When the Gates Foundation issued a press release calling for a two-year moratorium on the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, its position met a mixed reception. Some saw it as a victory for the critics of high-stakes testing; others as an attempt to weaken the critics by deferring the high stakes.
Anthony Cody says, don’t be fooled. The Gates Foundation gives no indication that it understands that its path is wrong, it is simply buying time.
The question we should all be asking is how this one very rich foundation took charge of American education and is in a position to issue policy statements that should be the domain of state and local school boards. What we have lost is democratic control of public education; while no one was looking, it got outsourced to the Gates Foundation.
Cody writes:
“As a thought experiment, what would it look like if the Gates Foundation truly was attending to the research and evidence that is showing how damaging the new Common Core tests and high stakes accountability systems are? Would they simply be calling to defer the worst effects of this system for two years?
A real appraisal of the evidence would reveal:
“VAM systems are unreliable and destructive when used for teacher evaluations, even as one of several measurements.
“School closures based on test scores result in no real gains for the students, and tremendous community disruption.
“Charter schools are not providing systemic improvements, and are expanding inequity and segregation.
“Attacks on teacher seniority and due process are destabilizing a fragile profession, increasing turnover.
“Tech-based solutions are often wildly oversold, and deliver disappointing results. Witness K12 Inc’s rapidly expanded virtual charter school chain, described here earlier this year.
“Our public education system is not broken, but is burdened with growing levels of poverty, inequity and racial isolation. Genuine reform means supporting schools, not abandoning them.
“The fundamental problem with the Gates Foundation is that it is driving education down a path towards more and more reliance on tests as the feedback mechanism for a market-driven system. This is indeed a full-blown ideology, reinforced by Gates’ own experience as a successful technocrat. The most likely hypothesis regarding the recent suggestion that high stakes be delayed by two years is that this is a tactical maneuver intended to diffuse opposition and preserve the Common Core project – rather than a recognition that these consequences do more harm than good.”
Moratorium or no, he notes, we are locked into a failed paradigm of testing and accountability. Standards and tests are not vehicles to advance equity and civil rights. If anything, they have become a way to undermine democracy and standardize education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s the same in Florida…
http://interactive.sun-sentinel.com/charter-schools-unsupervised/investigation.html
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Yes, this is a temporary retreat just prior to the next election cycle. So many candidates will win or lose based on their views regarding “edu-reforms”. Gates doesn’t want to bear the blame.
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readingexchange.. I agree. By the “delay to review” tactic… candidates can basically get away with taking this pseudo stance and… keep a lot of voters at the ballot box. The upcoming mayor of DC used this strategy. Muriel Bowser would not that she planned to keep Kaya Henderson (Rhee’s protégé) until after the election and I sure she knew it would decrease her vote!
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meant nominee for deems
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Gates isn’t running for office, and further his request for stalling them might hurt a candidate who is interested in projecting a get tough on teachers approach (it’s not popular everywhere, but it’s obviously popular somewhere). I think it’s real simply because of some neoliberal pushback against Gates’ position. Gates has to know that the scores will be awful since guidance on Cc has been so awful and slipshod.
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I suspect that many of the reformers simply don’t care about the casualties of their actions. To them, it is a necessary part of change.
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That’s because, for them, there aren’t any casualties! They’re not elected, so they can’t be voted out, and they won’t lose money, and their kids aren’t in the public schools, so these “reforms” won’t hurt their kids. Another major reason that unelected bureaucrats and monied interests should not be making policy.
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Gates now knows that his master paln is doomed. PARCC is down to only 15 states including NY which has “suspended” its committment. PARCC will lose all federal money if their number of member states drops below 15. InBloom data mining went down in flames. VAM studies have essentially invalidated any teacher evaluations making them highly suceptible to litigation. Moratorium is code for, relax parents we wont crucify your children for another two years and relax teachers we wont crucify you for another two years so please get off our case. Pretty please.
One thing Bill Gates never imagined. He never imagined that LOVE would be his undoing. Parents love their children too much to allow this to continue. The parent uprising of 2014 here in NY was the tip of the iceberg; the precursor to reformster disaster. And he knows it.
This is an invasion of the public schoolsystem by powreful corporate and poitical forces.
The grass roots Resistance spawned on this blog ang others is taking its cummulative toll. Show them no mercy for we will receive none in return. Show them no quarter and take no prisoners. The moratorium is their best chance to continue cashing in, to prolong their gravy train, albeit not a high speed one like they hoped. The Resistance should prefer that the tests go on as scheduled, because they will be the last nails in the CCSS coffin. At least that’s what I saw in my dream last night.
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NYC Teacher, Beautifully stated! Your article needs to be published throughout all newspapers in the U.S.! Thank you!
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I strongly agree!
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“PARCC is down to only 15 states including NY which has “suspended” its committment. PARCC will lose all federal money if their number of member states drops below 15.”
This is VERY interesting and I would love to see proof of it so that I might use it in discussions with the people in my life. Where can I find it?
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The $325 million awarde to PARCC and SBAC came with strings attached. There was federal pressure to maintain central control of all testing. It was an important ingredient for Gates’ master plan to work. States always had the option to create their own CC tests at their own cost. PARCC and SBAC were simply the path of least resistance. Once the true costs of computer based tests became apparent, the path of least resistance seems to be changing.
Now this 15 member state minimum for PARCC may have changed in light of the rats (states) rapidly abandoning the ship (PARCC). I’m sure this WAS the case at the onset of RTTT. I can’t recall the actual source, sorry. If I am misremebering, my apologies. I would imagine if that this can be checked out pretty easily.
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Yep, agree on the LOVE. Gates is an engineer at heart, a things person and not a people person. Who would treat the nation’s children as testing pawns? That’s messed up.
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Thank you Daniel. I am heartened.
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Like we even have to ask …
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Of course it’s time to back off. States keep dropping out or dropping PARCC and SBAC. CCSS was done in relative secrecy and then was poorly implemented.
GAtes is hoping to make the CCSS an established fact, claim that adjustments have been made and then revisit all the old ideas and plans again.
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Has a letter template, about the bi-partisan, two-pronged attack on public education been posted at this website? Is there a reference for it so, I can find it?
I, like other readers of Dr. Ravitch’s posts (and comments), want to communicate, in a concise and compelling manner, with local newspapers, school boards, community organizations and elected representatives about this complex issue.
I labored over a letter I sent to my local newspaper, describing the anticipated profit goal of charters and Common Core. The letter exposed the packaging theme, of corrective action for a system perpetuating an under class, the false narrative of wide spread failure, and the bogus selling point, that it would increase high-paying jobs, in great numbers. Despite my best efforts, better writing skills would have helped.
Is there a letter written by a person like Dr. Ravitch, who has excellent writing skills, that I and others could personalize for our community outreach?
Thank you.
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“Tech-based solutions are often wildly oversold, and deliver disappointing results.”
Absolutely. The degradation in academic rigor since my kids’ schools adopted laptops has been astounding. About the only thing digital learning really offers is the opportunity to get a lot of practice taking multiple-choice tests… which I guess is pretty much the point for the folks pushing this stuff.
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“Tech-based are often wildly oversold, and deliver disappointing results.”
Everyone wants the silver bullet, the magic potion.
Enter the snake oil salesman.
Few want to acknowldge that hard work and intellectual persevernce trump any and all technologies. Howerevr if these attributes are enhanced with the intelligent use of modern technology, the sky is the limit.
I would aalso add that,
“Standards-based testing has been wildly oversold, and has deliver ed disappointing results (NCLB).”
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It is a tactic. Mercesed Schneider wrote about the flaw of moratoriums and “pausing” any implementation. During a moratorium you are still technically enrolled. At some point the moratorium ends, and then the program resumes. What needs to happen is to get out, out, completely out.
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Sorry Mercedes.
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Interesting. Diane, I don’t know if you are aware of Rhode Island’s recent passage of two bills — one deferring the use of high-stakes testing like the NECAP as a graduation requirement until 2017, and the other cutting back on our onerous teacher evaluations so that teachers who are deemed “effective” and “highly effective” need only be evaluated once every two or three years, respectively.
These bills passed almost unanimously, after our new speaker of the house had been pretty clear about his intention to stonewall at least the high-stakes test bill. In fact, up until very recently everyone had expected the one bill to die in the Senate after having passed the House, and the other to die in the House after passing the Senate.
Only a few days ago, house speaker Matiello claimed to have had a change of heart about the high-stakes testing bill. Most people attribute this to an article that the Providence Journal ran about a young woman with Mosaic Down’s Syndrome who was from a well-to-do district and was being denied her diploma after having missed the target by only 2 points (while other young men and women were awarded diplomas after having scored lower than her, due to having shown “improvement” as per Gist’s nutty policy).
I wondered then if Matiello’s shift in position might have had more to do with Gates’ statement earlier this month — only a handful of days before the bills were allowed to go up for a vote — urging states to delay the high stakes accountability testing.
I’m not suggesting that Gates called Matiello and ordered him to reverse his stance and allow the House to vote on the testing moratorium bill. But I am saying that his statement made it a lot easier for Matiello to have a “change of heart”, and I wonder at the timing of the Providence Journal (a historically corporate reform friendly publication) in publishing a story so sympathetic to the moratorium bills right after Gates urged moratoriums.
You are right — we need to keep our eyes on this man, who seems to be calling entirely too many shots than one man has a right to call regarding education policy on the national and state levels.
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Note: If it isn’t clear, these bills passed VERY recently — Friday night, in fact. I know people who have been following them since their writing who were shocked at how quickly they went through after all indications being that they were going to die in the Assembly.
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Interesting Ron I did not make that connection at all but it is an interesting coincidence. What do we really know about Matiello?
FYI In Smithfield we have written up a petition to take to our school committee to ask them to get out of Common Core. I am not posting the link because per the school committee we only need signatures from our town residents. But you can read the petition if you like, it is up on change.org.
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I actually tweeted against that RI bill after I read it. We should not be supporting legislation that only sets a new calendar, while it reaffirms and mandates the high-stakes testing and “accountability” attack.
I understand kids lobbied for the delay, but they were played. it’s Gates agenda, exactly.
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Too many of us, particularly teachers, are willing to say they agree with the idea of common core, but find the implementation flawed. Dangerous position.
The very idea(s) behind common core is flawed to the core. We do not need to delay an implementation that should never have commenced.
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We’re “Educating the Gates Foundation” in Seattle this Thursday, June 26! Join us at 5pm @ Westlake Park (downtown) for speakers and sign making. We’ll then walk to the Gates Foundation to hear Anthony Cody speak. Let’s school Bill Gates where it really counts: in his hometown!
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Can someone set up a live web cam for all of us unable to attend?
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We are working to have Califather lifestream the event. Watch for details!
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Great!
What about general media attention?
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It doesn’t matter how genuine it is. Use this time to put forth the agenda of children.
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I thought it went like this, standards, curriculum, tests, evaluations. Are the standards even vetted yet??? More less the curriculum or tests, looks like they’re way ahead of themselves. The standards are not world class. So, roll back the tests and the curriculum as well, and if the nation is going to institute this grand plan, do it right.
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Tactic of course, he is too heavily invested.
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Whatever his intentions, Gates’ statement was tantamount to suggesting that States violate their RTTT “contracts.”
Also, Gates was on notice as early at 2009 (if not earlier) that teacher evals should not be based on student testing:
“On October 9, 2009, Edward Haertel, chair of the National Research Council’s Board on Testing and Assessment (BOTA) sent a letter-report to Arne Duncan to express BOTA’s concern about the use of testing in RTTT’s requirements.
Tests often play an important role in evaluating educational innovations, but an evaluation requires much more than tests alone. A rigorous evaluation plan typically involves implementation and outcome data that need to be collected throughout the course of a project.
Reflecting ‘a consensus of the Board,’ the nineteen-page letter went on to review the many scientific studies that demonstrate the pitfalls of using standardized test scores as a measure of student learning, teacher performance, or school improvement. BOTA recommended that the DOE use these studies to revise the RTTT plan. Unfortunately, as Haertel explained in his cover note, ‘Under National Academies procedures, any letter report must be reviewed by an independent group of experts before it can be publicly released, which made it impossible to complete the letter within the public comment period of the Federal Register notice [for RTTT’s proposed regulations].’ The scientists needed a peer review of their work, so they missed the Federal Register deadline, and that meant Duncan could ignore their recommendations—which he did. Haertel’s letter (www.nap.edu/catalog/12780.html) makes for poignant reading in the twenty-first century: science imploring at the feet of ideology.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools
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Here is the direct link to Haertel’s letter: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12780
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Hang on, Common Core? Where’s the NEPA, where’s the SEPA, where’s the public comment? Where’s the public record? You can’t build a gas station without this. The common core is not legit!
The common core is not of the public in any way shape or form. It is an ivory tower, elitist flight of fancy.
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He is trying to salvage CCSS. The anger over the testing might pull down the standards as well. If they can get CC embedded in school culture, they can revisit the testing question later and plan for a more reasoned roll out.
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Mr. Cody is 100% correct that this is just a delay/ diffuse tactic on the part of the Gates Foundation and Gates himself. At the most fundamental level, Gates has been forced to admit that you can’t build the plane while it is flying through the air. He doesn’t want to create the public relations debacle of masses of teachers who are known to be great by the communities they serve being fired by a VAM based system that has no more accuracy than a coin toss. He doesn’t want to create a situation where students in high performing, schools in wealthy communities experience a precipitous drop in their test scores, one that would have their well educated and resourced parents asking inconvenient questions. Gates does not want the truth about the profit extracting testing industrial complex to spread to a wider audience. The good news hiding in plain sight here is that perpetuating the idea that this is just about implementation and not about the flaws in the system as a whole is a much heavier lift than Gates and company are letting on. Had this all not been about the hostile takeover of public education, everyone would have acknowledged up front that the tests for the system being tested would have to wait till the system itself was up and running smoothly. The goldrush mentality that everything must be done at once, ASAP, gives the lie to all that. The urgency was not on behalf of students and education itself, rather it was to establish a beachhead from which to wage the rest of the war, to grab and hold market share in a way that would facilitate it’s expansion. This call for a moratorium is proof that Gates et al didn’t believe that rolling out CC$$ and it’s associated high stakes testing was any more complicated than learning a new skill on an assembly line which is the limit of their understanding of the what and how of education. It explains why they think they can make that imaginary assembly line better simply by the use of data, technology, and an anachronistically Taylorist view of labor. It is also a way for the Gates cabal to continue to not have any discussion about the effects of poverty and the real reasons that America has far higher levels of poverty among it’s citizens than the rest of the developed world.
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If there is a moratorium on the evaluations connected to the tests, then there is no point in continuing the tests either since the sole purpose of the tests was to attempt to measure growth for the purposes of the evaluations. The real reason the evaluations are being suspended is that there simply cannot be any remotely accurate growth measures to base them on while the CC$$ is being implemented. This moratorium is like saying we will suspend the use of nails but are still required to swing the hammers and hit the wood. And, once the CC$$ is being ramped up and many more teachers see it’s problems manifesting themselves, such as it being developmentally inappropriate for K-3, will the moratorium be extended while that and any other problems are being solved? How will they be solved, with the input of teachers as should have been the case from the beginning? Or not? Hard to say since it is a copy righted product.
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To stop the tests, we must use this opportunity to present our thoughts. Start with my upcoming book, Brainstorming Common Core. ( don’t let the title fool you, it’s to deceive the enemy) lol
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First of all, we can’t accept the stupid premise that “we” need to bargain with Gates at all for our schools. The only position to take in response to Gates “offer” is that we, the people, have always had the right to determine how our schools will be governed, and he has never had any right whatsoever.
The next step is a democratic process to restore public control and oversight of public education, and we’ve succeeded in bringing that proposal forward. Of course an immediate freeze on ALL high-stakes applications of standardized tests is required. Everybody agrees on that now. But, the purpose of the halt isn’t to decide how to carry out his agenda better. The people get a say in WHETHER to carry out any part of it.
We continue to insist on congressional hearings to examine the real effects of NCLB and RttT on schools and children. Congress must also investigate how laws and regulations have already been put in place to mandate the very policies Gates now agrees are destructive.
It’s only the people who can determine what role, if any, the corporate agenda will play in our schools. Only a democratic process in our communities and our political bodies can accomplish that, not some kind of bargaining or pleading among supposed “sides”.
Let Gates wheedle and negotiate for the timing of his take-over. Our job, as a democracy, is to get his heel entirely off our kids and our schools. Most people agree with this, so you don’t see him offering that option.
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Totally agree, and so we are clear local control does not mean state control. It means a way the community can hold their schools accountable via local community school boards. This is a fight for a democratic process where parents have control via local board elections. I say this because there is a danger with the School Choice/Voucher proponents becoming part of the common core opposition merely to wrangle it over to state control where ultimately it is the same game.
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No disrespect intended but Anthony Cody’s post only touches the tip of the Gates iceberg. Cody talks about Common Core, buts says nary a word about its partners, the ACT and the College Board.
As I wrote on this blog earlier, a two-year “moratorium” on testing will make virtually no difference regarding the Common Core. It’s already here.
Most states have adopted the Common Core standards, and worse, the top testing behemoths in the country –– the ACT and the College Board –– are publicly touting the fact that they’ve “aligned” their products with Common Core. Naturally they have, since they were instrumental in developing the Common Core. So, EVEN if there’s a two-year delay in Common Core testing, the Common Core will remain embedded in the ACT, the PSAT, the SAT, and Advanced Placement.
Bill Gates and others (like Randi Weingarten and Denis Van Roekel) can make the claim that they intend to “slow down” Common Core testing so that it could be “done right.”
Sorry, that doesn’t wash.
The Common Core is a “reform” that is unnecessary, that is incredibly expensive, and that will result in greater inequality in public schooling. And it’s based on a rationale – “economic competitiveness” – that is completely bogus (as I’ve pointed out on this blog numerous times)
In effect, Bill Gates bought his way into becoming the de facto education secretary in the United States. But he’s been aided and abetted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, by spineless politicians, by testing organizations that produce mostly worthless tests, and by the AFT and the NEA (organizations that allegedly support public education). And very sadly, many educators have been willing accomplices.
It will take much, much more than a short two-year testing reprieve to undo the chicanery.
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Redefining what someone says is a cheap political trick that is no longer acceptable. I didn’t hear Randi or others say “slow down to make tests better” It is time for the agenda of children, No more political “tea party” type games. Look at the issues at what people do, not what you say they do. Let the facts play out.
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Cap Lee is talking down to an honest commentator again. He’s hostile and dishonest, claiming ” I didn’t hear Randi or others say “slow down to make tests better”
While I’m opposed to feeding trolls, and this conversation has moved on, I want to address this outright misrepresentation. Michelle Gunderson is taking the Chicago resolution to the AFT national convention, where we face exactly the position Cap claims he hasn’t heard. She’s written, on Cody’s blog,
“Of special interest to all of us are the two resolutions that approach the Common Core State Standards. The first is a resolution on the role of standards in public education proposed by the AFT Executive Council which asks us all to continue to support the Common Core standards given corrective measures. The second is a resolution by the Chicago Teachers Union that fully opposes Common Core based on the philosophical purpose of education and the harm the standards created in our school communities. Both of these resolutions will encourage important and groundbreaking debate.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2014/06/michelle_gunderson_teacher_uni.html
She’s holding the actual resolution packet in front of her. If anybody says they haven’t heard Weingarten’s position by now, they are liars. This is an important conversation, and I don’t appreciate Cap Lee’s unfounded attack on democracy for putting forth his/her ideas on the subject.
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This is a brilliant tactic! There is a huge swath of teachers who wear their teacher hats when looking at politics, and with their wittle itty bitty teacher hats on they see a guy who is trying to help who’s making bad choices! He just needs redirection!
Um… Gate$ needs to be politically neutered. Let him stick to what he excels at – using his monopoly to make tons of money, and using that money to crush opponents who threaten his monopoly. (Lotus 1-2-3, Word Perfect, Novell…)
as I type this comment there are 40 others, and no one mentions the $ocial cla$$ of the dupe cla$$ doing the bidding of the toadie$ of Gate$.
If you go the Census Bureau & can dig up table CP03, “2012 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates”, you can see that there are appx. 116,000,000 households, and about 25,000,000 of them have income over $100,000 a year, with a median of appx. $51,000 => 58,000,000 households UNDER $51k a year.
One 1 hand millions of these over $100k relatively affluent households support civil rights! and planned parenthood!! and gay marriage!!! On the other hand, many have a view of community which consists of jetting around to different fun things to do, and, good for them!
The dupe cla$$ doesn’t really see the communities of little peeps working 1 or more crap pay jobs where the kid’s basketball or baseball or YMCA or art or choir or band… is The Entertainment … IF the kids are involved in anything organized. Umm… Is there anything organized for the kids to belong to? They certainly do NOT experience the low income neighborhood schools as the community centers they are, and they certainly do NOT experience the hodgepodge of random underfunded services which barely exist in those community center schools.
So … what is a good solution according to the toady cla$$? Well, everyone will get big test scores, hence everyone can get 800 SAT scores, therefore everyone will get careers instead of jobs, consequently everyone will be in the top 20%! (sh! do NOT look behind the curtain!! )
The dupe cla$$ is redeemable – the Gate$ toady cla$$ needs to be publicly outed, socially shamed and politically ostracized.
rmm.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/14/america-s-new-oligarchs-fwd-us-and-silicon-valley-s-shady-1-percenters.html
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