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Sign This Open Letter to Andreas Schleicher of OECD Against Too Much Testing!

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2014 //
17

Nearly 100 educators from around the world signed a letter warning that the over-emphasis on testing inspired by PISA was killing the joy of learning. This unelected, unaccountable organization is driving international competition and bad education policies. It is time for parents, educators, students, and researchers to join together and say “Enough is Enough.” Focus on access to education; focus on opportunity to learn; focus on the needs of children, teachers, and schools. But stop with your league tables. Stop the international Race to a mythical top. Let teachers teach. Stop enriching Pearson. Stop the ranking and rating that serves no purpose other than to corrupt education.

Please add your name to the signers of this letter. Here is the link:

http://oecdpisaletter.org/

An Open Letter: To Andreas Schleicher, OECD, Paris
Heinz-Dieter Meyer and Katie Zahedi, and signatories – 5th May 2014

Dear Dr. Schleicher,

We write to you in your capacity as OECD’s director of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). Now in its 13th year, PISA is known around the world as an instrument to rank OECD and non-OECD countries (60+ at last count) according to a measure of academic achievement of 15 year old students in mathematics, science, and reading. Administered every three years, PISA results are anxiously awaited by governments, education ministers, and the editorial boards of newspapers, and are cited authoritatively in countless policy reports. They have begun to deeply influence educational practices in many countries. As a result of PISA, countries are overhauling their education systems in the hopes of improving their rankings. Lack of progress on PISA has led to declarations of crisis and “PISA shock” in many countries, followed by calls for resignations, and far-reaching reforms according to PISA precepts.

We are frankly concerned about the negative consequences of the PISA rankings. These are some of our concerns:

-while standardized testing has been used in many nations for decades (despite serious reservations about its validity and reliability), PISA has contributed to an escalation in such testing and a dramatically increased reliance on quantitative measures. For example, in the United States, PISA has been invoked as a major justification for the recent “Race to the Top” program, which has increased the use of standardized testing for student-, teacher-, and administrator evaluations, which rank and label students, as well as teachers and administrators according to the results of tests widely known to be imperfect (see, for example, Finland’s unexplained decline from the top of the PISA table);

-in education policy, PISA, with its three-year assessment cycle, has caused a shift of attention to short-term fixes designed to help a country quickly climb the rankings, despite research showing that enduring changes in education practice take decades, not a few years to come to fruition. For example, we know that the status of teachers and the prestige of teaching as a profession has a strong influence on the quality of instruction, but that status varies strongly across cultures and is not easily influenced by short-term policy;

-by emphasizing a narrow range of measurable aspects of education, PISA takes attention away from the less measurable or immeasurable educational objectives like physical, moral, civic, and artistic development, thereby dangerously narrowing our collective imagination regarding what education is and ought to be about;

-as an organization of economic development, OECD is naturally biased in favor of the economic role of public schools. But preparing young men and women for gainful employment is not the only, and not even the main goal of public education, which has to prepare students for participation in democratic self-government, moral action, and a life of personal development, growth, and well-being;

-unlike United Nations (UN) organizations such as UNESCO or UNICEF that have clear and legitimate mandates to improve education and the lives of children around the world, OECD has no such mandate. Nor are there, at present, mechanisms of effective democratic participation in its education decision-making process;

-to carry out PISA and a host of follow-up services, OECD has embraced “public-private partnerships” and entered into alliances with multi-national for-profit companies, which stand to gain financially from any deficits—real or perceived—unearthed by PISA. Some of these companies provide educational services to American schools and school districts on a massive, for-profit basis, while also pursuing plans to develop for-profit elementary education in Africa, where OECD is now planning to introduce the PISA program;

-finally, and most importantly: the new PISA regime, with its continuous cycle of global testing, harms our children and impoverishes our classrooms, as it inevitably involves more and longer batteries of multiple-choice testing, more scripted “vendor”-made lessons, and less autonomy for our teachers. In this way PISA has further increased the already high stress-level in our schools, which endangers the well-being of our students and teachers.

These developments are in overt conflict with widely accepted principles of good educational and democratic practice:

-no reform of any consequence should be based on a single narrow measure of quality;

-no reform of any consequence should ignore the important role of non-educational factors, among which a nation’s socio-economic inequality is paramount. In many countries, including the United States, inequality has dramatically increased over the past 15 years, explaining the widening educational gap between rich and poor which education reforms, no matter how sophisticated, are unlikely to redress;

-an organization like OECD, as any organization that deeply affects the life of our communities, should be open to democratic accountability by members of those communities.

We are writing not only to point out deficits and problems. We would also like to offer constructive ideas and suggestions that may help to alleviate the above mentioned concerns. While in no way complete, they illustrate how learning could be improved without the above mentioned negative effects:

-develop alternatives to league tables: explore more meaningful and less easily sensationalized ways of reporting assessment outcomes. For example, comparing developing countries, where 15-year olds are regularly drafted into child labor, with first world countries makes neither educational nor political sense and opens OECD up for charges of educational colonialism;

-make room for participation by the full range of relevant constituents and scholarship: to date, the groups with greatest influence on what and how international learning is assessed are psychometricians, statisticians, and economists. They certainly deserve a seat at the table, but so do many other groups: parents, educators, administrators, community leaders, students, as well as scholars from disciplines like anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, linguistics, as well as the arts and humanities. What and how we assess the education of 15 year old students should be subject to discussions involving all these groups at local, national, and international levels;

-include national and international organizations in the formulation of assessment methods and standards whose mission goes beyond the economic aspect of public education and which are concerned with the health, human development, well-being and happiness of students and teachers. This would include the above mentioned United Nations organizations, as well as teacher, parent, and administrator associations, to name a few;

-publish the direct and indirect costs of administering PISA so that taxpayers in member countries can gauge alternative uses of the millions of dollars spent on these tests and determine if they want to continue their participation in it;

-welcome oversight by independent international monitoring teams which can observe the administration of PISA from the conception to the execution, so that questions about test format and statistical and scoring procedures can be weighed fairly against charges of bias or unfair comparisons;

-provide detailed accounts regarding the role of private, for-profit companies in the preparation, execution, and follow-up to the tri-annual PISA assessments to avoid the appearance or reality of conflicts of interest;

-slow down the testing juggernaut. To gain time to discuss the issues mentioned here at local, national, and international levels, consider skipping the next PISA cycle. This would give time to incorporate the collective learning that will result from the suggested deliberations in a new and improved assessment model.

We assume that OECD’s PISA experts are motivated by a sincere desire to improve education. But we fail to understand how your organization has become the global arbiter of the means and ends of education around the world. OECD’s narrow focus on standardized testing risks turning learning into drudgery and killing the joy of learning. As PISA has led many governments into an international competition for higher test scores, OECD has assumed the power to shape education policy around the world, with no debate about the necessity or limitations of OECD’s goals. We are deeply concerned that measuring a great diversity of educational traditions and cultures using a single, narrow, biased yardstick could, in the end, do irreparable harm to our schools and our students.

Sincerely,

Heinz-Dieter Meyer Katie Zahedi
State University of New York (SUNY Albany) Principal, Red Hook, New York

Signatories as of May 4, 2014:

Andrews, Paul- Professor of Mathematics Education, Stockholm University

Atkinson, Lori – New York State Allies for Public Education

Baldermann, Ingo, Professor of Protestant Theology and Didactics, Universität Siegen, Germany

Ball, Stephen J. – Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education, University of London

Barber, Melissa – Parents Against High Stakes Testing

Beckett, Lori – Winifred Mercier Professor of Teacher Education, Leeds Metropolitan University

Bender, Peter – Professor, Fakulty of Elektrotechnik, Informatik und Mathematik, Universität Paderborn, Germany

Berardi, Jillaine – Linden Avenue Middle School, Assistant Principal

Berliner, David – Regents Professor of Education at Arizona State University

Bloom, Elizabeth – EdD, Associate Professor of Education, Hartwick College

Boland, Neil – Senior Lecturer, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand

Boudet, Danielle – Oneonta Area for Public Education

Burchardt, Matthias – Academic Council; Society for Education and Knowledge, Vice-Chair, Cologne University, Germany

Burris, Carol – Principal and former Teacher of the Year, Co-Founder of New York Principals.

Cauthen, Nancy – Ph.D., Change the Stakes, NYS Allies for Public Education

Cerrone, Chris – Testing Hurts Kids; NYS Allies for Public Education

Ciaran, Sugrue – Professor, Head of School, School of Education, University College Dublin

Conneely, Claire – Programmes Director, Bridge21, Trinity College Dublin.

Danner, Helmut – Private Docent, Nairobi, Kenya

Deutermann, Jeanette – Founder Long Island Opt Out, Co-founder NYS Allies for Public Education

Devine, Nesta – Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Dodge, Arnie – Chair, Department of Educational Leadership, Long Island University

Dodge, Judith – Author, Educational Consultant

Farley, Tim – Principal, Ichabod Crane School; New York State Allies for Public Education.

Fehlmann, Ralph – Coordinator, Forum for General Education, Switzerland

Fellicello, Stacia – Principal, Chambers Elementary School

Fleming, Mary – Lecturer, School of Education, National University of Ireland, Galway

Fransson, Göran – Associate Professor of Education, University of Gävle, Sweden.

Giroux, Henry – Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

Glass, Gene – Senior Researcher, National Education Policy Center, Santa Fe, NM

Glynn, Kevin – Educator, co-founder of Lace to the Top

Goldstein, Harvey – Professor of Social Statistics, University of Bristol

Gorlewski, David – Director, Educational Leadership Doctoral Program, D’Youville College.

Gorlewski, Julie – PhD, Assistant Professor, State University of New York at New Paltz

Gowie, Cheryl – Professor of Education, Siena College

Greene, Kiersten – Assistant Professor of Literacy, State University of New York at New Paltz

Gruschka, Gruschka – Professor, Educational Sciences, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany

Haimson, Leonie – Parent Advocate and Director of “Class Size Matters”

Hannon, Cliona – Director, Trinity Access Programmes, Trinity College Dublin

Heinz, Manuela – Director of Teaching Practice, School of Education, National University of Ireland Galway

Hoefele, Joachim – Department of Applied Linguistics, University for Applied Sciences, Zurich, Switzerland

Hopmann, Stefan Thomas – Professor, Institute for Educational Sciences, Universität Wien

Hughes, Michelle – Principal, High Meadows Independent School

Jahnke, Thomas – Institute of Mathematics, Universität Potsdam, Germany

Jury, Mark – Chair, Education Department, Siena College

Kahn, Hudson Valley Against Common Core

Kastner, Marie-Theres – President of League of Catholic Parents, Germany

Kayden, Michelle – LOTE Teacher, Linden Avenue Middle School Red Hook, NY

Kempf, Arlo – Program Coordinator of School and Society, OISE, University of Toronto

Kilfoyle, Marla – NBCT, General Manager of BATs

Kissling, Beat – Psychologist and Education Science, Gymnasium and University Instructor, Zürich, Switzerland

Klein, Hans Peter – Chair, Didactics of Bio-Sciences, Goethe Universität Frankfurt

Kraus, Josef – German Teacher Association, President, Germany

Krautz,Jochen – Professor, Department of Art and Design, Bergische Universität Wuppertal

Labaree, David – Professor of Education, Stanford University

Lankau, Ralf – Professor, Media Design, Hochschule Offenburg, Germany

Leonardatos, Harry – Principal, High School, Clarkstown, NY

Liesner, Andreas – Professor, Educational Sciences, Universität Hamburg

Liessmann, Konrad Paul – Professor, Institut für Philosophie, Universität Wien

MacBeath, John – Professor Emeritus, Director of Leadership for Learning, University of Cambridge

McLaren, Peter – Distinguished Professor, Chapman University

McNair, Jessica – Co-founder Opt-Out CNY, parent member NYS Allies for Public Education

Meyer, Heinz-Dieter – Associate Professor, Education Governance & Policy, State University of New York (Albany)

Meyer, Tom – Associate Professor of Secondary Education, State University of New York at New Paltz

Millham, Rosemary – Ph. D., Science Coordinator, Master Teacher Campus Director, SUNY New Paltz

Millham, Rosemary – Science Coordinator/Assistant Professor, Master Teacher Campus Director, State University of New York, New Paltz

Oliveira Andreotti, Vanessa – Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequality, and Global Change, University of British Columbia, Canada

Mitchell, Ken – Lower Hudson Valley Superintendents Council

Mucher, Stephen – Director, Bard Master of Arts in Teaching Program, Los Angeles

Naison, Mark – Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University; Co-Founder, Badass Teachers Association

Muench, Richard – Professor of Sociology, Universitaet Bamberg

Nielsen, Kris – Author, Children of the Core

Noddings, Nel – Professor (emerita) Philosophy of Education, Stanford University

Noguera, Pedro – Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, New York University

Nunez, Isabel – Associate Professor, Concordia University, Chicago

O’Toole-Brennan, Kathleen – Programmes Manager, Trinity Access Programmes, Trinity College Dublin

Pallas, Aaron – Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education, Columbia University

Parmentier, Michael – Museum Pedagogy, Göttingen, Germany

Peters, Michael – Professor, University of Waikato, Honorary Fellow, Royal Society New Zealand

Pongratz, Ludwig – Professor, Institute for Pedagogy, Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Germany

Pugh, Nigel – Principal, Richard R Green High School of Teaching, New York City

Radtke, F.O. – Professor (em), Education Sciences, Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt

Ravitch, Diane – Research Professor, New York University

Reitz,Tilman – Junior Professor, Sociology, Universitaet Jena

Rekus, Juergen – Institute for Vocational and General Pedagogy, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), Germany

Rivera-Wilson, Jerusalem – Senior Faculty Associate and Director of Clinical Training and Field Experiences, University at Albany

Roberts, Peter – Professor, School of Educational Studies and Leadership, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Rougle, Eija – Instructor, SUNY Albany

Rudley, Lisa – Director: Education Policy-Autism Action Network

Saltzman, Janet – Science Chair, Physics Teacher, Red Hook High School

Schirlbauer, Alfred – Professor, Institute for Education Sciences, University of Vienna, Austria

Schniedewind, Nancy – Professor of Education, Suny New Paltz

Schopf, Heribert – Professor, School of Pedagogics and Education, Vienna, Austria

Silverberg, Ruth – Associate Professor, College of Staten Island – CUNY

Sperry, Carol – Professor of Education, Emerita, Millersville University

Sjøberg, Svein – Professor (em), Science Education, University of Oslo, Norway

Spring, Joel – Professor, Education Policy, City University of New York

St. John, Edward – Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan

Suzuki, Daiyu – Teachers College at Columbia University / Co-founder Edu 4

Swaffield, Sue – Senior Lecturer, Educational Leadership and School Improvement, University of Cambridge

Tangney, Brendan – Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin

Tanis, Bianca – Parent Member: ReThinking Testing

Thomas, Paul – Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

Thrupp, Martin – Professor of Education, University of Waikato

Tobin, KT – Founding member, ReThinking Testing

Tomlinson, Sally – Emeritus Professor, Goldsmiths College, University of London; Senior Research Fellow, Department of Education, Oxford University

Tuck, Eve – Coordinator of Native American Studies, State University of New York at New Paltz

VanSlyke-Briggs, Kjersti – Associate Professor, SUNY Oneonta

Vohns, Andreas – Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, School of Education, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

Wilson, Elaine – Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Wittmann, Erich – Professor of Mathematics Education, Technical University of Dortmund

Wrigley, Terry – Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Ballarat, Australia

Zahedi, Katie – Principal, Linden Ave Middle School, Red Hook, New York

Zhao, Yong – Professor of Education, Presidential Chair, University of Oregon

Categories International, Resistance, Testing

Amrein-Beardsley: What Kind of States Won Race to the Top $$$?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2014 //
11

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley noticed an interesting pattern among the states that won Race to the Top funding.

Most were states with highly inequitable school finance systems, as noted by the Education Law Center of New Jersey.

But Beardsley saw other correlations.

She writes:

“In this case, correlational analyses reveal that state-level policies that rely at least in part on VAMs are indeed more common in states that allocate less money than the national average for schooling as compared to the nation. More specifically, they are more likely found in states in which yearly per pupil expenditures are lower than the national average (as demonstrated in the aforementioned post). They are more likely found in states that have more centralized governments, rather than those with more powerful counties and districts as per local control. They are more likely to be found in more highly populated states and states with relatively larger populations of poor and racial and language minority students. And they are more likely to be found in red states in which residents predominantly vote for the Republican Party.”

These were the states most willing to evaluate teachers by test scores (VAM), despite the absence of evidence for doing so.

Categories Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

Anya Kamenetz at NPR: A Brief and Useful Guide to Testing

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2014 //
57

This piece by Anya Kamenetz is an excellent brief summary to standardized testing. It explains in lay men’s terms the difference between formative and summative assessment. It explains the concepts of reliability and validity.

It points out that schools have tested students throughout history, but leaves out a few vital facts.

Historically, most tests were written by classroom teachers for their own students, not by mega-corporations. Teachers want to know whether students learned what they were taught.

It does not explain the roots of standardized testing, which were firmly planted in the concept of intelligence or IQ. It does not explain that the early twentieth century psychologists who created the first standardized IQ tests believed that IQ was fixed and innate. They also firmly believed that IQ was determined by race and ethnicity. The most eminent psychologists wrote books and articles that we would today consider racist.

If you want to learn more about the history of standardized testing, read my book “Left Back,” chapter 4. The chapter title is “This Brutal Pessimism,” which is a quote from Alfred Binet, who was the father of group testing.

Categories Standardized Testing

Breaking News: Chicago Teachers Union Opposes Common Core

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
57

The Chicago Teachers Union adopted a resolution opposing the Common Core.

This is big news because the parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, accepted millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation to support and promote the Common Core.

Fred Klonsky posted the following account of the CTU action:

Chicago Teachers Union adopts resolution opposing the Common Core State Standards.

MAY 7, 2014

Today the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates passed a resolution opposing the Common Core standards.

A similar New Business Item was not permitted to be voted on at the recent Illinois Education Association state convention. It was ruled out of order by IEA President Cinda Klickna. The NBI had been introduced by veteran Park Ridge fifth grade teacher and delegate, Jerry Mulvihill.

From CTUnet:

Today, members of the House of Delegates (HOD) of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) passed the following resolution that enjoins the city’s educators to growing national opposition to the Common Core State Standards, saying the assessments disrupt student learning and consume tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration.

Now that the resolution has passed, the CTU will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core for teaching and assessment; and be it further and will work to organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the law that increases the expansion of nationwide controls over educational issues.

Common Core’s origins can be traced to the 2009 Stimulus Bill which gave $4.35 billion to the federal Department of Education which created the “Race to the Top” competition between states. In order to qualify for funding, the states needed to adopt Common Core with the added incentive that participating states would be exempted from many of the more onerous provisions of George Bush’s “No child left behind” program.

“I agree with educators and parents from across the country, the Common Core mandate represents an overreach of federal power into personal privacy as well as into state educational autonomy,” said CTU President Karen Lewis, a nationally board certified teacher. “Common Core eliminates creativity in the classroom and impedes collaboration. We also know that high-stakes standardized testing is designed to rank and sort our children and it contributes significantly to racial discrimination and the achievement gap among students in America’s schools.”

The official text of the resolution follows:

Resolution to Oppose the Common Core State Standards

WHEREAS, the purpose of education is to educate a populace of critical thinkers who are capable of shaping a just and equitable society in order to lead good and purpose-filled lives, not solely preparation for college and career; and

WHEREAS, instructional and curricular decisions should be in the hands of classroom professionals who understand the context and interests of their students; and

WHEREAS, the education of children should be grounded in developmentally appropriate practice; and

WHEREAS, high quality education requires adequate resources to provide a rich and varied course of instruction, individual and small group attention, and wrap-around services for students; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core State Standards were developed by non-practitioners, such as test and curriculum publishers, as well as education reform foundations, such as the Gates and Broad Foundations, and as a result the CCSS better reflect the interests and priorities of corporate education reformers than the best interests and priorities of teachers and students; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core State Standards were piloted incorrectly, have been implemented too quickly, and as a result have produced numerous developmentally inappropriate expectations that do not reflect the learning needs of many students; and

WHEREAS, imposition of the Common Core State Standards adversely impacts students of highest need, including students of color, impoverished students, English language learners, and students with disabilities; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core State Standards emphasize pedagogical techniques, such as close reading, out of proportion to the actual value of these methods – and as a result distort instruction and remove instructional materials from their social context; and

WHEREAS, despite the efforts of our union to provide support to teachers, the significant time, effort, and expense associated with modifying curricula to the Common Core State Standards interferes and takes resources away from work developing appropriate and engaging courses of study; and

WHEREAS, the assessments that accompany the Common Core State Standards (PARCC and Smarter Balance) are not transparent in that –teachers and parents are not allowed to view the tests and item analysis will likely not be made available given the nature of computer adaptive tests; and

WHEREAS, Common Core assessments disrupt student learning, consuming tremendous amounts of time and resources for test preparation and administration; and

WHEREAS, the assessment practices that accompany Common Core State Standards – including the political manipulation of test scores – are used as justification to label and close schools, fail students, and evaluate educators; therefore be it

RESOLVED that the Chicago Teachers Union opposes the Common Core State Standards (and the aligned tests) as a framework for teaching and learning; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union advocates for an engaged and socially relevant curriculum that is student-based and supported by research, as well as for supports such as those described in the Chicago Teachers Union report, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union will embark on internal discussions to educate and seek feedback from members regarding the Common Core and its impact on our students; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union will lobby the Illinois Board of Education to eliminate the use of the Common Core State Standards for teaching and assessment; and be it further

RESOLVED, the Chicago Teachers Union will organize other members and affiliates to increase opposition to the Common Core State Standards; and be it further

RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to the Illinois State Board of Education, the Chicago Board of Education, the Governor of Illinois, and all members of the Illinois legislative branch; and be it finally

RESOLVED, that should this resolution be passed by the CTU House of Delegates, an appropriate version will be submitted to the American Federation of Teachers for consideration at the 2014 Convention.

Categories Chicago, Common Core, Resistance

Chancellor Carmen Farina Sends a Note of Thanks to New York City’s Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
25

What a difference one election makes! For a dozen years, New York City had a Department of Education and a Mayor who viewed teachers with disdain. At best, they were checkers on a checkerboard controlled from “downtown,” doing the bidding of business-school graduates or TFA wonders who had little regard for veterans. Now, with a new mayor and a chancellor who is an experienced educator, the tone has changed. Tone matters. Respect matters. Words matter. Here is a message from Chancellor Carmen Farina to every teacher and principal in New York City.

 

 

 
Chancellor’s Memo

This week’s Chancellor’s Memo is a message for your teachers; it was sent via email to all principals and teachers on May 6.
Dear Colleagues,
Few of us remember the teachers who made us spend hours memorizing and spouting back facts. But none of us forget the ones who, with a gentle nudge or a kind word, convinced us that we could achieve endless opportunity. Sister Leonard, my English language arts teacher, was one of the memorable ones.
As a sophomore in high school, I decided to become a teacher. But unbeknownst to me, I was on a non-academic track, taking typing and stenography instead of math and other credit-bearing courses like many classmates. My advisor had apparently decided that a daughter of Spanish immigrants lacked the aptitude and wherewithal to attend college. Sister Leonard made my cause her personal mission. With her support, I caught up on all the math classes I’d missed, took the Spanish Regents exam—and became the first person in my family to go to college.
One great teacher can transform a life.

On this Teacher Appreciation Day, I want to recognize you—the City’s 75,000 public school teachers—for the countless lives you transform. Thank you for showing up every day, bringing joy to our classrooms, and working tirelessly to provide all of our students with a first-rate education.
I know this isn’t an easy job. As a New York City public school teacher for 22 years, I have walked thousands of miles in your shoes. As Chancellor, it is now my privilege to walk alongside you. My focus will always be on the critical work you do in the classroom.
As we embark on this journey together, I encourage you to think about teaching as a craft and a profession. Whether you are beginning your career in the classroom or are a veteran in our schools, our 1.1 million students rely on you. We want to help you cultivate your passion, achieve excellence, and take your skills to levels you never dreamed possible.
Thanks to our proposed contract with the teachers union, we will be able to deliver unparalleled professional learning: teachers will have a 75- to 80-minute block of time every week to share successful practices. You will have more time for parent engagement; you can even schedule appointments. In addition, the new contract offers excellent educators formal opportunities to hone their classroom practices, develop their leadership skills, and collaborate with and support other educators to improve student achievement. These are monumental changes that will help return dignity and respect to the profession. Going forward, we will give you more tools you need to succeed, including Town Halls just for teachers, and unprecedented on-the-ground support.
In honor of the hard work you do for our school children, I ask you to take some time today to remember a student whose life you have changed: the student who, like me, became the first person in her family to graduate from college; the student who has a career because you cared enough to see the potential others missed. These are the reasons we teach.
Thank you for making a difference in our children’s lives.
Warmly,
Carmen Fariña
Chancellor

 

Categories New York City, Teachers and Teaching

FairTest: 12th Grade NAEP Shows Failure of NCLB, Race to Top Strategies

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
29

FairTest comments on today’s release of 12th grade NAEP scores. Their conclusion: a dozen years of test-based accountability has had no discernible effect on the test scores of seniors.

This accords with the 2010 report of the National Research Council, which released a report saying that incentives and test-based accountability are ineffective.

Although I have never put much stock in 12th grade NAEP results, due to lack of student motivation on a test that doesn’t count, there ought to be some residual effects of 12 years of testing, testing, testing.

 

 

FairTest
National Center for Fair & Open Testing

for further information:
Bob Schaeffer: (239) 395-6773
mobile: (239) 699-0468
for immediate release May 7, 2014
STAGNANT GRADE 12 NAEP RESULTS UNDERSCORE
FAILURE OF TEST-DRIVEN PUBLIC EDUCATION;
“NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” AND STATE HIGH-STAKES EXAMS
DID NOT LEAD TO IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for twelfth graders “underscore the failure of federal and state test-driven school policies,” according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest). Today’s report shows no NAEP score improvement for high school seniors in reading or math since 2009 and little progress over the past decade. Over the same period, performance gaps between racial groups have not narrowed significantly.
The NAEP trend is consistent with results from the ACT and SAT college admissions tests, where average scores continue to stagnate and racial gaps persist.
“How much more evidence do federal and state policy-makers need that driving schooling through standardized exams does not increase educational quality?” asked FairTest Public Education Director Bob Schaeffer. “It is time to abandon failed test-and-punish policies and adopt assessments that have been shown to improve teaching and learning.”
Schaeffer continued, “Across the country parents, teachers, students, and community activists are saying ‘enough is enough’ to testing misuse and overuse. They are opting out of tests, organizing protests against high-stakes exam overkill, and successfully pressing politicians to overhaul assessment policies. More elected officials must start listening to their constituents, who know what is going on in public school classrooms.” FairTest is a founder of the national Testing Resistance & Reform Spring campaign.

Categories NAEP, Testing

More on Florida Decision that Teacher Evaluation is Unfair But Legal

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
7

In Florida, teachers are given ratings based on the scores of students they never taught.

 

Teachers in several counties challenged the law in court.

 

The judge agreed that the system was unfair, but refused to overturn it.

 

Where teachers are concerned, Junk Science is just fine.

 

It is okay to rate a teacher based on the performance on tests of students the teacher never met, never taught.

 

This is “reform.” Thanks, Arne Duncan, for Race to the Top.

 

Thanks for introducing this insane, stupid policy into our nation’s schools.

 

The true education miracle will be if American public education can survive eight years of stupid policies like this one in Florida.

Categories Florida, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

A Common Core Disaster: Did the Holocaust Actually Happen?

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
136

Will Fitzhugh, the peerless founder of The Concord Review, sent me this astonishing article. The Concord Review is a marvelous journal that publishes the original research papers of high school students. If anyone happens to know a hedge fund manager or philanthropist or billionaire in search of a worthy cause, tell him or her to contact Will Fitzhugh so that our great high school students who love history continue to have a journal to display their work.

 
Let’s Have Middle-Schoolers Debate Whether the Holocaust Happened!

May 7, 2014 by EducationViews.org; Houston, Texas

Scott Shackford –

A group of eighth-grade teachers in the Rialto Unified School District (that’s east of Los Angeles in the Inland Empire of Southern California) decided that a good way to teach their students effective debate skills in writing is to ask them to take a side on whether the Holocaust happened and back up their arguments with facts. You don’t need an Upworthy-style headline to figure out what happened after news got out about the students’ assignment. Outrage! Death threats! And so the school district will not repeat the assignment. From The Sun of San Bernardino, California:

Throughout the day Monday, the district fielded angry calls from parents, a death threat and a flurry of media inquiries over the assignment, which district officials initially defended as an effort to teach students to think critically. Ultimately, however, administrators acknowledged the assignment was in poor taste and promised it would not be given again.

“Our interim superintendent will be talking with our Educational Services Department to assure that any references to the Holocaust ‘not occurring’ will be stricken on any current or future Argumentative Research projects,” district spokeswoman Syeda Jafri said in a prepared statement late Sunday.

Initially, seconds before it turned into a massive public relations disaster, the school district was defending the assignment to The Sun as part of Common Core requirements to teach critical thinking. In an early response, one school board member said, “Current events are part of the basis for measuring IQ. The Middle East, Israel, Palestine and the Holocaust are on newscasts discussing current events. Teaching how to come to your own conclusion based on the facts, test your position, be able to articulate that position, then defend your belief with a lucid argument is essential to good citizenship.”

The Holocaust is a current event? Anyway, I can see both where this bus was going and why it was never going to get there. What if dozens of students decided to argue that the Holocaust didn’t happen, given the small amount of information provided by the writing assignment? Even though I believe the slaughter obviously did happen, I could easily see the argumentative eighth grade version of me trying to argue the other side just to prove I was clever. Imagine the kind of public relations disaster it would have been if it got out that a bunch of Rialto students wrote that the Holocaust didn’t happen in a school assignment. Imagine being those kids’ parents.

This is not to say engaging in a look at Holocaust denial theories should be beyond the bounds of education, but perhaps not in 8th grade and not as a homework assignment on writing skills?

Also, the controversy is a good reminder that even when they’re actually trying to teach critical thinking skills instead of suppressing them, public schools sometimes struggle with doing so in a sensible way. If I were a parent, I’d be more concerned about how quickly the school district Godwinned itself by selecting a subject with such an obvious desired outcome and not something that would actually lead to diverse answers and debate. Will they replace the assignment with a debate over whether man actually landed on the moon next? Or whether the world is round or flat? Or maybe this is the public school version of teaching critical skills—only tackling obvious cases where determining the “right” answer is a breeze.

 

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Categories Common Core

John Thompson: Our Education Spring Is Coming

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
37

John Thompson, historian and teacher, understands the long view of history. He thinks deeply, tries to see different sides of issues, and given his training in the study of history, knows that bad things eventually collapse, wither, die, fade away.

And so I am glad to see his support for my belief that the current ungrounded attacks on public education and on teachers will not survive. It is such a nonsensical campaign that it cannot succeed. Its basic belief that the private sector is inherently superior to the public sector in supplying essential services has no basis in fact, nor does its bottomless faith in the data produced by narrow-gauge standardized tests.

As is his way, John talked to people who see merit in these ideas. But his fundamental fairness and his strong sense of history led him to see a correction in the works. This moment of error wil not last. Historians will pick over the bones of discredited ideas. And the time will come when teachers will be free to teach and students will be free to learn, chastened by the lessons of an era of data-driven mindlessness.

Categories Resistance

AIR Files Lawsuit Against Pearson Multi-Billion $$$ Contract to Score PARCC

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2014 //
14

Now begins the struggle for billions of dollars for Common Core testing. Bear in mind that this is public money that should be spent on reducing class sizes, providing arts programs, hiring librarians and counselors, and supplying other necessary services to students and schools. The next time you hear some politician or pundit complain about the cost of public education, remind them of the billions of dollars that Pearson and its rivals will collect to administer and score Common Core tests. This is the national marketplace that Race to the Top was designed to create. It succeeded beyond Arne Duncan’s wildest dreams–in enriching testing corporations and impoverishing schools.

 

Is this a crime in plain sight? The victims are our students, educators, and schools. Who will be held liable for this massive diversion of taxpayer dollars into the testing industry?

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Politico reports this morning:

 

RIVAL PROTESTS PEARSON CONTRACT: The contract to administer and score Common Core tests for states in the PARCC consortium was expected to be worth several billion dollars through the end of the decade. So it surprised some in the industry that Pearson was the only bidder, in a consortium with a handful of subcontractors. Now a rival, the American Institutes for Research, is claiming it was no coincidence: It’s pressing a lawsuit alleging the bid was rigged. (h/t EdWeek: http://bit.ly/1s0Ksap).

– The PARCC bidding process was run through the state of New Mexico, which put out a request for proposals last year. The request bundled development and delivery of the first year of testing – which Pearson was already working on – with administration of the test in subsequent years. AIR, a nonprofit that administers tests in several states, claims Pearson got an automatic, insurmountable advantage because of the bid’s set up. AIR filed a protest with New Mexico last December, claiming the bidding process unfairly and unlawfully restricted competition. It sent its complaint to the individual identified by the state as the only person testing companies could contact about the process. But some time later – after the deadline for filing a complaint passed – New Mexico told AIR the protest was sent to the wrong office and it missed the deadline. Then it declined to hear AIR’s claim of an illegal bid process. AIR appealed in district court; a hearing is scheduled for later this month.

– “The RFP looked designed to go to Pearson, and it seems that every other firm in the industry must have drawn the same conclusion,” Jon Cohen, AIR’s president of assessment, told Morning Education. “To make a multi-billion-dollar decision based on an anti-competitive RFP won’t serve PARCC, New Mexico or all the other PARCC states well in the long run.’ For more, dive into the (very lengthy) AIR complaints: http://politico.pro/SyehVG and http://politico.pro/1uxz2PE.

– Pearson declined to comment. PARCC also declined to talk, referring questions to New Mexico officials, who could not be reached.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, Pearson, Testing
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