Stephanie Simon reports on Bill Gates’ latest explanation of why the Common Core standards are a wonderful idea. We need standardization. Maybe we need a national curriculum so that everyone learns exactly the same thing at the same time. Bill Gates loves the Common Core because it is like a standard electrical outlet that we can plug children’s brains into and get standard electrical current. That explains why he paid out at least $200 million to create Common Core, so everyone could have a standard mind and be just like everyone else. Some people, like Emeritus Professor Jack Hassard of Georgia State University, think that Gates has actually pumped $2 billion into Common Core. Really, without standardizing the minds and hopes and dreams and aspirations of everyone everywhere, how can we hope to compete with the standardized minds in other nations?
This is not news. We knew that, didn’t we?
Here is some more not-news: Bill Gates thinks Arne Duncan is wonderful because Arne Duncan wants to standardize everyone’s minds just like Bill Gates. And he wants to pay teachers based on the test scores of their students, just like they don’t do at his children’s private school.
They can’t understand why the more parents learn about Common Core, the less they like it. That’s what the polls show.
Here is an anecdote, not a poll, not scientific. I spoke to a friend who is a retired New York City principal. She had a distinguished career for many years in a middle school. Her grandson came home from his first day in kindergarten. He had work sheets for homework. When she asked about his day, he said there was no recess because they had to work on reading and math problems. This is ridiculous. The children will learn to hate school.
Common Core will never be “national standards,” no matter how much money Bill spends, no matter how much the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pushes it, no matter how many states lose Arne’s waivers. It might survive in half the states. But it will never stop being a source of controversy. It didn’t have to be this way. The lesson is that you don’t get “national standards” by writing them in secret, then using federal funds as a lure to shove them down the throats of parents and children. If we ever have national standards, it will come about as the result of a democratic, open process, not a secret deal among oligarchs and the feds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Love the phrase: “…just like they don’t do at his children’s private school.”
I think Gates used the Mark Zuckerberg Facebook philosophy “break things” in trying to establish the Common Core and his educational policies. Not sure the feedback is quite what he expected (at least the feedback from anyone not receiving his financial support).
As you stated, no surprises here….. In the article, Gates states that unnamed Asian countries “spend far, far less money and get far, far better results.” Does anyone know what the range of teacher salaries from 1st year to max are at the elite private schools that the Obama girls, his children, and the children of oligarchs attend? Just curious. Thanks!
Teacher Tom from Pittsburgh, read Yong Zhao’s new book about education in China, and you will see that testing and test prep are central and key to their high scores. If we sacrifice our children’s health, love of learning, individualism, and creativity, we could get those scores too.
And South Korea, another high scoring country, has one of the highest proportion of youth suicides in the world.
Sadly, I doubt very much that fact is considered by the Reformers. It is all about confidence intervals and margins of error.
“But he did cite Education Secretary Arne Duncan as a Washington leader he admires, praising Duncan for helping to get more children in charter schools and for demonstrating a willingness to confront teachers unions.”
A little awkward for Democrats just as they launch the “we don’t hate public schools and labor, really we don’t” campaign season push, I think.
Gates did nail it, though. It’s been attacks on labor and charter schools, all day everyday, and nothing else. It’s amusing to watch the glowing reviews of public schools and the Common Core. Democrats discovered public schools again! All of a sudden, rave reviews are rolling in. The Common Core truly must be miraculous. Public schools went from a bunch of lazy, mediocre losers that no one cared about to being worthy of high praise from the ed reform “movement”, in less than a year.
It’s so miraculous that between 56% and 71% of students failed the tests in Utah this year.
The single most practical and helpful thing I’ve read on the Common Core is Carol Burris and her careful explanation of how they set the cut scores.
That’s what parents need to know. They need context. These numbers are presented as set points and they’re not. If they wanted to work backwards from a remediation-free SAT score, why not just say that? Explain that. Explain how NY came up with a passing score. Then we can make an informed decision about whether this score means anything to us.
The funny thing is, in Utah, there has NEVER been any indication of how the cut scores were set. I would like to know whose definition of “proficient” is being used, because to say that, in some cases, less than 30% of students are “proficient” is ridiculous. No one seems to ask: what is proficient? Is the level of proficiency set appropriately? No. The media just crows about how the students are all stupid.
“Then we can make an informed decision about whether this score means anything to us.”
Due to the myriad epistemological and ontological errors involved in the educational standards and standardized testing educational malpractices that render said malpractices COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson, the only “informed decision” has to be one of TOTAL REJECTION of those scores and any conclusions drawn.
Chiara, have you read the Wilson study to which I so frequently refer? If so, your thoughts please!
I have read what you posted, Duane, but I am “of” the testing system myself so it may take a while before I leave it all behind 🙂
I took standardized tests. It wasn’t that big a deal. We did them once a year and I don’t remember ever thinking about them after that one test day.
I didn’t take the ACT because I went to a community college for a technical degree program after high school. I did take the LSAT, however, but I was an adult.
I know people who care about them a lot. I have a friend who is an engineer and he still tells people he got a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT. I think that’s a little sad.
Chiara,
I, too, am “of” the testing system-don’t remember that I ever scored below the 90th percentile on the ones I took. And when I interviewed for a doctoral program the professors, after seeing my GRE score, asked why I was applying at their second tier state university school and not to Washington University in St. Louis. It was mainly through those two professors as to why I “broke out” of the testing regime.
It took Diane quite a while (and with a lot of my gentle-ha ha prodding) to read it and she now understands why I reference it so much. My summary doesn’t do Wilson’s work justice at all. It must be read to really comprehend the depth of analysis that Wilson brings to the subject matter.
So, if I may gently prod you, Chiara, please read it. You’ll understand all the better the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of those educational malpractices.
“Should Georgia have a different railroad width than anybody else? Should they teach multiplication in a different way? Oh, that’s brilliant. Who came up with that idea?” Gates said.
What is he getting at here? The Commerce Clause? He really DOES see education as wholly economic activity.
…and lets not forget the real reason Gates, et al. LOVE them some common core and charter schools: Ka-ching. End-game profits. Public taxes equal private profits. Gates’s philanthropy was a down payment on the payback in investment he expects – like everything he “gifts” money to.
He has just donated money for Ebola care, research, cure – while the care portion of this is admirable, no doubt the end game is a vaccine, like malaria and polio, and then…Ka-ching. Bill Gates for President.
In some ways he’s more powerful than the President.
Right! No one’s elected (chosen) him for anything.
I’d add to Diane’s observation about the lack of recess making young children hate school that in my experience over the last 60 years and conversations with people of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, a significant number of children have hated school for well over a century in this country. The removal of recess will only serve to increase both the degree of hatred and the number of children who experience it.
So I suspect strongly that when the current debates and editorials and articles about Common Core fade into memory just as they have with NCLB, the New Math, and countless other bills and top-down reform/deform initiatives for curricula in various disciplines (as well as a few that appear, fade, reappear, and fade again from the “standard” menu in our schools – e.g., values education), we’ll still need to have a conversation locally and nationally about what the purpose of public education is, what it means to be educated, and how education fits into the care and feeding of a democratic republic. One thing that we’ll quickly discover if we try to enter into such a conversation is that there are a lot of Americans who have no problem with the word “democracy” when it’s used by people like George W. Bush or even Barack Obama to justify imperialist acts of aggression overseas (or even domestically), but have no use for the word when it comes to discussing how we should live and how the nation should be governed. Indeed, in the latter context, the word “democracy” is anathema to them, as they repeatedly state in no uncertain terms. A dip into those waters will quickly convince many people that a lot of us are living in quite a different country from a lot of others of us.
From the article:
“Gates described the state of education before Common Core was introduced as “a cacophony” because every state had different standards. Many of those standards, he said, didn’t align well with exams.
“Common Core is, to me, a very basic idea that kids should be taught what they’re going to be tested on and that we should have great curriculum material,” he said.”
Confirmation that the test is the curriculum.
Now how that equates to “great curriculum” is beyond this peon’s mind. I guess one must have thousands of millions of dollars to understand Billy’s supposed thinking.
Yes, the tests we can never see used to as input to a secret formula in an effort to impose unproven methodologies. Makes perfect sense.
It has always been CCSS are a smoke and mirror act to the true standards being the tests.
This is truly dystopian — a return to child factory slave labor. It is really hard to imagine how such horrible regression could have happened. They are crippling our children, mentally and physically.
“Unless we conform, unless we follow orders blindly, there is no way that we can remain free.” Frank Burns, M*A*S*H
Like it. Could be a good epitaph for the common core.
Kurt Vonnegut was quite a prognosticator in 1961 when he published Harrison Bergeron. Gates and Duncan could be appointed co-Handicapper Generals.
Odd that Bill Gates and I have such different views of “gardening children”.
In his view, each child is a blade of grass identical in every way – height, color, etc to every other blade of grass child, much like the grass on the green of a golf course. Perfect uniformity.
For many of us though, raising (and educating) children is much more like tending a wildflower garden. When the first child-plant appears, it is impossible to know what it will blossom into, and each plant differs from those around it and demands special attention in order to flourish, grow and thrive. Some are tall and others are short. Some are showy whereas others are more subdued. Their colors are those of the entire rainbow. The beauty of the wildflower garden, and its strength, is its diversity. Were a gardener to insist that each of the wildflowers be treated the same, none would survive, let alone thrive.
Children are not blades of grass any more than they are toasters!
Excellent analogy GE2L2R!
TAGO!
“Common Core will never be “national standards,” no matter how much money Bill spends, no matter how much the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pushes it, no matter how many states lose Arne’s waivers. It might survive in half the states. But it will never stop being a source of controversy. It didn’t have to be this way. The lesson is that you don’t get “national standards” by writing them in secret, then using federal funds as a lure to shove them down the throats of parents and children. If we ever have national standards, it will come about as the result of a democratic, open process, not a secret deal among oligarchs and the feds.”
You can carve this into a granite slab and put it on a pedestal in the USDOE atrium.
And someone (Diane?) should make him write this 500 times and have it signed by his parents.
cx. him = Arne
Maybe he should be forced to carve it 500 times on a granite slab.
That should keep him out of teachers’ hair for awhile.
The oft-repeated claim that Bill Gates would never make his own children sit for a multi- day standardized bubble test turned out not to be true: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=142569&rc=0
Is it known for sure that the results of these tests in no way influence personnel decisions?
Recess is an ongoing problem area in many NYC DOE schools, and it’s got nothing to do with Bill Gates. At Lakeside and other elite private schools, a teacher may have to pull am bus duty, eat lunch with their class, and supervise recess all in one day. Most public school administrators do not have that kind of staffing flexibility.
Tim, I followed the link and it said nothing about standardized testing at Lakeside. It described opportunities for scholarships, again without reference to test scores. I found this under “academics”:
“A Commitment to Excellence
“Lakeside’s 5th- to 12th-grade student-centered academic program focuses on the relationships between talented students and capable and caring teachers. We develop and nurture students’ passions and abilities and ensure every student feels known.
“The cultural and economic diversity of our community, the teaching styles, and the approaches to learning are all essential to Lakeside academics. We believe that in today’s global world, our students need to know more than one culture, one history, and one language.
“Each student’s curiosities and capabilities lead them to unique academic challenges that are sustained through a culture of support and encouragement. All students will find opportunities to discover and develop a passion; to hone the skills of writing, thinking, and speaking; and to interact with the world both on and off campus. Lakeside trusts that each student has effective ideas about how to maximize his or her own education, and that they will positively contribute to our vibrant learning community.”
Sounds good to me. No mention of standardization, electric outlets, Common Core, or 8-hour tests.
Scroll down to the entry for 1/10/14, or try this link.
http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=204&nid=892971
Everyone was 100% positive that these tests were not given at the elite private schools, and it turns out they are administered at nearly all of them. Do we know for sure that the results don’t affect staffing decisions?
Tim,
I know for sure that private schools do not take state annual tests.
Tim, just because students are taking tests in January (mid-terms), does not make them standardized. and I love that the photo shows students writing on actual paper, not blankly staring at a computer screen.
They’re standardized tests, administered by the ERB.
FLERP, ERB is not administered annually. It is part of admissions. If parent is a billionaire, ERB doesn’t matter.
“ERB” isn’t a test, it’s an entity that develops and administers tests. Some are used for admissions, others for assessments. The ERB has assessments for almost every grade, although as Stiles notes below, Lakeside appears to use them only in grades 6 and 8.
Yes, Lakeside administers standardized tests, but on a noticeably smaller scale that we see in public schools. It looks like 6th and 8th grade students take the CTP IV, which is a standardized test typically used in independent schools or sometimes in public schools for advanced learners. Juniors take the PSAT. And they request the SSAT as part of their admissions process. That’s a far cry from annual state accountability assessments and benchmark assessments three times annually.
Stiles,
I don’t count the PSAT or the SAT, as in any way comparable to the PARCC or SBAC or state tests, some of which last 8-10 hours. Truly, the kids at Lakeside and Sidwell are spared Testmania.
Lakeside can administer standardized tests 24/7 if they want, but does anybody really believe the school would fail a billionaire’s kid? There is a difference between standardized tests and high stakes standardized tests.
Thanks for reminding me–the timing of when Lakeside administers these standardized assessments isn’t coincidental. Middle school is when these lovely, Dewey-approved schools begin to prune their low-performers in preparation for the extreme competitiveness of high school, where there’s $250/hour private tutors and the suffocating “Race to Nowhere” type pressure. The test results might be used to bolster the case against the wash-outs.
It’s pretty clear from the tone of the Lakeside notice that they take the assessments seriously, and that they anticipate families will as well. The fanciest, most elite private school in New Orleans goes even further and prepares a thorough guide for families to help boost scores: http://www.newmanschool.org/ftpimages/161/download/Getting%20Ready%20for%20the%20ERB's.pdf
If they were “no stakes” tests, they wouldn’t be given.
Reality check. The difference is the children of the elite have the luxury of failure. The school and parents at these exclusive schools can furrow their brow and act serious, but few seriously believe the stakes are as high as a poor or middle class student working without a net and seeing one shot at a decent life in the form of a multiple choice exam.
Mathvale,
Which one grade 3-8 NCLB-mandated state test represents a public school student’s single shot at a decent life? I’m not following.
Just to be perfectly clear, having just now seen a comment from Diane regarding admissions–these standardized bubble/computer tests are being given during the school year to all enrolled students in certain grades (Sidwell is 5-8, Lakeside 6 and 8, and Isidore Newman 3-8; Harpeth Hall is undetermined).
My school district is now demanding at least nineteen hours of standardized testing per student per year beginning in grade 7. And next year, when the fine arts (!) and health and P.E. (!) standardized testing comes online, it will be closer to 30. I highly doubt that Lakeside has that much standardized testing per year, since that’s the length 10 or 11 Advanced Placement tests PER YEAR.
Money doesn’t matter? George W. graduated from Yale.
“. . . a teacher may have to pull am bus duty, eat lunch with their class, and supervise recess all in one day. Most public school administrators do not have that kind of staffing flexibility.”
Tell that to my public school administrators. See my response to Laura Chapman:
“. . . teachers in the US have a heavier work load. . . ”
What you mean my five preps, seven classes, 150 or so students with 1.5 hours daily of prep time (which includes the 45 minutes before and after school less one day’s worth) and 22 minutes for lunch (including ‘travel’ time) with one lunch and before/after school a week supervisory time isn’t the norm around the world?
Weak namby pambies all of them, I say!!!
“Everyone was 100% positive that these tests were not given at the elite private schools. . .”
That’s a mighty insupportable statement there Timmy!!
or is it unsupportable?
Señor Swacker: inquiring minds and all that…
“The oft-repeated claim that Bill Gates would never make his own children sit for a multi- day standardized bubble test turned out not to be true”—
“Everyone was 100% positive that these tests were not given at the elite private schools, and it turns out they are administered at nearly all of them.”—
Interesting assertions. I wonder who or what that refers to?
😳
Oh right…
That’s the old “straw man” argument.
😱
For a second there I thought someone was playing fair.
😒
Sorry for the momentary slip but maybe a very old and very dead and very Greek guy might catch me before I fall too far…
“As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.” [Demosthenes]
😎
P.S. “Se aprovechan de mi nobleza”/they are taking advantage of my nobility.
From that famous Mexican superhero of yesteryear, El Chapulín Colorado [The Red Grasshopper].
But not on my watch…
😏
You are right, Duane. That statement is both in- and unsupportable.
Turns out it’s not just Bill Gates’s kids’ school who is administering multi-day, standardized bubble tests that are used partially to rank and stack their students.
Harpeth Hall does it: Google “harpeth hall faculty handbook”, see p. 11 of the first link.
Sidwell Friends? Oh, my. They take their standardized bubble tests in grades 5-8 on COMPUTERS. Download the document “Standardized_Testing” found at the following link: http://www.sidwell.edu/news/article/index.aspx?pageaction=ViewSinglePublic&LinkID=33549&ModuleID=537&NEWSPID=1
“Everyone was 100% positive that these tests were not given at the elite private schools, and it turns out they are administered at nearly all of them.”—
Interesting assertions. I wonder who or what that refers to?
I think that refers to ‘100% (every one) of the strawmen” (or maybe “every one of the men who are 100% straw”)
This is actually very reminiscent of statements made by another individual on this site about “orthodox opinion” and the like.
Strawmen appear to be plentiful round these here parts.
Sidwell Friends, Harpeth Hall, and Lakeside administer standardized bubble tests to assess their students and curriculum. It’s nice to have that settled.
SomeDAM Poet: perhaps it’s all just a misunderstanding…
😏
Look, doing a victory dance after winning a “straw man” argument is not what it seems.
Not at all. There was an ulterior, and rather benign, motive at work here.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]
See, today was not wasted…
😎
TIM WRITES:
“Sidwell Friends, Harpeth Hall, and Lakeside administer standardized bubble tests to assess their students and curriculum. It’s nice to have that settled.”
TIM FAILS TO MENTION:
Sidwell Friends, Harpeth Hall, and Lakeside administer standardized bubble tests to assess their students and curriculum BUT ARE NOT USED TO THREATEN THE CAREERS< THE LIVELIHOODS OR THEREPUTATION OF THEIR TEACHERS OR ADMINISTRATORS. NOR DO THEY INTENTIONALLY PRODUCE A 70% FAILURE RATE IN THE ATTEMPT TO PROVE THAT THEIR SCHOOLS ARE FAILURE FACTORIES.
NY Teacher: wow!
Facts and logic and consistency, oh my… I don’t think we’re on RheeWorld anymore, Toto. This must be Planet Reality.
Now your comments are something we can do a victory dance around.
Next time you’re around, stop by Pink Slip Bar & Grille. It’s on the Greek guy. Socrates always has enough drachmas for a round of good cheer with someone who can make a good argument…
😎
“The streams of test scores generated by No Child Left Behind showed Americans just how poorly many schools were performing, Gates said at a POLITICO event entitled “Lessons from Leaders.” All that bad news could be numbing, Gates said. But Duncan came in and said “let’s find some positive outliers, let’s get behind them, whether it’s teacher evaluation, use of technology and in a few places, getting more kids into charter schools,” Gates said.”
The news was grim. Just as Gates and Duncan suspected, all public schools sucked.
Luckily, though, both men are visionary leaders, so they hit on a way to raise the flagging spirits of the dumb and lazy populace, who (incidentally) attended those same public schools, which suck.
They would buy them all devices, start measuring teachers with complicated formulas from Harvard economists, and open thousands of charter schools to “create demand”, garner market share, and hopefully drive those irritating and imprecise public schools out of business for good.
“But Duncan came in and said “let’s find some positive outliers, let’s get behind them, whether it’s teacher evaluation, use of technology and in a few places, getting more kids into charter schools,” Gates said.”
Wouldn’t you love to be in the room when Duncan reports back to Gates that he can’t find any value at all in existing public schools, so they have to focus on “positive outliers”, all of which are (coincidentally) exactly the same things Bill Gates supports, and none of which have anything to do with improving existing public schools.
I insist ed reformers run on charter schools, teacher measuring systems, and more screens in classrooms. It’s the least they could do.
Here’s the simple way to look at it….we are expected to teach our students a standardized curriculum, so they will pass the standardized test. But by no means, in any way shape or form, are students standard! Whether it’s across the country, statewide, district wide, or even a single classroom. In fact, you could have refugee students from the same village in Sudan, bet they come from different tribes. There is no standard for these students and their parents, that CCSS addresses.
Imagine if Gates et al, spent those wasted $200 million on actual public classrooms? Wow! I can’t even imagine what an incredible impact that would have on our nation’s classrooms and students. You wouldn’t even have to put it towards teacher salaries. Just help create smaller classes and add the arts and everything else he values for his own kids. Help to close the gap in SES, employment, access to health/prenatal care, resources to empower parents and families so they aren’t dependent on the system. That’s just a short list.
$200 million is at most 0.03% of our national public K-12 spending. Unless it was lavished on a relative small number of students, it is unlikely to have that much of an impact. Gates’s entire personal fortune would only fund the NYC DOE for about three years.
Philanthropists who have tried to figure out innovations with a multiplier and self-scaling effect are often derided on this blog, but it could be simply that they have a very good understanding of how quickly large-scale public institutions can burn through money.
You forget the other costs of testing–particularly in technology. You also do not consider the other important testing costs–the horrendous loss of instructional time spent in test prep, practice tests, and the tests themselves With all of the testing I’m being forced to do, I am starting to wonder when I will have time to actually teach anything.
All fair points, but I have no sympathy at all regarding time spent on test prep–that is a choice that districts and schools and administrators make. It’s not what’s best for kids, and Campbell’s “law” / “the test made me do it!” is a miserable excuse.
Tim
You seem to be completely out of the loop on this. What don’t you get about the punitive, career threatening nature of standardized testing under the current USDOE/RTTT/NCLB waiver regime?
I get it perfectly, NY teacher, and my kids are in the loop up to their necks: all that stuff about always doing what’s best for kids is meaningless and hollow. When jobs are “threatened,” the kids can’t be thrown under the bus quickly enough.
Where are the districts and schools that demonstrate their commitment to kids not by telling them to “opt out,” yet still teach to the test and test prep, but by delivering a rich, broad curriculum?
Bill Gates should be voted out of office for making all of these decisions about our country’s public education.
Let me reform that statement: If Bill Gates was an elected official…
It’s true that small homogenenous countries benefit from a standardized curriculum from within its highly regulated public schools. Private and religious schools do as well as people are members of a community and share a common vision.
However, remember Bill Gates is primarily contributing to large charter school systems through “Race to the Top,” grants. Charter schools are not homogenious in nature. American culture is more scattered. Charters make all the choices for curriculum instead of parents and real/ licensed educators/ teachers. Charters generally buy the most cost effective curriculum that “appears” to meet students needs. Parents are left with PTA and other more minor supportive roles in charters.
Standards do need to be re-visted from state to state. There are too many standards as many standards are written too broadly and yet too specifically to be able to accomplish or master at every skills level. We wind up with a schedule for teaching and only give an exposure of skills sets over mastery of skills sets. So we basically wind up with students with holes in their knowledge and a lack of interest in school due to all the confusion in information they are receiving. I can appreciate what Bill is trying to do, but he is leaving the community behind and best practices behind.
If he really was interested in education as he claims … he would tackle poverty first. But, there is less immediate profit. The outcome may not be profitable in the future to his business or his associates either.
[…] The “research” was there, coming from the workers, just as CCSS resistance is coming from parents and teachers. Instead of listening, Gates merely regurgitates his CCSS support. […]
@ Tim
Your arguments are handy but misguided. I don’t have much time so here’s a succinct summary to your points:
First, the private school tests seem to be be pretty diagnostic in terms of evaluating students and their curriculum choices. State tests and CCSS aligned tests are used as an evaluation of teachers and schools. They evaluate different things. As a high school teacher in Michigan, I can honestly tell you that any test NOT named ACT is meaningless and not taken seriously by 11th graders. No stakes in the non-ACT tests. The private school tests appear to have stakes for students though. Big difference.
Second, the $200 million was NOT placed in actual education spending but rather in two ways: one to create CCSS and the other to pay groups in exchange for their public support.
Third, in this climate, public school teachers skip preps and duties all the time. Why? Because tenure laws are pretty much toast and seniority is meaningless. I’ve heard more than one story about new administrators looking to replace the existing staff with their own people. This leads to people doing anything to keep their jobs, including taking on innumerable tasks that are exhausting.
Fourth, if you don’t like test prep time and think it’s bad for kids then stop supporting these ideas that you are currently on board with. You defeated your entire argument in one sentence. Teachers are being judged on test scores. It’s part of the weighting and not an insignificant part in many places. The effect is to teach to the test. So, yeah, the test made me do it! is a valid response. By the way, stop supporting charter schools because they are all about the test. I have friends and neighbors that have sent their kids or taught in charter schools. Lots of practice tests and a heavy proportion of time spent on math and reading. Tests drive this system. And look at Gates quote about essentially, yes, teaching to the test. Your hero promoted what you just opposed. Wake up and see that it is ALL ABOUT THE TESTS to these reformers.
I don’t mind that you’re trying to be a challenging voice but you aren’t really hitting on the arguments directly. You’re approaching through the side door and hoping no one notices. Live these reforms for a single school year and you’ll understand that everything you wrote is fantasyland.
Your argument about incentives makes sense, but there’s a very important point Tim make, which is that here in New York, there is actually a state law that limits test prep to three or four school days per year.
Why wouldn’t we want to see an education advocacy group try to enforce this law by challenging a specific school’s practices? At a minimum, it would hold the DOE accountable for its implementation of the law, or lack thereof, by forcing it to explain how it interprets the law, what it thinks “test prep” means, how the test prep that schools openly say they’re devoting months to isn’t actually “test prep,” and provide the public a vivid illustration of how, as you say, “it is ALL ABOUT THE TESTS.”
I think you need to clarify Tim’s important point. This is not sarcastic: you go on to say that his point is backed up by a law that is essentially unenforceable. I admit I’m confused here, Flerp.
Maybe Tim didn’t actually make the point explicit here; he’s done so elsewhere, and I may have been inferring it. I think his point re: schools needing to take responsibility for limiting test prep is a reference to the law that I mentioned, and that NYS Teacher mentions below. I think that’s an important point, because I think it’s an important law. And I don’t think it’s an unenforceable law.
Sorry about two posts but after I sent the first a new thought came to me. Since the tests are reading and math focused, do we consider schools that teach those disproportionately and to the exclusion of social studies, PE, music, art and so on, to be engaged in test prep?
You make the point that the law can’t really be enforced. And you’re correct. There would be a lot of gaming and circumvention. I mean, okay, a school can’t hand out practice tests but there’s so many ways around that. A district could create unit tests that highly resemble standardized tests. Does that count as test prep, because it kind of is.
The law is cosmetic. So when a school does well, then the state can say, “Well it isn’t due to test prep.” But that would be so disingenuous.
Sorry, again, I wasn’t saying the law can’t be enforced. I was saying we should try to enforce it and see what happens. I agree that it essentially would come down to defining what “test prep” is, but I think that’s a conversation that should happen.
Flerp, I agree that test prep needs to be defined. However, I believe whatever definition is used can still easily be gamed. Teams of lawyers work on stuff like this with the express intention of circumvention. Consider my question: if an elementary school does English and math for 90% of its day, even without doing any practice tests, is this considered test prep? I mean, they’re simply spending nearly all time on the subjects that will be tested.
Also, if you believe that such laws can be enforced, how? Will there be enforcement officers at each school? How much will that cost? Who hires them? Are they sympathetic to the school? Is it just the superintendent’s cousin’s neighbor who needs a job?
I just don’t think it’s practical or cost-effective.
I guess I’m interested in how this could be monitored.
I don’t know what’s considered “test prep.” I actually have disturbingly little visibility into what happens inside my kids’s classrooms. But like I said, at a minimum, I’d like the DOE to tell me what *it* considers test prep. Unless the DOE’s pressured about its compliance with the law, this won’t happen.
Enforcement and monitoring are common problems with all kinds of policies. Deciding at the outset that we should allow schools to ignore the law because of potential enforcement problems is putting the cart in front of the horse. It’s also not the kind of mindset that I’m used to seeing in education advocates.
“I don’t know what’s considered “test prep.” I actually have disturbingly little visibility into what happens inside my kids’s classrooms. But like I said, at a minimum, I’d like the DOE to tell me what *it* considers test prep. Unless the DOE’s pressured about its compliance with the law, this won’t happen.”
I totally agree with you here.
“Deciding at the outset that we should allow schools to ignore the law because of potential enforcement problems is putting the cart in front of the horse.”
I never said that schools should be allowed to ignore any such law. I merely asked how would such a law be enforced. Which is not putting the cart before the horse. Passing any law requires it’s enforcement, so it’s fair to ask: how?
I ask this because my suspicion is that the law gets passed, then they develop some ineffective way to “claim” enforcement. Then when their precious little charter babies do fine (with lax or intentionally insufficient enforcement occur), the legislature can say, “See it isn’t test prep.”
Considering the politicized nature of this topic, I think that’s a reasonable suspicion.
I’m not questioning your sincerity or intentions. I agree with you on many counts. I just see a law that is tremendously difficult to define specifically (your wonderful question of what counts as a test prep is a good starting point) and a law that might be impractical to enforce.
The NYS law (Common Core Implementation Reform Act) can be enforced by parent advocates. The now famous Supreme Court decision by Justice Potter Stewart would be a viable tact: “I know it when I see it.”
“The phrase “I know it when I see it” is a colloquial expression by which a speaker attempts to categorize an observable fact or event, although the category is subjective or lacks clearly defined parameters.”
I see my last sentence is fairly incoherent, but I you’ll get what I’m saying.
Wow, I wrote another incoherent sentence.
If we plug in just the right words and assignments at just the right time (which is the same for all children) then all children will naturally be successful. I really hate this minimalization of the humanity of our children to the point where we reduce them to being predictable because our needs to evaluate teachers demands that our children be standard.
Tim
If your kids attend public school in NYS, as a parent, you can help to enforce the “Common Core Implementation Reform Act”. This limits test prep to 2% (about 3 days or 3 periods depending) of instructional time. How instructional “test prep” is defined or identified is of course a huge blurry, gray fog of uncertainty. Personally I plan on adhering to the CCIRA despite some external pressure to produce higher test scores. Not every teacher has the luxury of ignoring this nonsense like I do. I’m in the twilight of my career which makes it much easier for me to operate out of best practices instead of fear.
Like.
NYS Teacher — has your school’s administration, or your district, given any guidance or made any statements to teachers about the CCIRA? Have there been any internal discussions at your school about how to comply with it, including discussions about what “test prep” means?
No. None. Pretty much flying undre the RADAR.
NYS Teacher, the test prep law is totally my jam. I’ve been telling any parent who’ll listen that this is something to bring up at their school, and I’ve brought it up at my kids’ schools.
I can’t go too much into the details. I expected confusion and ignorance, and I got it, but I definitely did not expect some of the other reactions. It doesn’t help that all we hear from NYSED and the DOE is crickets.
Your kids and school are lucky to have you.
I have made a point of explaining it to parents during Back to School Night. As far as I’m concerned it’s up to parents to enforce it, if teachers do not take it upon themselves to adhere to this new act (law). So if your HS kid is spending the last three weeks of school taking old Regents exams, you would have the right to complain about excessive test prep. This is a standrad practice in many Regents programs.
TIM
Try to be cognizant of the extreme pressure some teachers are under to produce better test scores.
Nothing good can come from this approach to teaching and learning. The standards, the tests, and the teacher evaluation were intended to be, and are inherently inseparable – by force of law.
I believe the CCIRA would limit test prep at the HS level only to CC algebra I (9th grade) andthe ELA exam (11th grade)