On his blog, Julian Vasquez Heilig explores how the federal courts have failed to confront the racially disparate impact of high-stakes tests.
When the courts were asked in Florida to recognize the unfairness of denying a diploma to students who could not pass the exit examination, in light of the racial disparities in passing rates, the federal court upheld the exams. Not only that, but the court held that the exam would help eliminate racism, even though black students failed the exam at a far higher rate than whites.
When the decision was appealed to the federal appeals court, it upheld the verdict Nd again treated high-stakes testing as a cure for racism. Here is the peculiar reasoning:
“…the diploma sanction is needed to remedy the present effects of past segregation in Florida’s schools. … the diploma sanction will motivate teachers and administrators, as well as students. Although the sanction is to deny the student the diploma, diploma denial reflects adversely on the teachers and administrators of the school system responsible for the student’s education. We think it is clear that teachers and administrators will work to avoid this stigma, thus tending to remedy any lingering lower expectations on the part of teachers (Debra P. v. Turlington 1984, p. 58.).”
Heilig believes that the same reasoning is found among today’s “reformers,” who think that they are defending the civil rights of minorities by subjecting them to standardized tests that have a racially disparate impact.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Since the tests have no meaning and serve no purpose for the classroom, it needs to be considered if these standardized tests and their preparation are being used to condition children (and teachers and administrators) to think {and not think} in a certain way.
Absolutely! This is about the 1% “controlling” the whole of education in the US (and ultimately the whole US ). It is a shift to the oligarchy that most on this blog have been pointing out. Or should we say…..it is the beginning of the dystopian era.
Perhaps some of the “reformers” think they are “defending the civil rights of minorities”, but believing most “reformers think that smacks of the “soft bigotry of low expectations”. George W. Bush wanted us to think he was none too bright – it was great cover for getting away with what he wanted. I think most of the “reformers” are pulling the same stunt. They benefit greatly from the white-supremicist economic structure our country was founded on and still thrives on and they have motivation to continue that structure while pretending such deep concern for those poor black kids.
Excellent point Dienne, it’s bait-and-switch the entire way, with “the civil rights movement of our time” functioning as a cover for intensified class war and increased segregation, all accelerated during the term of a Black – or a “Black, so-called,” as I once heard Gwen Ifill say – President.
well said, Michael
This is exactly the case. Sadly, some civil rights groups have taken money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote this crap. $#&&$#*&*$#*&!!!!!!
Bizglish-to-English translation: “the soft bigotry of low expectations” = “the hard bigotry of mandated failure.”
And as others have remarked in other threads, one of the benefits for the self-styled “education reformers” of the so-called “new civil rights movement of our time” is that the people being punished often internalize the idea that they, and they alone, are responsible for what has been forced on them.
That is why this blog is so important.
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.” [Frederick Douglass]
😎
well said!
Testing away poverty!
Say what?!?
What a novel idea, because no other country in history has ever tested away poverty before. So exciting and so profitable for UK’s Pearson, Bill Gates, the Walton family, Hedge Fund billionaires on Wall Street and billionaires like Eli Broad.
I think Obama is on to something.
Instead, France reduced poverty with expensive early childhood education programs that didn’t make the rich wealthier, and saw poverty reduced from 15% to less than 7% over a period of thirty years—who wants to wait thirty years?
In the U.S., our two greatest presidents in history (tongue in cheek) wanted to reduce poverty faster and make a profit at the same time.
During the era of testing reform starting with President G. W. Bush’s NCLB in 2001, and then Obama’s Race to the Top and Machiavellian Common Core Standardized Testing that fires teachers and closes public schools, poverty increased from 11.3% in 2000 to, as reported by the Washington Post, a record 47 million, about 13 million more than when Obama took office, the highest poverty rate in the U.S. in fifty years.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/7/obamas-rhetoric-on-fighting-poverty-doesnt-match-h/?page=all
What was the President’s response: “What I think the American people are really looking for in 2014 is just a little bit of stability,” Mr. Obama said. Through more standardized testing, of course.
Who’s fault was that increase in poverty? The teachers of course. We have to test more and fire more. Close those public schools down to reduce poverty. It’s the only way. Ignore what happened in France. That’s just a fluke.
Eventually, Arne Duncan will claim, we will test the U.S. out of poverty or change the classification so there is no poverty according to government reports. All we have to do is pass a new law that to qualify for poverty, you can’t have any money or own any property—that way only homeless people will be considered living in poverty.
And, France has a better record for full-time employment.
France appears to have persevered full time employment for the middle aged worker at the expense of employment for younger workers. That is certainly a policy decision we could make in the US.
Chart showing full-time employment, expressed as a percentage, ages 25-54 for U.S. and France, May 21, 2014, New York Times.
“French students (age 25 and below) are less likely to have to work their way through college.”
Like the distortions about economic mobility in the U.S., a few years back, fail.
Here is a link to some thoughts about Krugman’s recent column on the French labor market: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/05/why-has-french-employment-for-some-workers-done-so-well.html
Marginal revolution citation-economic malpractice
Perhaps you could explain the errors that you find in the posting? I was glad to be reminded that there is mandatory retirement in France. If that were the case in the US, there would be many more tenure line faculty positions open at my university.
Lloyd Lofthouse: “Testing away poverty!”
An instant classic. So much said in three words.
Thank you.
😎
I can’t understand why Bill Gates hasn’t sent his people to the streets with Bubble Tests from Pearson to test away homelessness, too.
After all, homeless people must be eligible for food stamps, Obamacare and other forms of welfare and possibly federal/state job training and maybe Gates could find a way to get some of that money to fund the Common Core of homelessness testing.
High-stakes testing only increases inequity. It does this in two ways:
1. It gobbles up BILLIONS in resources and enormous amounts of time that could be spent providing wrap-around services for poor children–that could be spent addressing real problems (kids who are hungry, kids who need eye exams, warm clothes in the winter, a safe and nurturing place to play and learn AFTER school)
2. It just increases the Matthew Effect. It stigmatizes, early on, those who have deficits due to their early environmental influences and does NOTHING to address those deficits. Let me elaborate on this one because it’s important.
Why the One Size Fits All Approach of the CCSS in ELA Will Not Address the Achievement Gap
Education has more than its fair share of charlatans. One way to spot these people is that they are just fine with applying gross generalities to all children, with treating differing children as though they were the same. They did this with NCLB when they decided that EVERY child was going to reach proficiency by the 2014-15 school year. (which would be by this coming August, btw.) They did this with CSS, aka Son of NCLB, when they decided that text appropriateness at each grade level for all kids should be decided based on working backward from the average Lexile of college-level texts.
A seven year old is NOT just a younger version of an adult. In some ways, a seven-year-old brain is like an adult brain. In many ways it is not. In some ways, a seven year old is actually more capable than an adult is. For example, a seven-year-old brain is quicker (much quicker) at forming an internal, unconscious model of the grammar of a new language than is a thirty-five-year-old brain. Babies can be shown to be doing types of complex inductive and abductive reasoning (see Alison Gopnik’s great books on this subject). But there are whole regions of the brain that govern some kinds of abstract thinking that do not for most people even begin to develop until kids are around 16 years old and are not in most people fully in place until people are in their mid twenties! Further, individual brains differ. The innate language acquisition device that automatically intuits the syntax and morphology of a language typically breaks down at around the age of 14 (about the time we usually start teaching foreign languages, btw), making attaining fluency in a new language a far more difficult task for an adult than for a child, but there are some people to whom this doesn’t happen—who retain the child’s ease, there, and those are generally ones who have the facility exercised in the tween years.
When amateurs write standards, as was the case with the CCSS for ELA, they understand none of this. And standards are, well, standard, but kids are not. Kids vary enormously. Low-SES and high-SES kids come into school with a 30-million-word gap in the amount of language they have heard and with a corresponding gap in vocabulary and in the complexity of their internalized models for syntax, morphology, semantic structures. These differences require very different pedagogy and curricula in the early grades, not a one-size-fits-all approach. Those children who have been in low-SES environments in their early years desperately need interaction with engaging, nurturing, sophisticated SPOKEN linguistic environments that are rich in vocabulary and that contain the full range of syntactic and morphological forms of the language so that their innate structures for intuiting those forms and creating a robust internalized model of the language have the necessary material from which to work. If they don’t get that compensating early school environment, such kids will never be able to catch up—the low-SES/high-SES gap that is the REAL ISSUE in U.S. education will remain in place because its root cause has not been addressed.
In addition, kids from low-SES environments do not learn in their home environments the background knowledge that is assumed by texts, and this presents an enormous barrier to their comprehension of texts going forward. Again, educational programs for such students have to address this. An excellent approach is to impart such background knowledge via a syntactically rich spoken language interaction beginning in programs long before school age. Again, one size does not fit all.
The CCSS in ELA show no indication that the authors of the document understood either point I have made here and so will do nothing effective to address the achievement gap in ELA. The authors of the CCSS grabbed a hammer and went about treating everything as if it were a nail. Kids are not nails.
P.S.: The brain is extraordinarily plastic, and beyond the early grades, as people grow, they exhibit differing interests and proclivities, and a complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs those differences recognized, celebrated, and built upon. It does not need to have children identically milled as though they were so many rivets coming off a rivet-production assembly line, all needing to meet the specifications of ISO 1051:1999 or CCSS. Literacy.ELA.11-12.4a.
The whole standards-and-summative-standardized-testing model is incredibly backward. It’s invalid, its punitive and abusive, and it is DEMOTIVATING FOR COGNITIVE TASKS.
I has had and will continue to have effects precisely the opposite of those intended, and it will have really, really dramatic opportunity costs.
BILLIONS wasted. Incalculable amounts of time wasted. Kids lives wasted, ruined.
And one day we shall look back on all this in horror and ask how people could ever have been as stupid as they were in the data-based numerology era in U.S. education.
sorry about the typos in that post. in a hurry here.
Bob, in a good way, you hurt my brain! You are so passionate and informed. Good!!!!
“And one day we shall look back on all this in horror and ask how people could ever have been as stupid as they were in the data-based numerology era in U.S. education.”
Horror is exactly what it is…..And….we may not have an opportunity to look back if the destructive forces in power continue on their same path!
I’m so sick of policy makers, and now I guess judges, assuming that teachers are holding out on kids and that we will ONLY “work harder” when we have the stick of test scores hanging over us. As if I have been holding back on the world’s best lesson plans and activities until I am threatened or rewarded.
The court decisions referenced in this post happened 30 to 35 years ago.
FYI, on the iOS WordPress app, your comment appears under the user name “Dienne.” Viewed in an Internet browser, it appears under the user name “Threatened out West.” I noticed the same thing on another thread on which the user names “Puget Sound Parent” and “Steve K” were switched. Perhaps it’s some doppleganger effect that’s spreading via Diane’s blog.
Weird. My name isn’t Dienne.
What should determine if a student graduates from high school?
Grades given by high-school teachers have always been MUCH BETTER PREDICTORS of success in college that the SAT or the ACT, and those tests were originally developed to do such testing and were FAR BETTER VETTED than the sloppy, completely invalid tests being developed for the CCSS by the two national consortia of technocratic philistines.
cx: than the SAT and the ACT have been
Assuming that’s true for purposes of this discussion, it doesn’t address the question of racially disparate impacts. In other words, do grades given by high-school teachers also have a disparate negative impact on black students?
In some ways this reminds me of the evolution of federal sentencing law in the last 40 years or so. Judges once had substantial discretion in setting criminal sentences to fit the unique circumstances of each case. But critics (correctly) argued that this practice was leading to wide sentencing disparities for similar crimes, and that these disparities correlated with the defendant’s race. So Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act, which authorized a commission to publish a mandatory, uniform set of sentencing ranges for judges to apply, with pages and pages of tables and cross references to account for the severity of the crime, the defendant’s criminal history, whether or not there was a gun involved, the weight of the drugs involved, etc. But critics (again, correctly) noted that now there were even wider sentencing disparities for similar crimes that shook out by race (partly, but only partly, because of the infamous crack/powder cocaine disparity), and they argued (and still do) that we should return to the pre-guidelines system, which allowed judges to grant downward departures in sentences where there were mitigating circumstances. (The developments in 6th Amendment law over the last decade has returned a little bit of that discretion, but not much.)
As usual, I have no answers. But I think the disparate impact issue is generally more complicated than some people seem to think.
This is one reason why I support having standardized testing as AN OPTION that a student, in consultation with his or her guidance counselors and teachers, can choose. We should have a variety of testing options, and EVERY kid should have an IEP.
Bob, I don’t think it’s even close to being settled science that HS grades are a better predictor than SAT/ACT scores. Within schools and students who have similar SAT/ACT scores, perhaps. But across schools or districts, which are often of wildly differing quality? I’m skeptical.
These are the best-vetted standardized tests in history. They were created to predict success in college. At one time, the SAT was called the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The name had to be changed because THE TEST DID NOT VALIDLY ASSESS APTITUDE FOR COLLEGE. This is well known.
And PARCC and SBAC–not validated against independent measures AT ALL.
But, soon enough, we shall have the new Scholastic Common Core Aptitude Test–the SCAT, or whatever Coleman decides he’s going to call it. Then we can begin decades of inconclusive argument about whether this test is valid.
One thing is certain: Like the SAT and the ACT, the new SCAT and PARCC and SBAC will be GREAT predictors of students’ zip codes.
At my institution ACT scores do a better job of predicting student performance for at risk students than GPA. Part of the reason may be that the range of student GPA is relatively small (3.0-4.0, though only a 2.0 in academic classes is required for admission) compared to the range of ACT scores, something on the order of 16-36.
FLERP,
In your evolution of sentencing laws, there is no mention of ALEC, The Nation reported that ALEC worked to change law so that prison labor could be used for the private sector. The GEO group and Corrections Corp. of America, benefitted from ALEC’s “pioneering the toughest sentencing laws.”
Sorry, Linda, how does that relate to the changes in sentencing law? FYI, the Sentencing Reform Act was mid-1980s. Are you saying that ALEC was one of the groups that pushed for sentencing reform at that time?
If we look at a timeline, it’s possible even without evidence, because ALEC was founded 40 years ago when “a small group of state legislators and conservative policy advocates met in Chicago to implement a vision.”
Their first meeting was in September 1973.
I’d take out “vision” and put in “their own agenda” that the rest of America just doesn’t agree with or see the value of to the top 1%.
http://www.alec.org/about-alec/history/
And they have been behind:
Stand Your Ground Laws
Voter Identification
Immigration
Criminal sentencing and misprision management
Health Care
Education
Just to name a few.
In addition, ALEC does not disclose its membership list or the origins of its model bills, and its legislative members frequently deny being influenced by the organization or its model legislation. Arizona Assistant Minority Leader Steve Farley proposed an ALEC Accountability Act to force legislators to disclose their ALEC ties. The bill did not receive a committee hearing.
According to ALECwatch and IRS documents, ALEC receives 95% of its funding from foundations, corporations, other nonprofits, meeting revenue and the sale of its publications. Legislators pay $100 in annual membership dues, while corporations pay $10,000, or often much more. In 2010 NPR reported that tax records showed that corporations had collectively paid as much as $6 million a year.
Koch Industries Inc. was one of 14 “Vice Chairman” level sponsors at ALEC’s 2010 annual meeting, which requires a $25,000 donation.
According to tax records, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation gave $75,858 to ALEC in 2009. Exxon Mobil’s foundation donated $30,000 in both 2005 and 2006.
Alan Jeffers, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, said the company paid $39,000 in dues in 2010 and sponsored a reception at the annual meeting in San Diego for $25,000.
In August 2011, Exxon spent $45,000 to sponsor a workshop on natural gas.
According to the Center For Public Integrity, ALEC received $150,000 from Charles and David Koch in 2011 to help finance its activities.
MORE: According to Governing magazine, “ALEC has been a major force behind both privatizing state prison space and keeping prisons filled.”
ALEC has developed model bills advancing “tough on crime” initiatives, including “truth in sentencing” and “three strikes” laws.
Critics argue that by funding and participating in ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Forces, private prison companies directly influence legislation for tougher, longer sentences. Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, two of the largest for-profit prison companies in the US, have been contributors to the ALEC.
ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to allow the creation of private-sector for-profit prisons.
NOTE: From the ponderousness of the evidence, the Koch brothers are the covert unelected government of the United States or some of the U.S.
Interesting stuff, although I’m not sure it relates to the Sentencing Reform Act. Anyway, I mentioned sentencing law simply as a way to throw some light on the question of the disparate impacts that can result both from rules that are standardized and mechanically applied versus rules that are applied with discretion in specific circumstances.
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 4:00 PM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> Lloyd Lofthouse commented: “MORE: According to Governing magazine, > “ALEC has been a major force behind both privatizing state prison space and > keeping prisons filled.” ALEC has developed model bills advancing “tough on > crime” initiatives, including “truth in sentencing”” >
Sadly, my grades are not going to predict anything: they seemingly are going to be changed by my district. I failed 3 students for not turning in work, I have full documentation, two of them had been socially promoted last year, they did not come to the mandated tutoring, they did not always work in the RTI pullouts…I am going to say it: these kids were just lazy. They were lazy because each year prior, when they have not done work, they were pushed through without having to do the work.
Where will they be next year? In English 2…wait for it, PRE-AP English 2. My district said they can’t “act on failures” because if they fail and repeat one again, they will not be on track to graduate.
SO they did no work hardly, and they will be bringing the who group morale down in my Pre-AP class next year.
Sometimes there is low expectations, but not on part of the teacher; my district has set the bar so low that now kids who literally refuse to do work are still allowed to pass, and even take Pre-AP.
And yes, all three failed the test this year. All three failed it several times last year. And it will be considered part of my PDAS.
I am so frustrated: I have some really hard working kids, but the ones who won’t work, and then I read about “low expectations”? Sheesh, please.
Lloyd,
If you are (were) a teacher, your students are lucky. I’m relatively new to the discussion threads. I’ve been impressed with your explanations, citing evidence and applying logical deduction. Your points are clear, concise and persuasive. I appreciate your willingness to take time to elucidate, when a commenter writes, that he is going to describe “The evolution of federal sentencing law in the last 40 years or so”. And, he then proceeds to leave out a significant part of the history, followed by a dismissal of the information you presented, as unrelated.
A simple thank you for the information, of which he was unaware, is the act of a gracious person who wants to learn.
Thank you for having the optimism of a teacher.
You’re welcome.
And ecologies are healthier than are monocultures. The last thing that a complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs is kids who have been tested to ensure that they are invariant products of factory schools for the milling of standardized minds according to the dictates of a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
Maybe “who should determine” is a more important question.
My question is, why shouldn’t a student graduate high school?
That is a very interesting question you ask. Should there be an criteria that a student has to satisfy in order to graduate from high school? In my state students must have 21 units with some distribution requirements about the subjects. Is that too restrictive a requirement?
in response to that see my post above: my question is, why should some students do nothing, and get pushed through, when others bust their butt to pass?
I don’t like failing kids, but I fail so few that when I fail you, you deserve it. I know my kids, and I know the ones who have a reason outside of school, that contributes to their ability to focus. I get that. I was a kid like that myself at one point.
But what I cannot get my head around, is a few of the kids I see, who literally just don’t do anything hardly, and they keep getting pushed on…what are we, as a community, saying to a kid when they can miss 30 something days of school and just have to make up an hour for each day, in night school? Or they have “O”s for everything because they have not turned anything in, and I am supposed to give them 50’s for no work.
Kids like this need to be able to, on their own, choose an apprentice program, or some sort of program to get them productive.
I am busting my chops here and I don’t mind tutoring. I do mind being here to tutor and no one showing up!
title one texas teacher and Izzy
In NJ and NY, we have credit recovery programs whereby students sit for a minimal number of hours and complete a minimal number of computerized assigments. Some administrators do not allowteachers to give low 50s grades in order to pump up grade point averages.
Izzy, have you spent any time teaching? Getting some students to do work is a struggle on a daily basis. I am with you title one texas teacher. I teach a similar population in NJ.
Nothing done by students on the new national assessments remotely resembles real reading and writing. In other words, what is done by students on these assessments is extraordinarily inauthentic, unlike anything that readers and writers do in the real world. Therefore, ipso facto, these are not, and cannot be, valid assessments of real reading and writing.
1. The “standards” being tested in ELA neither cover world knowledge (knowledge of what) nor formulate procedural knowledge (knowledge of how) in ways sufficiently operationalized to allow for valid testing.
2. Those “standards” also treat acquisition that does not involve, primarily, explicit learning as though it did involve such processes and so, again, misconceive, at a very basic level, much of what would be measured if we were following scientifically informed, rational assessment policies.
If what kids do on these invalid, inappropriate tests seems to you completely unnatural that’s because it is.
Other varieties of assessment–diagnostic and formative and performative assessment–actually serve some educational purpose. These national summative assessments serve no instructional purpose whatsoever (teachers cannot even see the questions and detailed breakdowns of which their students got right and wrong and so cannot use them to inform instruction) but do negatively affect instruction by a) leading to narrowing and distortion of pedagogy and curricula (for example to teaching of the InstaWriting required by the test rather than to the teaching of writing) and by b) imposing an extrinsic punishment and reward mechanism that is known to be highly DEMOTIVATING for cognitive tasks. The second of these runs counter to our prime directive as teachers, which is to nurture intrinsic motivation–to build self-motivated, independent, life-long learners.
Because these are criterion-referenced tests, the determination of cut scores for them is completely arbitrary and subject to manipulation for political rather than educational purposes.
These tests use many so-called “objective” question formats that are inappropriate, generally, for testing anything more sophisticated than simple factual recall, and because these questions formats are pushed into a kind of service for which they are generally unsuitable, the questions tend to be convoluted and the results generated highly suspect.
The tests are invariant, but appropriate instruction and assessment should not be, for students are not widgets to be identically milled, and testing should, of course, be based on instruction.
Any tiny improvement at any particular grade level that we saw during the NCLB era, that failed national trial of the whole testing-based approach, is, of course, well within the statistical margin of error of the measurements employed.
Simply from the Hawthorne Effect, one would expect that there would have been some improvement. But there was none that has been validly demonstrated. None. What this suggests is that standardized summative testing to bullet lists of standards has actually negatively impacted student achievement, and there are many, many reasons to think that that is, indeed, the case. Much of the momentum of positive innovation in curricula and pedagogy was stopped cold by NCLB and continues to be impossible under Son of NCLB, NCLB Fright Night II: The Nightmare Is Nationalized.
Those who think otherwise, with no evidence, thereby evince cultlike, magical, faith-based thinking, and it is not on the basis of such thinking that we should be making national and state education policy.
Teacher assigned grades systematically disadvantage boys. Should we subject students to these practices that have a gender disparate impact?
About half of the lower college graduation rates for males can be attributed to lower high school graduation rates for males, especially african american males (see Heckman, James and Paul A. LaFontaine. 2010. ―The American High School Graduation Rate:
Trends and Levels.‖ The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 92, No. 2: 244-262.)
You raise an important issue, especially important in this time in which 60 percent of college kids and 3/5ths of graduate students are female. Boys are being crushed. (I happen to think that this will become an even bigger issue as Ed Deform continues to distort and narrow K-12 education).
At any rate, this disparity is one reason why I support having standardized testing as AN OPTION that a student, in consultation with his or her guidance counselors and teachers, can choose. We should have a variety of testing options, and EVERY kid should have an IEP.
Most of the currently existing IEPs are of little value. I was recently informed at an IEP meeting that instead of doing a test of language dominance, we would determine at the meeting which was the child’s language of dominance. I patiently explained that I do not speak Spanish and I am not qualified to determine dominance. Therefore, they let the parent decide. It does not get more professional and scientific than that!
I know I have blogged about IEPs before, but here goes. IEPs as they are designed today have good and bad features. I think you are trying to focus on designing an individual education map. Current IEPs do not do that. They lay out areas of weakness and try to isolate skills within those areas that need to be addressed, which is done through a performance based task analysis that makes nice data points. Those IEPs eat up an enormous amount of time creating a paper trail proving that a student does some behavior 70% of the time or 8 times out of 10 or whatever bogus scale you want to apply. WE DO NOT NEED A SYSTEM OF MICROMANAGING EVERY CHILD’S EDUCATION PLAN ANY MORE THAN WE NEED ONE THAT MANAGES EVERYONE EN MASSE. Do we really want every child tagged with this ever expanding paper trail of an educational resume? It might be interesting as a longitudinal observational study of watching how a child grows and changes. I do not believe we have the expertize to execute such a program to direct a child’s learning program any more than I believe that the deformers can test us to success. I would like to see you elaborate on your ideas in this area and lose the term IEP.
I agree. NO paper trail following the student. Just a group of people who care about that student guiding him or her through a system that offers much more choice that the current one does. GREAT that you are sensitive to this issue.
A system of mentorship. Yes.
You are right. The nature of school is not good for more boys than girls. CCSS will exacerbate this difference. It will widen the gender gap that exists already. We’ve had many discussions in this school, mostly by female teachers, about the best ways for boys (as a general rule but not true in all specific cases) to learn.
So we’ve just deduced that CCSS will widen yet another sociological gap. Cool.
That’s exactly what will happen. Widening of both. No question about it.
We will have a good natural experiment. Some states have adopted the CCSS, other states have not. If you are right, we out to see those states with the CCSS graduate relatively fewer males from high school than those states without the CCSS, and a corresponding increase in relative college graduation rates for males from non-CCSS states compared to CCSS states.
All are going to be using versions of the same absurd summative standardized tests, and most of these states that have retreated from the CCSS have adopted “standards” that are simply rebrandings of the CCSS, with minor variations (as per the advice from the Reverend Mike Huckabee that they should rebrand–that is, adopt the same standards but lie about that) so this is not a good experiment. CCSS-look-alike “standards” and very similar tests do not make for a natural experiment.
Without any variation, we will never know if you are right or not.
Oh, we shall know, certainly. At some point in the future, Ed Deform will have caused so much damage that EVERYONE will understand what an utter disaster it was, even the very, very slow learners at organizations like the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Achieve. With regard to the particular question of the effects on low-SES students and boys of the CCSS + PARCC or SBAC, I suppose that we shall have to look to private schools that don’t do that crap, but those, of course, enroll very few low-SES kids.
Your experiment is lacking. Too many other factors. Your control group of “not adopting CCSS” is questionable. But think of what you are saying. Are you in favor of using the entire US as lab rats? I like experiment as an approach, but smaller scaled, better designed, more incremental, peer reviewed, and controlled. If CCSS is, in fact, effective, those pushing it should have no problem turning it over to independent, verifiable scrutiny.
This is the world of empirical economics. Sometimes we are lucky and some political jurisdictions will have a different policy than other jurisdictions or policies will roll out sooner in some places than others. Economists would love to be able to run the great recession again and this time not make any effort to do expansionary monetary policy so that we can judge how effective expansionary monetary policy might be. We would love to run it a third time and not do any expansionary fiscal policy, etc. We cant do these sort of controlled experiments, so we have to try and tease the information out of the world as the world spins along.
“About half of the lower college graduation rates for males can be attributed to lower high school graduation rates for males, especially african american males”.
Wow. Major disconnect. By “attributed”, are you suggesting high graduation rates cause college graduation rates? Or are the other factors of cause when observing this relationship.
As far as gender bias in grades, perhaps is is a diagnostic indicator of underlying issues as test scores should be, not an end result.
Actually I think the argument is not graduating from high school causes students to not graduate from college. At my institution at least a high school degree is required for admission, and few students who are not admitted end up graduating.
This is running in Education Week today:
“In 2012, 13 states adopted laws targeting early reading achievement, many of which require schools to hold back elementary school students based on reading assessments. At least 10 other states have considered or are considering similar laws … A majority of peer-reviewed studies over the past 30 years have demonstrated that holding students back yields little or no long-term academic benefits and can actually be harmful to students. When improvements in achievement are linked to retention, they are not usually sustained beyond a few years, and there is some evidence for negative effects on self-esteem and emotional well-being … Retention does not help most children who have fallen behind, primarily because they are exposed to the same material in the same way that didn’t work for them the first time around. When a strategy fails to work, the solution is not to do it again; it is to change the strategy. Happily, there are more effective and less expensive alternatives.”
Here’s the money quote from that: “When a strategy fails to work, the solution is not to do it again; it is to change the strategy.” This applies, of course, to the whole standards-and-summative-standardized-testing approach that we have taken under NCLB and Son of NCLB.
We had a 10+-year trial of that absurd approach, nationwide, and it failed. Utterly.
And now our deformers want to double down on it.
Riffing off your remarks:
1), “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
2), “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”
A one-two punch from a genuinely creative numbers/stats guy.
Or as Mr. Bill Gates might say: if we wait for ten more years then there is a 98% “satisfactory” chance of certainty that Albert Einstein was and is right.
¿😳?
I’ll go with you on this: “We had a 10+-year trial of that absurd approach, nationwide, and it failed. Utterly. And now our deformers want to double down on it.”
Thank you for your comments.
😎
The only reason why we are persisting in this failed strategy is that some plutocrats have billions at stake on continuing it, and so they have spent, according to figures compiled by Mercedes Schneider, about a billion dollars to promote its continuance.
These summative standardized tests are of ZERO instructional value. The only folks they serve are the shareholders of Pearson and McGraw Hill and the execs with the fat salaries at the College Board and ETS.
Do not forget all the bloated administrative salaries, the consultants and the nonprofits.
In the past, the low-SES kid for whom school wasn’t ideal could, at least, take the GED and then go to a junior college or vo-tech school.
But now PEARSON owns the GED and is redoing it so that it will be YET ANOTHER COMMON CORE TEST rather than a test of basic skills, and THIS WILL IMPACT ENORMOUSLY the options available to low-SES kids who did not do well in K-12.
It’s as though our policymakers were saying to themselves, “LET’S SEE HOW MANY MORE BARRIERS WE CAN PUT IN FRONT OF KIDS WHO DON’T FIT THE ACADEMIC MOLD.”
These people are doing enormous harm to real kids. The kind of harm that destroys lives.
But, hey, let’s wait a decade and then have a look at how many low-SES kids didn’t become cosmetologists or auto mechanics or enter any other job that requires licensure because they didn’t pass the Pearson Common Core GED. After all, in the meantime, there are plenty of jobs in the underground economy, and there is plenty of money to be made in the for-profit prison business.
In fact, Pearson stockholders might want to double up with stock in Corrections Corporation of America as well.
One of my students told another teacher that he did not have to pay attention to what she was teaching because he is going to be a drug dealer. Here you have it Common Core; career and college ready at the tender age of fourteen.
Aligning the GED with the Common Core before high school students have had much exposure to the Common Core could severely limit kids’ opportunities. Completely agree with you.
Last week some of our staff met with our regional technical college on a new program that might offer an alternative for credit deficient students who are at least 16 years old. The program dually enrolls the student at technical college and the high school. The student attends the technical college for their coursework with fairly substantial supplemental support. They work toward their associates degree or certificate while using the same courses to complete their high school diploma requirements.
It is a national program that ironically was Gates funded for its initial replication.
Wonderful. More of this!
This is in response to “title one texas teacher” who said she planned to fail 3 students because they were ” just lazy” and didn’t do their work.
That comment illustrates the new low of the teaching profession!
First of all, kids are not ‘just lazy”. They may be unmotivated, uninspired, tired, worried, bored, dealing with family dysfunction, dealing with unrecognized learning disabilities, depressed, or any number of other issues, but kids are not “just lazy”.
When children have learning opportunities that inspire them to use their imagination and to connect with their peers and have fun with learning, rather than being punished with all “work”….they will amaze you.
The problem you have illustrated is pervasive, and that is that school has become “all work”, boring, and punitive from standardized testing and burned out teachers. If the truth be told….the reason it is all work and no play is because teachers are scripted and stern, rather than being spontaneous and natural and connecting with the children socially and emotionally.
A good teacher doesn’t label students as lazy, especially kids in Title I schools who live in disadvantaged circumstances and already may perceive themselves as “inferior”. For many of them, the only security in their life is school, and how helpful is it to a child to perceive himself as “lazy” rather than “capable”. If his teacher thinks he is lazy, he will think himself lazy.
Please understand my need to express this is not a personal attack, but a need to help teachers recognize the impact of their behavior.
@izzy
Actually Izzy they were given the opportunity of 9 weeks of 2 hours of night school with me, 2 periods a week of pullouts of RTI work on my conference, and constant parent phone calls home. All three were socially promoted from the year before and NONE of them did their final research paper even though all the rest of my kids did each section of it in class with me over two weeks.
Low standards? How dare you! You have zero understanding of what it is like to spend 12 hour days at a title one school dealing begging and pleading those three kids, and their parents, to do something.
Yes lazy. It is actually possible for a child to be lazy and to not care and for a teacher to spend a full year busting their butt… Oh and btw Izzy? One of them was in jail for 6 weeks and it broke her mothers heart. And no she does not care.
People like you sicken me. On your high horse full of false self righteousness blaming teachers for bad parenting, low academic expectations from schools and you probably don’t even teach yourself.
I just finished school today: all my students hugged me except for one of the three I failed. The other two? Still hugged me, looked sheepish, and told me that would try in summer school.
I sleep fine at night for what I do for my kids. I have letters all over my fridge from my kids, how many kids have ever written you and to you that you changed their life? That they want to write a book and make a teacher character like you? That they are thankful that you told them that not handing work in , and goofing off and not living up to their potential was insulting to their family, their teachers, and all the students in the world who want to go to school, in places where they can’t like Nigeria.
I say stuff like that all the time to kids who fail to work. Those three specifically. I will not lower my standards to tell them that not showing up for tutoring is okay. I will not let them think that hanging out on the street and commuting crimes and making your mother cry is okay… And no I will not let a kid who is totally capable of writing a paper not write it in my class, not write it, because people like you have such low expectations that you don’t expect kids from the hood to be able to produce work.
You are the problem with teaching not me. YOU want me to pass a kid on, to develop no skills… What kind of joke of a teacher does not ever expect work to be done?
get in the trenches with us and get back to me in ten years about how awful and cruel it is to expect a child to do their work. Yes what an awful teacher I am, to expect my kids to do their work.
Oh and Izzy I am just going to add one more thing because your comment was just so disrespectful: all three of those children who failed and did not do their work just finished coming back from a 3 day field trip where we went to NASA, a factory, and an art museum. So enough with the Oh school needs to be more fun.” Your insulting post was full of ridiculous assumptions about me and my school. And yes I especially expect my students to do their work after a cool experience like that.
Don’t ever lecture someone who actually works at a title one school, about them. It’s just grandiose and again, get out there and teach in one for a few years: it is so apparent that you’re expectations for poor children comes from a privileged viewpoint.