this note:
“It would be duplicitous for the powers that be to withhold those expectations from us if they were even close to having established them, but we are all too aware that, unfortunately, Pearson and others are scrambling madly to write tests (for billions and billions of dollars) that they have no time to field test, which has already resulted in chaos and utter confusion in lower grades in NY State. My colleagues and I have NO problem holding students to high standards as long as those standards are clearly conveyed to us and as long as we have time to develop appropriate curricula and activities. (We would have used the summer to do this if the standards had been available before September — not happily, but we would have done so.) The current situation is diametrically opposed to that. And I must reiterate my disappointment that The Times, the only paper of record as far as I am concerned, totally missed the point: that parents and students and educators are ALL up in arms about the Common Core, not just extremist politicians on both sides, because to us, the Common Core standards are not even standards. They are vague ideas being developed (for huge personal profit) by billionaires and testing companies, imposed upon teachers, students and parents with complete disregard for education, learning and progress.”
I was especially pleased to see Heidi Reich’s letter, because it was originally written in response to a piece I posted on April 20, called “Why Doesn’t the New York Times Understand the Controversy Over the Common Core?” The post expressed frustration with the insistence by the editorial board, the opinion writers, and the reporters that the Common Core was the best thing ever and that its only critics were extremists. A column by David Brooks, echoing the conventional wisdom framed by Arne Duncan, ridiculed the critics as part of a circus of extremists. The final straw was when a first-page story portrayed the battle over the Common Core as an intramural struggle between “moderate” Jeb Bush, who loves Common Core (but hates public education) and the even more extreme Ted Cruz. My post listed a series of crucial issues that the Times overlooked, while ignoring the voices of teachers, administrators, and parents who had strong concerns a bout the rapid adoption of untested national standards.
Soon after my post was published, a reader recommended that everyone write to the public editor of the New York Times. four hours later, Heidi Reich posted a comment to say that she had done exactly that, explaining why she–an experienced and successful math teacher–was critical of the Common Core. .
This is the comment that Reich posted at 4:27 pm on April 20, and it is very close to what the Times published today.
hreich
April 20, 2014 at 4:27 pm
This is the letter I sent to Ms. Sullivan.
Dear Ms. Sullivan,
I’m writing to express my dismay at the Times’s representation of opposition to the Common Core. I’m sure you have received many letters so far, some from “extremist” politicians, including Republicans and leaders of various teachers’ unions, sure; but others from parents, moderately political teachers and possibly even a student or two. I am a teacher and have been for 15 years which means I am right in the middle of my career. I have been recognized for my teaching by Math for America (I have been a “Master Teacher” for eight or so years now), am locally respected (sorry, no data to support that) and have loved my job for all of these years. Now I find that the nutty wacky whims of the Department of Education under Bloomberg and Klein have been dwarfed by NYS and the federal government’s desire to implement truly difficult standards in a matter of months. We (teachers) are required to write curriculum based on almost NO information, tailor said curriculum to testing about which there are NO data, and still teach our five classes of 34 students a day without skipping a beat.
I imagine you are thinking, why do you need to tailor curriculum to tests, especially if the tests don’t even exist yet? Sure, it has something to do with our jobs being on the line if our students don’t surpass some standard or other (sorry, but to us it all seems just so very arbitrary), but more to the point, no reform means anything until you see what assessment is going to be. We are accustomed to writing our curricula by determining what it is we want our students to be able to do and then designing activities and lessons to convey those expectations and to train students to accomplish goals. It would be duplicitous for the powers that be to withhold those expectations from us if they were even close to having established them, but we are all too aware that, unfortunately, Pearson and others are scrambling madly to write tests (for billions and billions of dollars) that they have no time to field test, which has already resulted in chaos and utter confusion in lower grades in NY State. My colleagues and I have NO problem holding students to high standards as long as those standards are clearly conveyed to us and as long as we have time to develop appropriate curricula and activities. (We would have used the summer to do this if the standards had been available before September — not happily, but we would have done so.) The current situation is diametrically opposed to that. And I must reiterate my disappointment that the NYT, the only paper of record as far as I am concerned, totally missed the point: that parents and students and educators are ALL up in arms about the Common Core, not just extremist politicians on both sides, because to us, the CC standards are not even standards. They are vague ideas being developed (for huge personal profit) by billionaires and testing companies, imposed upon teachers, students and parents with complete disregard for education, learning and progress. And there, Ms. Sullivan, is your story.
Thanks and very best wishes,
Heidi Reich
Congratulations to Heidi Reich! You spoke eloquently for many of us whose views go unnoticed by the New York Times and the mainstream media.
Now, let’s see whether their reporters follow up by writing articles telling the facts about the origins of the Common Core, about the absence of classroom teachers from the writing group for the standards, about the absence of early childhood educators and educators of students with disabilities, about the overrepresentation of employees the testing industry on the writing committee, about why Common Core was quickly adopted by 46 states (to be eligible for the $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funding), about the criticism by leading scholarly organizations of tying teacher evaluations to student test scores, about the lack of evidence that higher, more rigorous standards produces higher achievement, and about the corporate interests now pushing Common Core. None of these facts are conspiracy theory but all have been neglected by the New York Times, which has faithfully parroted the narrative shaped by the advocates for the Common Core.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Front page article in NYTimes today about Broad Foundation financial support for charters
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Appears as if the Walton Foundation is racing to the top of the “corporate profiteer” ladder as this is the front page article link in the NY Times today…
They virtually “own” the DC School system… and they provide “free” (processed junk food) breakfasts to many title one public schools in Prince George’s County MD.
How can Americans possibly trust anything the Walton Foundation gets involved with? Walmart is no shining example of how to treat its workers – that is for sure.
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I tried to post in the comment section for this article and it was rejected by the old graying lady. Totalitarian tactics have no place in this country.
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Yup. I suppose they chose to run this one because it doesn’t reject the “standards” but simply rejects not being given the time to prepare and a sense of what kids are being prepared for.
I doubt VERY seriously that the Times would publish an incisive scholarly critique of the standards themselves, one that reveals them for the hackneyed, amateurish, unimaginative drivel that they are.
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Exactly Bob. As teachers, we should know better. “It’s the implementation” refrain gives the CCSS implicit support. NO!
More time to adjust to crappy, untestable standards is request based on ignorance, delusion, fear, or stupidity. Teachers have to get off the implementation horse. It will never hunt.
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NY teacher…I think they have a lot of places….Public radio in st. Louis does have a good education reporter, and even though I am barred from commenting on all public radio articles…at the Post Dispatch, where I am still tolerated….My being barred from commenting by public radio gave me a unique perspective to praise a public radio article this week….they were barred from reporting what the state board of education is ramming through in secrecy…….Pub radio barred by Missouri from covering Normandy meeting http://interact.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1024564&sid=be37736f3d834a4b958a3b8cfbc288dc censorship is a way of life with Missouri media.
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“. . . that the Times would publish an incisive scholarly critique of the standards themselves. . . ”
You mean like this?
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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 logical 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 crap 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.
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Superb piece, Heidi!
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really beautifully written
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My biggest issue with the Times articles on the Common Core is that they repeatedly characterize this as a bottom up initiative. I posted this comment a few minutes ago:
“My concern with the Times’ coverage of the Common Core is the characterization that it came from the bottom up: that the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers pushed for it in 2010 “…to bolster the country’s competitiveness”. The Common Core was adopted by states and promoted by Governors AFTER the USDoE required that States use it as a condition to get Race To The Top waivers from No Child Left Behind. Furthermore, the USDoE’s Race To The Top required states to link teacher evaluations to student test results as part of the waiver process. The governors got on board with the Common Core and the standardized tests because the USDoE made it clear that failing to agree would result in the loss of federal dollars. If you don’t think this is true, look at your story earlier this week on Washington state’s potential loss of federal $$$.
My bottom line for the NYTimes: please stop characterizing the Common Core as something that emerged from the bottom up. It was a de facto mandate from the US Department of Education”
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It’s breathtaking to me that there has been so little SCHOLARLY critique of the Common Core in ELA. Where the _____ are the experts in instruction in literature, writing, rhetoric, grammar, vocabulary, research, argument, logic, linguistics, and so on, who should be commenting on the idiocies of these purported “standards”?
I will never understand why the authors of these amateurish “standards” haven’t been hooted off the national stage by people who actually know something about these various domains of study and about teaching in these domains.
We have politicians and policy wonks who don’t know SQUAT about teaching vocabulary or teaching the short story proclaiming, all the time, that this amateurish, backward, unimaginative bullet list is some sort of Great Leap Forward.
It’s shocking, to me, that people don’t recognize that these are scholarly disciplines about which something is actually known. If a group of amateur non-physicians had presumed to write new “standards” for practicing medicine, the reaction would have been intense and immediate. I really don’t see the difference here.
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I suppose that people have gotten so used to the similarly amateurish state bullet lists that they are inured to hackneyed pablum like the Core, and so when presented with such a list, they don’t examine it critically, don’t think about the far more interesting and important alternatives to much of what is in Lord Coleman’s bullet list, and don’t notice what is MISSING but key.
Perhaps there is a boiled frog phenomenon occurring here. Perhaps people have been so numbed by a decade of NCLB and shoddy state “standards” that they will simply let it pass when people refer to work this unimaginative and pedestrian as “higher standards.”
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The link above is an example of the sort of critique that the purported “standards” have not been subjected to. These “standards” would not survive any sort of close reading.
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Or maybe it’s because, like my state, people are being threatened. Teachers in my state received an email last week that told us if we told students about the ability to opt out of the Common Core tests, we could lose our licenses. The union lawyer told me that they can do that. I was even told to have my children stop telling their friends about opting out, because I might lose my license for that, too.
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What is your state, Anonymous?
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What is that state…that letter needs to go PUBLIC!
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We should be thanking the public editor in a comment in NYT. Not here. I did as follows:
Thanks to Margaret Sullivan for sharing a real teacher’s frustration with how the Common Core teaching standards have become “all powerful” despite never having been properly field-tested. Most teachers (I‘m retired CT civics teacher) feel The Times & its education reporters have had their heads turned by the rich & powerful who have launched well-funded programs to “fix” our nation’s public schools even though these men (plug in former Mayor Bloomberg or Bill Gates) never have been a parent of a student in an urban public school. They saw money to be made. NYT needs to use its investigative skills see how textbook publishing companies are driving these so-called reforms. These reforms are testing driven to save the textbook industry’s “business model” from going the way print newspapers seem to be going. Our schools are not failing because teachers do not know what to teach or how to do it. They are failing because poor districts don’t have the money for small class sizes, for smart boards, for computers and in some cases for decent libraries, adequate paper supplies, or a school nurse every day. Schools in wealthy districts are not failing, despite what the media repeats.
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well said!
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Nice job Gailj2!
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Thank you, everyone, for both your support and criticisms. I agree that my letter was pathetically moderate. My true feelings are not moderate. But I wanted Margaret Sullivan to listen so I reined in my opinion, which in truth is practically identical to Bob Shepherd’s, NY Teacher’s, and Ms. Ravitch’s. (I had no idea she’d publish my letter. I just wanted her to consider better coverage of the debate.) It’s clear to anyone who needs to use them to shape instruction that this year’s “standards” are no more revolutionary than last year’s, or the year’s before, and so forth. My subject, mathematics, has seen five “reforms” in the 15 years I’ve been teaching. None has managed to “fix” our students (whom we know to be not broken). We know what a joke it is to pretend to do a major overhaul (which coincidentally results in the purchase of new textbooks and test-prep materials). But the NYT-reading civilian world doesn’t know that, at least not yet. Baby steps.
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Heidi, your letter was outstanding!!! I suspected as much. It was beautifully written and showed an understanding of what would work in the venue.
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How wonderful that you are BOTH a mathematician and a very capable writer! Your students are lucky.
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A letter like this one, Heidi, with this particular message, can prove to be extraordinarily important. It appears to me to be crafted to hit a nerve. It’s brilliant, rhetorically. Just brilliant.
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I have a new term for sending in an opinion to counter the “ed reformy” opinions posted in the NY Times.. (to the NY Times)… let us call this “Reiching the Wrong” in honor of your hopefully trend-setting accomplishment!!!!!
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wonderful
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Wow! Wonderful!
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“Hackneyed pablum” is it, exactly.
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Congratulations Heidi! I told you your letter was good! I am a tough audience.
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*blushing*
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Public Education has long become a billion dollar industry, according to a report put out way back in 2007 by Thomas Meldon, professor in the Benerd School of Education at the University of the Pacific in California, and editor of Teacher Education Quarterly, and Bruce A. Jones, professor and director of the David C. Anchin Center at the University of South Florida.
In their fact finding, they state that companies that produce educational materials and supplies were (then) over the billion dollar threshold, with product lines rapidly expanding.
Fast forward almost 7 years later and in the perfect storm of NCLB and Race to the Top, profits are at a record high while teacher’s pedagogical autonomy and basic job rights remain at an all time low.
Ultimately, children absorb this “system” as they’re being jam packed into assembly line style teaching with frequent and numerous tests. The extent of testing narrows the curriculum by paying far less attention to the arts, foreign languages, athletics, and civics.
The high stakes testing culture created by the ruling power elite, most of whom are not educators or cognitive scientists, stands only to de-prioritize any discipline not measured by a standardized test. And it stands to reason that among the cruelest ironies of all is that standardized tests, which are empirically full of flaws and distortions, can never capture the truest, most accurate picture of a child’s abilities. Yet, they dominate the landscape of a student’s and teacher’s worthiness. For now, the testing companies conjure up the imagery of a crass monster, a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to expire, thrashing its psychometric tail in a frenzy of might and will.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Concrete Jungle” described the horrible working conditions inside Chicago’s Meat packing industry, but the educational testing complex is fast producing the same tone of darkness, productivity, and obedience inside public schools. The love of learning is left to fester in the thick grime of the sweatshop style, test-to-death academics. Such vapid curriculums will only dumb down future generations, marginalize labor rights, and fatten the pockets of upper end executive of these so called “education products and service” industries.
For fiscal year 2011, Pearson alone pulled in over one and a half billion dollars in income from its testing and publishing services. Add Pearson to other educational service companies, and one can realize an industrial complex that costs taxpayers several billion dollars annually while compromising the quality of education for the masses.
Public education is supposed to promote democracy, but as it becomes adulterated by pecuniary interests, it is undoing democracy. Ultimately, it will be alliances between parents and teachers only, and not government or the anemic education unions, that will, to some degree of hopeful probability, reverse the trends in education policy. While there is hope for real change and an expansion of equality, there is also the inevitability of a long, drawn out fight.
And as with any battle, one is not immune to the consequences of excellent teachers being faultily measured and characterized by a hastily thrown together and overly polticized system. Equally bad are the consequences of a poorly educated society. Catalyzing those unthinkable consequences are many corporations and “think tanks” that have jumped on the “reform” bandwagon to fulfill agendas that have little or nothing to do with equalizing educational opporutnity. The very factions that purport to defend the poor and vulnerable, like the Walton family and Eil Broad to name a few, are the same ones who advance class stratification.
Is this class warfare? You decide.
In the meantime, we natives – who pay taxes, send our children to public schools, and educate – are getting very, very restless . . . .
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This is beautifully said, Robert!
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I say the same thing, often, but not nearly as well as you did…thanks.
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This acknowledgement by The Times is very good news.
For so long, the voices of dissent on Common Core specifically and Ed Reform in general, were out in the cold. The naysayers were regarded as “cranks” and defenders of the “status quo”. They had “no sense of urgency.” They were more interested in protecting teachers than “the kids”. Both parties played a role in defining the narrative and the Big Money pushed the story and made sure there was no oxygen for a dissenting opinion.
I am reminded of a similar scenario in our not-so-distant past: The Iraq War dissent. For years, no one could get the media to pay attention to the obvious. People who were amazed how we could go to war with such contrived data and specious reasoning were bullied and scolded into submission. There were many dark days when it seemed that the “Official Story” was going to be the one that history printed.
Yet, I remember being thrilled on August 18,2005 when Republican Senator Chuck Hagel publicly expressed his doubts of the story he (and America) were being told.
It was a pebble rolling down the big mountain of BS that had been constructed.
Hegel, of course, was sharply rebuked by the Bush administration and made to look like the only lone, kooky dissenter.
But then came Stephen Colbert’s extraordinary press club monologue in 2006 where he said what had to be said to a miffed Washington Press Corp and a visibly disturbed President Bush.
Because someone so brazenly said the Emperor had no clothes, more people stood up to challenge the Story. They began to express their doubts and in short order, the entire Iraq fiasco story that we had been fed was demonstrated to be a farce.
I am crossing my fingers that the supporters of Common Core, many many business interests, corporate reform school supervisors and municipal mayors and primarily Arne Duncan himself are now a tad nervous.
How will they respond to a groundswell of trepidation over their Grand Plan because, now, people have a NEW, more fact-based narrative that they will have to figure out how to dispute? How hard are they willing to fight? To what ends are they willing to go to press THEIR version of reality on the public?
We’ll soon see. The Big Money is gearing up to do just that.
We, must likewise, be ready.
I appreciate you Amigos so very much because YOU are the pebbles that will create the inevitable landslide.
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It was demonstrated to be a farce, but we were already all in, and there was no stopping the machine. Trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives later. . . .
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I wrote also to the public editor, and to the publisher, and the managing editor,a dn I copied your blog to them ,too saying:
Dear Sirs,
I respectfully suggest you think about the conversation here, because your paper once was a respected medium for genuine journalism.
I have copied what Diane Ravitch posted at her blog where
she quotes David Colemand and links to commentary of Mercedes Schneider, which represents what genuine educators feel.
Brooks is the clown, by the way… so ironic.”
Maybe, they are getting the message… there were some letters from teachers today, too.
I never thought I would see the day when the NY Times began to see the light.
I still believe they are.
One last thing:
What do YOU make of the front page story by MOTOKO RICH, “A Walmart Fortune, Spreading Charter Schools.” ? What do you think the average reader will ‘take-away’ from this oligarchs largess now that education is woefully underfunded thanks to austerity measures passed by the legislators that their money elected?
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Here’s a different kind of voice for a teacher, Lucy Caulkins.
First, the teacher (and parent) Mary<
"I love American public education. I don’t particularly love it right now, but I love it like I love baseball, apple pie, the land of immigrants and the ultimate hopes for a better life for which America has always stood.
One of the biggest reasons for America’s great standing is that its education is public.
Let’s face it. Any institution that plans to be around forever had better be having systems and plans in place for how to be continually reforming and renewing.
Recently, as I braced myself for the current round of standardized testing in my great state of NY, I had so many concerns. And, the answers I was receiving from those involved in the current Reform Agenda, just sounded, well…you decide.
For example, I am a middle school reading specialist. I teach reading to children who don’t take to reading easily. We can loosely refer to these children as having some form of dyslexia. There is so much research now about dyslexia and children who need a different pathway and time table to learn to read. For example, the research of Dr. Shaywitz and the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity out of Yale University estimates as many as one in five children have brains with other strengths, whole picture thinkers, creative, sorts of people. Reading print text is not the easiest thing for such people. Reading will need to be a grade K-12 different kind of learning experience for these children, and people.
In NY State, all children have to take the ELA and math paper/pencil print assessments. These cannot be taken with any reading supports a child may have been entitled to all year, and the tests are given without respect to the actual reading level the child has currently achieved. This is a noble gesture, because NY State wants ALL children to have access to high quality education. The “higher standards” now will assure that all children have the same access to a high quality education. And so, the 20 percent of the population who have some version of dyslexia will get to take the test that everyone else takes. This sounds good.
Reading specialists, on the other hand, are taught in their master’s degree level programs, which are based on sound educational research, to never test children at their frustration reading level. Doing so has no impact on the child’s learning. It is not instructive to the educator, and in more ways than one, it is actually hurtful to the child with dyslexia, staring at unrecognizable text or straining to sort out the print. As reading specialists we are taught in our programs that when providing remedial reading instruction to students who don’t take to reading easily, we continually diagnose through a number of assessments, and continually provide the next level of reading instruction. This makes me wonder about a recent report just released by US.Gov. that says 61 percent of teachers coming out of Teacher Ed. programs do not feel prepared to teach the high standards. I realize, I would be included in that percentage. I was not prepared in my reading specialist program to disregard the child and the child’s ability, when it comes to testing.
I have heard all kinds of tips and tricks for how to get ALL children to “survive” these tests. (Survive is the word that testing advocates I know use.) “Oh come on, the children can get something out of the 12 hour experience of testing—6 days, 2 hours a day experience.” Here are just a few examples of suggestions, “Have the child circle the magic e words he knows on the test (bike, take, mine), or have the child practice writing free writes on the blank lines of the test.” Interesting advice. I have to wonder if a child would even know what a “free write” is anymore. Schools I know of have all but eliminated the notion of “free write” as all the writing must be to the state’s… I mean to the higher standards of excellence, purpose. “Children need to have more mettle and verve.” I hear. “They should be able to sit there and be strong.” “Suck it up.”
Perhaps, all of the years of accumulated research about dyslexia and reading based learning issues, are not important anymore. We really have to rethink this. In the meantime, as a practitioner, I struggle with the sort of inhumane practice I feel I am being asked to take part in. Children want to show what they have achieved. One 12 year old child asked if he could please take an easier test, rather than his 6th grade test, which is actually written at a 6th through 8th grade level with the “higher standards.” He wanted so badly to show how much he has grown as a reader.
Another troubling component of the current Reform Agenda as carried out in NY State is the secretive nature of the tests. I think it has something to do with test security, but all I keep thinking of is subliminal messaging. Do people still believe in and practice subliminal messaging? What if test creators, Pearson, NY State, whoever else, wanted to use subliminal messaging in tests to begin to shape the next generation of young people toward ideas that the testing companies or the state wanted people to have. Just, what if? And, what if, no one but the the test creators could see those tests? Then, tests could be tools for certain messaging, right? Don’t worry, I am not going to pull a Michael Snowden here and discuss the contents NY State’s secret tests. It just makes me uncomfortable is all that in this day and age one group could have so much power over another group of people that they could get people to believe that keeping tests secret is for the good of everyone.
I know those tests are only open for discussion among the circles of the testing creation circle people. No one is really sure who is in that circle.
This year NYSED does not have a testing feedback site available as in year’s past for stakeholders, students, parents, teachers, to give feedback about the tests. It is no longer necessary they say. Apparently, parents CAN (and I believe should) ask to see their child’s test (all but the multiple choice questions— no one will ever know what multiple choice questions were asked). While I am glad and whole heartedly, as a parent, want to see my child’s tests, this does beg the question about implications for test security. The Reform Agenda is all very complicated.
Some people, in education and out of education, will say that the testing experience makes schools better. That these standardized tests, given year after year, are what will make sure that public school stays good and accountable.
I wonder, am I crazy, or is it actually proper funding, 21st century resources, a 21st century view of all people as human beings worth investing in, instructional practice reforms, reading instruction based on proven brain research, teacher and student agency that will lead to accountability in the work place, testing that makes sense with achievement valued in a wide range of subject areas, and overall a clear answer about the kind of human being we want to create for the 21st century and beyond; aren’t these the ideals that will make education great and accountable?
Of course, we have to keep reforming public education. Creating Systems of Caring in our public education centers means empowering teachers and children and all stakeholders in education. Teacher and student agency will cause teachers and students to be vested in their community schools. I imagine a place where children walk into school as learners with a job to do. They work hard all day on projects and thinking and go home at the end of the day with a feeling of accomplishment and a job well-done because they did it to the best of their ability. This is great reform and as simple as a shift in focus away from top down and back to bottom up. How do we prove such learning, and that everyone is doing their job? Let’s let all stake holders put their heads together and come up with some really good ideas. Let’s help children see that when they walk in to public school doors in September they are learners with a job to do, jobs they are vested in, not just the job “the state” gives them to do—achieve on tests."
Next, is Lucy Caulkins "thoughtful response"
"Mary, I came on the site this afternoon, thinking I would skim through responses and see if I could learn more about the tests that are, as you say, kept so secret. And so I read your entry, and am stopped short in my tracks. I am floored by the level of care and wisdom and pain in your entry–as in so many on this site. I do think all of these issues are incredibly complicated because, for example, we all lived through the years when kids with IEPs were not tested and so more and more schools labeled kids, and they were given less skilled teachers because their progress didn't 'count.' But I do wonder why we spend literally billions of dollars on tests that haven't worked, especially in this age where evidence is supposed to rule the day. Finland gives no high stakes one-size-for-all tests. But here is some good news–three minutes ago I saw that NYC schools may be able to opt out of the ELA and give PARCC instead, next year. I don't know if your school is in the city or not, but if that goes thru for NYC, presumably it might be extended to other schools. PARCC won't solve the problems you are discussing but the posts on this site make me think it is worlds more CCSS aligned than the current ELA which seems like an out-lier."
Yeah Lucy, PARCC online for dyslexics is the solution. And she is one of the leading reading specialists in America? This comment should get her license revoked.
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Did anyone see Randi Weingarten’s column in The New York Times today?
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/press/nytimes/column042714.cfm
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Thank you, I missed it. That’s what I like about this ‘place’, I stay informed. And Anthony told Gates where to get off. I know Mr Cody for many, years now, and he and Leonie Haimison and Diane, and of course, Randi, whom I met in 1999 when she saved me from the assault because she knew who I was from the standards research, and what had been done to drive me to retire.
I have corresponded with Randi for over 14 years, and I have a favorite essay by her, too
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randi-weingarten/to-innovate-look-to-those_b_1424817.html
I am happy to be talking an listening here.
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