Tom Scarice, superintendent of schools in Madison, Connecticut, here speaks out and names the criminal corruption of education into a test-taking industry that has no goal other than test scores. He knows that as the stakes go higher, people succumb to the pressure to teach to the test or even to cheat. Campbell’s Law is relentless. The same things happen in other fields, when the goal of profit becomes more important than the endeavor itself.
Scarice compares present practices to those that destroyed Enron. He writes:
“Without question, measures, qualitative and quantitative, representing a variety of indicators that mark the values of an organization, are necessary fuel for the engine of continuous improvement. High-quality tests, specifically used for the purposes for which they were designed, can and should play a productive role in this process. But, measures are not goals. Regrettably, just as Lay and Skilling did in bringing a multibillion dollar corporation to its knees, in this era, the shallowest of thinkers have passively accepted the paradigm that measures are goals.
“And finally, we are left with the greatest crime committed against the professional practice of education as a result of the corrosive effect of the high-stakes testing era. In an effort to thrive, and perhaps, just to survive, in a redefined world of quality education, a soft, though sometimes harsh, distortion of pedagogy, has perniciously spread to classrooms, just as the Enron executives distorted sound accounting practices to meet high-stakes targets. This will indeed be our greatest regret.”
When test scores on standardized tests take precedence over the larger humanistic and aesthetic goals of education, over the needs of children, over creativity and ingenuity, then education itself becomes a cheapened enterprise.
Reblogged this on Arts Education Forum and commented:
The final paragraph in Diane Ravitch’s post is my reason for reblogging this. It are the humanistic and aesthetic goals which lead to ethical treatment of all.
TESTING is a tool the reformers us to bust schools, fire qualified/certified teachers, open charters with tfa scabs, and profit. Maybe when all the public schools have been shuttered and all that is left is charters, the testing will stop because its useful purpose has been attained. I’m sick of the no-nothings running/ruining education for their own selfish profit reasons.
They’ll pull the money away from charters so that only private schools exist, and if parents don’t have the money to educate their children, too bad.
“use” to bust, not “us” to bust. Angry. I. am.
They’re in a bubble, Diane. They have no earthly idea what’s going on outside that bubble.
Here’s Secretary Duncan wagging his finger at people for their lack of “financial literacy”:
“U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stressed the importance of making financial literacy a staple of the American education system at Pensions & Investments’ Investment Innovation and the Global Future of Retirement conference and urged attendees to help educators.
“You guys have the knowledge,” Mr. Duncan told the executives at the conference. “We can’t do this alone.”
In an interview conducted by Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson, Mr. Duncan said seeing so many families without savings and without a basic understanding about how to prepare for retirement has him “tremendously” worried about the future.”
Whatever the problems are in the US economy, lobbyists and their lawmakers have an answer: it’s the fault of working people. This is great because it lets them completely off the hook.
I can’t wait until Secretary Duncan brings his “financial literacy” program into public schools. I foresee a VERY lucrative public-private partnership on the horizon!
http://www.pionline.com/article/20140624/ONLINE/140629954/education-secretary-duncan-financial-literacy-needed-in-education-system
Back in the day we learned about savings through an elementary school program allowing us to open small savings accounts with nickels and dimes at the local S and L. Thanks to the charlatans in Congress who deregulated everything needing regulation, today S and L’s have gone the way of Bell Telephone and the Fairness Doctrine, and idiots like Duncan propose financial literacy programs probably to be developed with grants to Pearson and Rupert Murdoch and requiring e-readers in every classroom and testing of the students and evaluations of the teachers based on their kids’ investment returns ( tip for today – invest in charters).
“They” aren’t in a “bubble”–they know EXACTLY what they are doing. Duncan is a crook, just like his boss, and everybody in both political parties who want to destroy public institutions for private gain.
They are out to destroy the United States as we know it and turn this country into Chile in the 1970s. This despite the fact what happened there was a complete failure.
Sure folks, don’t expect to retire on social security because instead of putting the money in a dedicated fund we added the social security revenue to general funds and along with the rest of the $17 trillion dollar “investments” social security is bankrupt so, please folks, invest in the stock market so you can create the illusion
of healthy markets and then when the bottom actually does fall out the central bankers will either devalue your money or
the state will seize it to offset the national
debt. Afterall, desperate times call for
desperate measures. No thanks, I think I’ll
take a pass on the financial advice to save
from folks who only know how to spend. Wonder where the funds for our new
healthcare “tax” are going? The general fund? Hmmm. “Sorry folks, seems all this bureaucracy is rather expensive, we’re gonna have to make some difficult choices in healthcare”.
In prefacing her vote to institue PARCC at our local school commitee meeting one member touted the inevitability of high stakes tests and recommended parents look for books that teach how to “cheat” on these tests. Ughh!
Well, THAT’S charming!
Let’s make a list of what K-12 public schools are now responsible for, according to DC:
International competitiveness, national security, stagnant and falling wages, “financial literacy” and the lack of “retirement savings”, poor diet and lack of exercise, segregation, income inequality and high college costs.
Now let’s look at what this “debate” allows them to avoid: the deliberate, systematic destruction of organized labor, tax policy, the ridiculous CEO pay scales, crony deals to subsidize corporate profits, privatization of public goods and services, trade deals, the deliberate defunding of public education (see: tax rates) and, finally, campaign finance reform, corruption, and captured regulators and lawmakers.
Hey, I’d blame it all on public schools too! It’s a wonderful dodge!
You forgot that public schools are also to blame for not getting special education students up to grade level. Also high levels of suspensions.
Newark is planning to eliminate suspensions and in school suspensions. All discipline issues will be handled by classroom teachers. Children will be encircled by sharing, caring adults according to principles of restorative justice.
Oy. Even if the kid (these both happened to me) sets off a stink bomb or lights matches in a classroom? Or, heaven forbid, brings a gun to school?
A student lit a lighter in my class. Teachers have been assaulted.
Disgusting. I don’t mind positive discipline for most things, but for egregious problems–assault, fires, weapons–schools need to be able to suspend.
I haven’t been trained yet. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Everything they present me nowadays goes in one ear and out the other. Do you have lockdowns?
I was in a school where we had three lockdowns in a year. None before or since. Two of the three lockdowns were for crimes committed near the school, but not in the school or by anyone associated with the school. The third was because of gang threats. The school refused to train faculty on gang problems because, “It doesn’t happen at our school.” I already knew about them because I had taught at the alternative junior high. Anyway, so when a bunch of kids came in full gang regalia, they got away with it, because few teachers knew what they were seeing. So the next day, threats had been exchanged, so we were in semi-lockdown. Kids were escorted to each class and so forth. Ironically, that was at a much wealthier school than other places where I’ve taught. I’ve never had a lockdown at the higher-poverty, higher-risk schools I’ve taught at, even the alternative school.
It was a familiar practice in my last school, for administrators to send disruptive students back to the class they were asked to leave the same period. The student could have cussed out the teacher, threatened the teacher or a classmate physically,…you get the picture. The teachers were routinely told that they needed to improve their class management skills.
Diane, we need to organize a national movement to fight through grass roots and through the legal system. This blog constantly reveals fraud after fraud, conflicts of interest on the part of our elected officials, and corruption. How can we combat this collectively and also put some of these criminals behind well deserved bars? So sick of feeling so impotent!!!
Reblogged this on We Are More and commented:
Research indicates the best predictor of college and career success are GPA and class placement.
Oh, it’s not SES?
The best predictor of GPA and class placement is SES.
Shelly, CT is ground zero for the fight to stop Common Core and restore our public school system. Jon Pelto is taking on the most anti-teacher , pro-charter school, and pro-oligarch Democrat Governor in our country. If we send him into retirement because of his policies, it will go a long way in changing the direction of our educational system now under attack by these profit hungry oligarchs. So stay tuned and if you can tell others in CT of our efforts.
You have an insane cult–libertarianism or neoliberalism–that has adherents in both political parties and are in positions of power, including the White House. Yes, what is happening to public education is the same as what happened with Enron, but the same war is being waged against the public sector, period. You cannot separate what is happening with public education with what is going on outside it.
We are well on the road to feudalism in this country, and it is going to take massive opposition to curb it. Our politicians, unfortunately, are owned by the very interests who benefit from rampant inequality.
So true. We have been caught up with our individual partisan viewpoints that we have failed to see the bigger progressive picture that has been unfolding over the past 50-60 years and this progressive movement has disciples in both the democratic and republican parties. Two names stand out the Clintons and the Bush’s. Enough with Dynastic politics. The wizard controlling all of these individuals are the central bankers and they will not be stopped until they are managing the whole damn world from cradle to grave under the rule if philosopher kings. It is outright diabolic and folks can’t see it because the only news they get is from the capitalist controlled media. Soon even the internet will be restricted. Can’t have serfs sharing any dangerous ideas like the inalienable rights.
Below is a link to an analysis comparing test scores, school letter grades, and poverty level in Louisiana by blogger Louisiana Educator. Can you guess what is the best predictor of educational achievement in Louisiana?
In my experiences teaching diverse groups of students (both general ed and special ed), I can tell you that there are easy to teach students and difficult to teach students. Standardized test scores tell only a small part of the whole story about each individual student and what they have to offer. I choose to teach high poverty, at-risk students because they teach me so much in return. This Ed Deform agenda is destroying their self esteem and creating an education environment that meets their needs less and less each day. We need to remember to celebrate diversity and recognize diverse talents that make our world exciting. We need artists, plumbers, engineers, waiters, cooks, doctors… But most importantly we need adults who can fully participate in a democratic society.
We have lost our focus. We need for every superintendent of every school district to refuse to administer these tests. We need principals and teachers who refuse to focus on test prep. We need parents to support the Opt Out movement. There is power in numbers. Why haven’t we figured that out by now?
Follow the link below.
http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-most-powerful-predictor-of-student_26.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LouisianaEducator+%28Louisiana+Educator%29
Wonderful link! The story is the same in Newark.
Standardized testing. Campbell’s Law. A good intro to my fourth posting on Vergara.
See my second piece of 6-25-14 on this blog, under the posting “Adam Bessie: How the Vergara Advocates Framed the Narrative,” for the links to VD (Vergara Decision) and CT (Chetty Testimony). “Q” = “Question” and “A” = “Answer.” *Note disclaimer re latter.*
VD does not address the question of high-stakes standardized testing and Campbell’s Law.
CT has an extended response by Dr. Raj Chetty about Campbell’s Law with a nod to high-stakes standardized testing. I include the entire section re Campbell’s Law so that context can be more accurately determined (pp. 86-94, noted in parentheses).
[start quote]
(86) Q Are you familiar with something called Campbell’s Law?
A Yes, I am.
Q Is Campbell’s Law an actual law?
A I would call it Campbell’s Conjecture.
Q Why don’t you describe what Campbell’s Law is for the court.
A Campbell’s Law is the idea that if you use these value-added estimates or any performance metric for evaluation purposes, for personnel evaluation, for instance, that that metric might become distorted. So to give you one concrete example of how this might happen, suppose we evaluate teachers on (87) the basis of value-added. So teachers who are rated as highly ineffective we might assign them further training or we might dismiss them or so forth. So suppose we use these measures in high stakes evaluations. The concern Campbell had and a number of other social scientists have raised is that that might lead to behavioral responses by the teachers. So suppose you are in a really high-pressure environment, you might say I’m really concerned about my job, maybe I should try to do things like really teach to the test score, in extreme circumstances, maybe even (88) cheat on the tests in order to raise my value-added rating. And that type of distortion can undermine, potentially, the content in these value-added estimates.
Q And what is your response to Campbell’s Law in terms of your view that value-added can be used to measure teacher effectiveness?
A There are – – my response – – I think there are three aspects to this. So, first, unlike the other three issues here, which I believe have been directly addressed in the literature in our paper and in my view are resolved, the issue of Campbell’s Law, there is no conclusive evidence to date as to whether this effect that teacher value-added estimates become poor predictors of teacher (89) quality once they are used, is that an important effect or not. Sop that’s why I say it’s a theoretical issue at this moment. It’s possible that it could happen. It’s possible that it might not happen. I think it’s even conceivable that the value-added measures will become more accurate once teachers recognize that they are being evaluated on these measures and start to pay attention to the content on certain tests. Now, what I do know – – in my view, that works remains to be done to understand how big that effect is. Now, from a practical point of view, given (90) the knowledge we have to date, the reason I’m not concerned by the Campbell’s Law critique is twofold. First of all, you can correct the value-added measures and possibly combine them with other measures of teacher effectiveness to deal with this problem. So let me give you a very simple example. Suppose what ends up happening is that when we use these value-added measures, teachers become concerned about their ratings and as has actually occurred in certain school districts, they cheat on the tests or they do some test manipulation to try to artificially inflate their students’ test scores in the (91) current year. Now, that is actually a detectable pattern, because it’s going to produce a very clear recognizable pattern in the data where you will see that students’ test scores jump at the end of the current school year. So let’s say it’s a fourth grade teacher. You will see that fourth grade teacher’s test scores jump up. The test scores at the end of the fourth grade jump up. But then what you end up seeing is that the students’ scores bounce back down at the end of fifth grade because they haven’t learned anything, you only manipulated their test scores to be high at the end of the fourth grade. So that addresses is a very simple strategy. The way you deal with this problem is not (92) compute value-added on the basis of test scores at the end of the current year, you also look at test scores at the end of next year, and that way – – the test scores at the end of next year are outside of the current teacher’s control. So you can basically address this issue by using data on future test scores. Moreover, you can also combine value-added measures with other measures of effectiveness as a kind of a cross-validation. So, for instance, principal ratings or student observations, you can use those other measures to basically say something looks remiss here, (93) based on the students surveys or principal ratings, it looks like this teacher is not that effective, but somehow they are scoring really high on the value-added measure, let’s investigate this more carefully. So my view is you can address the potential Campbell’s Law concerns by using these other measures and so that’s why at the end of the day I would say there is theoretical speculation at the moment that this could be a concern but if it ends up being a concern, it can be remedied and moreover, if you put partial weight on value-added measure which is what is being proposed in most school districts, my opinion is that it’s very unlikely that this would become a (94) significant problem.
[end quote]
I will try to keep this as short as possible; let’s start at the beginning.
The following quotations are from a posting on this blog of 5/25/2012, entitled “What Is Campbell’s Law?”
From Donald Campbell’s 1976 article: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” And further that: “achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)”
Am I misunderstanding standard American English, but where does Campbell’s Law state that subordinates (in this case, teachers) defy their superiors (in this case, admins and school boards and edupreneurs) by engaging in the behaviors that Dr. Chetty mentions and (implicitly) condemns —
Or is Campbell referring to a general social process that highlights how the managers/heads/people in the highest positions of authority such as in Atlanta, GA and Washington, DC school systems (or other public, charter, voucher schools) put on the HEAT TO CHEAT? And did the subordinates in the recent VA scandal or the Potemkin Villages of the now-vanished Soviet Union decide all on their own to massage and torture numbers—or did the HEAT TO CHEAT come from the very highest levels?
Regardless of Dr. Chetty’s intentions, his misunderstanding of Campbell’s Law can only be interpreted (and I am putting this gently) as scapegoating and vilifying teachers.
An additional note on this: W. Edwards Deming long ago predicted such as the inevitable product of M.B.O = Management By Objective/M.B.R. = Management By Results/M.B.N = Management By The Numbers.
“A numerical goal is a number drawn out of the sky. A numerical goal outside the control limit cannot be accomplished without changing the system. A numerical goal accomplishes nothing. What counts is by what method. Three words. If you can accomplish a goal without a method, then why weren’t you doing it last year? There’s only one possible answer: you were goofing off. May the numerical goal be achieved? Yes. We can make almost anything happen. But what about the cost? What about the loss? Anybody can achieve almost anything by distortion and faking, redefinition of terms, running up costs.”
(THE ESSENTIAL DEMING: LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES FROM THE FATHER OF QUALITY, 2013, p. 55)
Note the phrase near the end “Anybody can achieve almost anything by distortion and faking” — a proposition that Dr. Raj Chetty would obviously find discomfiting because it would eviscerate the purity and beauty and infallibility of the numbers he’s using to construct his value-added models.
While Dr. Chetty elsewhere makes it clear that he prefers large data sets and not anecdotes (a topic for another piece), he does this at the expense of a “grossly ineffective” [can’t help myself!] downplaying of such monumental challenges to his numerical fantasies such as Atlanta, GA and Washington D.C. as well as ignoring a (by now) large literature and numerous sources as different as Todd Farley, Dan DiMaggio and Audrey Amrein-Beardsley (please google).
But why are the numbers so important? Test scores, according to him, aren’t everything, aren’t the only thing. Nonetheless, as his entire testimony that morning makes clear, the numbers generated by standardized tests are proxies for, and the glue that binds together, all the other outcomes and assessments he has put forth.
This piece is already too long. Before I end, though, one last point on language. Note how challenges to his bullet-proof numbers construct are only a “theoretical issue” or “you can correct” with “other measures” or one can deal with manipulated test scores by employing a “very simple strategy” or that concern with doctored figures is merely “theoretical speculation.” On RheeWorld perhaps, with its Rheeality Distortion Fields, these fantastical assertions are passed off as received knowledge and infallibly correct pronouncements.
Here on Planet Reality his self-serving dismissive assertions have long since been disproven in practice. But will that make a difference? I hope so, but as a very dead and very Greek guy said long long ago:
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” [Demosthenes]
Not holdin’ my breath…
😎
I am glad school is finally over so I can focus my attention on this nonsense. Am I now accountable for future testing data? The quality of testimony on Perry Mason was better.
NJ Teacher: you didn’t get the memo? You aren’t on the Gates Foundation emailing list?
Wow…
What are the chances of that? [A numbers/stats joke]
😎
KrazyTA:
Check out Goodhart’s law, which sounds like a variant of Campbell’s law. It’s a pithier statement of the same basic idea. It should make intuitive sense to anyone. From the Wikipedia entry:
“Goodhart’s law is named after the banker who originated it, Charles Goodhart. Its most popular formulation is: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'”
This might sound innocuous, but of course the reliance on test scores as a measure of “effectiveness” has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars, and it has spun US education policy wildly out of control.
The “ed reform” goal of continually improving student test scores is wrong for lots of reasons. Goodhart’s law puts one of them in a nutshell. It is easier to quote than Campbell’s law and gets to the point more quickly:
“When a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Randal Hendee: thank you!
I am going to start using this one too.
😎
Can someone with greater knowledge than me please reply to Andre Perry’s defense of Common Core in The Washington Monthly’s College Guide section? His take on Gov. Jindal’s reversal of support of CCSS is merely political opportunism and that every generation needs new standards to aspire to. He says:
“The haters of Common Core are mischaracterizing it as merely a test. Let’s be clear; every generation needs new standards.”
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/common_core_the_tetherball_of.php
Thank you.
David Yuguchi: one of the best answers to that statement was recently made by an extremely well informed individual in the education establishment, a genuine rheephorm insider, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
Aspirational goals these days seem to just be another name for pr spin, marketing hype, catchy slogan and misleading cliché. Ignore. Heed the words of an old dead Greek guy:
“Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.” [Homer]
😎
I’ve been using the phrase “Educational Enron” myself for years now. Thanks for sharing this article.
Love your blog –
Thought you might find this of interest.
http://www.mvtimes.com/2014/06/27/state-college-board-invalidates-high-school-advanced-placement-test-results/
Geraldine’s link (above) to the possibility of “cheating” on AP tests raises another very troubling problem, and that is that Common Core IS already here, and it’s embedded in the ACT and in the PSA, SAT and Advanced Placement.
As I’ve noted numerous times, ACT Inc, and the College Board were instrumental in developing the Common Core. Both say that their products are fully “aligned” with it. And their products are mostly worthless; they don’t do anything. Neither the ACT nor the SAT is a good predictor of college success. But they are sensitive to family income (SES), and that’s mostly what they measure.
But here’s the kicker: Besides the tests, “the ACT and the College Board…sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
One commenter on this thread said that “we need to organize a national movement to fight through grass roots” to end corruption and, presumably, the Common Core.
But as long as public school educators and parents and students (and administrators and school board members) are wedded to the ACT, the PSAT, and SAT, and AP courses and tests, there is little (if any) hope for change.
Cross-posted the original artilcle with a link in the commentary to this blog
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Superintendent-The-greate-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Accountability_Education_Effect_Important-140628-385.html#comment497528
n the 6/30/2014 edition of the LA Times Howard Blume indicates that a public survey indicates that there is a majority of people who support the Vergara decision regarding teacher tenure. What this survey also indicates is the shameful lack of public education that United Teacher’s of Los Angeles (UTLA) and all other teacher’s union has done. As an ardent UTLA union member and supporter I am appalled by the failure of AFT, as well, to actively go out into the community and leaflet, every single Saturday and at every single event that involves the public, with the truth about the destruction of public education under the guise of “bad teachers”. Have we forgotten the lessons of Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement, and yes, the union building movement? Only the efforts of the unions to reach out and educate all the public about the plans of the John Deasey’s and the Arne Duncan’s , not the bureaucratic blathering’s of hacks and union leaders ,will result in a change of public understanding.