Crazy Crawfish, aka Jason France, used to work in the assessment division of the Louisiana State Department of Education. He has sources there, and he knows the games that officials can play to make data look better or worse.
In this post, he asserts that State Commissioner of Education John White, with two years in TFA and a few years in Joel Klein’s NYC Department of Education, came to Louisiana with a strong view of what to do and how to lead the change that he thought was needed.
France says that White did not agree with Governor Jindal’s voucher plan, but went along.
He says he knew that the VAM plan was problematic.
But he also knew he had to produce higher test scores to claim victory.
What he had going for him is that the media opin Louisiana is passive, and the public can’t or won’t follow stories that involve math. That provides plenty of leeway for officials looking for a win.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Test scores are constantly manipulated in Florida as well. I am always exasperated when the legislature boasts of Jeb’s “miracle” in raising test scores (which he didn’t) and take credit for bettering the future of students through severe school grading, VAM, retention, bullying teachers with threats, embrace of NCLB and RTTT without question (and they haven’t bettered anything for those not employed by Pearson; poverty continues to rise, homeownership is down, wages are down, cost of living is up, etc.)
In election years it seems that scores always go up and when unpopular legislation that attacks teachers and public schools needs to be passed scores go down suddenly. That is until parents start complaining loudly enough then scores are changed, one year 4 times.
Amazing how flexible the almighty test scores really are. Alice would have been flummoxed since numbers mean whatever the governor and Jeb’s minions want to mean, it seems.
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Aren’t “they” all manipulating the data, everywhere? If they need to close a school, the data is bad. If they need to make a school look good, vice versa. I cannot remember where I read about, and it very well may be a high school in Newark, NJ, where even tho the numbers are good, the powers that be want to shutter it and bring in charter management. So, even when the odds are WITH you, they are against you, if that is what the privatizers and their puppets want.
In reading the instant story further, I was confused in that…was White trying to make just 3 teachers look good, and somehow skewed ALL of the data? Were numbers manipulated for the 3, but had to be adjusted for an overall score on 3 others? I really couldn’t get the gist of what happened and how so many teachers were affected by worse numbers, or perhaps better numbers?
No doubt, he was acting for his own betterment, but what I did get out of the story is that he tried very hard to point blame elsewhere, even planting evidence.
I think the Rheeformers will stop at nothing. When one tack doesn’t work, they don’t back down — their words — no, they just change the wording, or the title. Vouchers? No, lets call them scholarships. Etc. They don’t drop what they are doing, they simply repackage it. Oftentimes they use sleight of hand when wording things, for example, Students First will trick people by sentences crafted to get a certain response, which it often gets, or by offering a free “teacher appreciation” card, which isn’t free because to get it, you’re now signed up in their organization as a “supporter.” Frightening stuff.
So much of the news out there is rhetoric. Oftentimes, I have to re-read the text to find the true meaning in the context of who is spewing it.
I didn’t finish college, and I’m a regular Jane…I do not think I am stupid, but I would imagine I am not alone in trying to make sense of the senseless, and I’m sure by using rhetoric and well-crafted-to-fool-you propaganda, “they” get a lot of us, unknowingly, caught in their nets, making it look like more of us are on their side when that could not be further from the truth. Perhaps even especially so, preying on immigrants and the impoverished.
I am hoping we will all wake up from the trance. If you have no skin in the game, you likely don’t follow this situation. If you have no kids in school, are not a teacher, or not related to a teacher — you likely don’t know what is going on under your nose, and how your tax dollars are being misappropriate by the privateers. Thank goodness YOU who post and print the truth, continue to print the truth.
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http://www.louisianaweekly.com/new-orleans-nearing-a-privatized-public-school-system/
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