According to Politico.com, Senator Lamar Alexander is considering eliminating the federal mandate for annual testing in grades 3-8. Charles Barone of the hedge fund managers’ “Democrats for Education Reform” is alarmed by this proposal, claiming it is an “equity” issue that would make it impossible to compare states.
Why the need to compare test scores is an equity issue is unexplained. Apparently Barone–who used to work for Congressman George Miller, senior Democrat on the House Education Committee–is unfamiliar with NAEP. That is the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has been testing American students since 1969. It has been comparing states since 1992 and disaggregating scores by race, gender, language, and disability status. I hope proponents of annual testing will soon explain how comparing states creates equity. We know that Mississippi has lower scores than Massachusetts, whether we test annually or every three years. The gap is not changed by knowing about it more frequently but by funding schools attended by low-performing students so they can have smaller classes, more arts programs, more specialists, better paid professionals, and amply supplied and staffed libraries.
Here is the story:
THE GOP DRAFT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR: Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander unveiled a discussion draft Tuesday night detailing his plan for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. It borrows heavily from his 2013 proposal [http://1.usa.gov/1C4GZNS ] and if passed, it would take the federal government right out of some of the Obama administration’s most contentious policies – providing relief to states that haven’t met the administration’s bar for accountability systems and teacher evaluations. The bill would give states the option to make more than $14 billion in Title I funding portable across public schools. Alexander’s draft also makes clear that the federal government would have no involvement in states’ academic standards – although states would have to set high standards. When it comes to testing, one option would allow districts to forgo annual exams. Maggie Severns reports: http://politico.pro/14SYoPQ Read the discussion draft here: http://1.usa.gov/1swgqBH
– Some feel that testing option would make it impossible to compare results at the state level. “This, by extension, becomes an equity issue,” said Charles Barone, policy director for Democrats for Education Reform. “Any effort to advance equity requires comparability of student circumstances across zip codes, incomes, race, disability, etc. Any accountability system that drives to improve the achievement of those students and target resources toward them is out the window if every school or district is held accountable based on a different set of numbers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ranking Minority Democratic Senator is in line with the Secretary of Education. From the same article:
— Senate HELP ranking Democrat Patty Murray also discussed her priorities for a reauthorization of the law on Tuesday, saying she wants to increase funding for low-income students, improve resources for principals and teachers and boost early education. She’ll also take a hard line on preserving annual testing. “If we can agree with something, we’ll put it in a bill,” Alexander said — and if not, the issue will be negotiated down the line on the Senate floor or with the president. More: http://politico.pro/1wXo6cC
I never thought I’d believe this, but someone named Lamar might actually be on to something. If it keeps the federal government from putting teachers in a vice grip of stupidity, it sounds promising.
As for Barone, his concern about comparative data is addressed through NAEP. What is more concerning is that since the statistics from NAEP have existed for many years, what has the DOE been doing to make education equitable across the states? Where is their accountability? If they are wondering which states do better overall, that’s an easy one. The better performing states are ones with the schools represented by organized labor!
I’ll lay odds the final version preserves annual testing. That someone has the civil rights groups lined up says that serious lobbying is already going on. That makes sense now; they’re straw men for other interests, maybe red herrings.
What’s right for kids will have nothing to do with this.
Completely agree with you. Refusing to get my hopes up with Lamar’s comments. Looking for presidential hopefuls who might give us legitimate hope.
I just posted on the civil rights groups that put testing at the center of the reauthorization in a January press release. Checked on Gates funding of the civil rights= tests rhetoric and a bit more. Long post is being moderated at
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/14/what-education-policy-do-civil-rights-groups-want/comment-page-1/#comment-2279072
Great, Laura. Do you have a link to the press release? I’m interested in the rhetoric. Or have you checked the sources?
Here is one of several lings to the press announcement
http://www.edtrust.org/dc/press-room/news/nearly-20-civil-rights-groups-and-education-advocates-release-principles-for-esea
Ed reformers are lousy advocates for funding existing public schools, and kids test all the time now. Have they gotten any better at their jobs as paid advocates for children over the last 6 weeks or something?
“States’ new budgets are providing less per-pupil funding for kindergarten through 12th grade than they did six years ago — often far less. The reduced levels reflect not only the lingering effects of the 2007-09 recession but also continued austerity in many states; indeed, despite some improvements in overall state revenues, schools in around a third of states are entering the new school year with less state funding than they had last year.”
Maybe they mean they’d like to more fairly allocate the lower funding levels for public schools they’ve achieved thus far. In that case maybe what he says is true.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=4011
please comment on my blog 🙂
I strongly recommend folks read Anthony Cody’s THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH, with special emphasis on chapter 22, “Bill Gates and the Cult of Measurement: Efficiency Without Excellence.”
Essentially the “education reform” argument goes likes this: you don’t solve problems by tackling them head on but by measuring the problem until you find some small part of it that is amenable to the pressure [aka brutality] you are willing to inflict. Then use your measurements so that you can label, sort and rank something or somebody. Then it’s on to “measure and punish” [to use Audrey Amrein-Beardsley’s felicitous phrase].
In other words, even when the accountabully underlings of the “education reform” establishment admit that teachers are, literally, only a part of the in-school factors affecting student “achievement/performance”—and even concede that in-school factors as a whole are a smaller part of total student “achievement/performance” than the out-of-school factors!—they contend they if we wield every club and bludgeon of [numerous and long-lasting] punishments and [few and ephemeral] rewards on teachers then—
Voilà! We will transform the entire horrible morass of poverty and inequity and deprivation and racial discrimination and every bad and nasty thing—by just exerting seemingly unlimited pressure against the minuscule teacher portion of the whole structure of human existence. And make the USofA #1 in the world in every conceivable sphere of human activity!
It’s an elaborate excuse for not making a genuine (and personally uncomfortable and risky) effort to take on the great challenges and difficulties of our time and place. *Literally a restatement of an old adage: in rheephormish, “comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.”*
That’s not even taking into account that high-stakes standardized tests measure very little, are inherently imprecise, and are used for purposes for which they are unsuited and increasingly destructive.
So leaving aside the fact that the numbers & stats won’t be getting at the really important realities of poverty and segregation by race & SES, etc., the very metrics [derived from test scores!] used to compare teachers to teachers or states to states are so unstable and untrustworthy that they will serve to deflect attention and resources away from the real problems and solutions.
I realize I may be rambling so let me sum up this “state comparison” foolishness: they want to use uncertainties about little stuff that masquerades as numerical precision and accuracy to make very big and consequential decisions about the lives and futures of the vast majority of us.
They would be better served by just holding a televised series of events rolling dice and using those numbers to achieve the same ends.
I urge all those that can attend to read another posting on this blog entitled “Join Me in Manhattan on January 21st.”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” [Frederick Douglass]
😎
When I first learned of the new PARCC testing a couple years back, I was alarmed at the increased hours of testing for my grade level. What I didn’t realize is the added hours of practice testing for the PARCC! It is downright miserable for my students and me. It is awful. I told my husband that teachers will have to just mark January out on the calendar, due to all of the practice testing and bad weather. The pitiful thing is that I now test in February too. Thank you for listening to my misery. It does help to talk about it. It is far worse than I ever expected. Someone is going to have to come forth and save our kids and teachers. This is abuse.
The high stakes testing have sucked the joy out of learning and the energy out of teaching.
I could tell you stories of teachers in my district who have several hours a week blocked out on the computer carts solely for training kids on how to take the SBAC. Several hours. Each week. From now until April.
Not for instruction. Not for creative project use. Just to get kids familiar with the test interface.
How many hours of social studies instruction are they losing? How many hours of science instruction? How many kids will fall further behind because the time they are spending playing around with stupid tools on the SBAC to “highlight evidence” means less silent reading time, or less time on choice books, or even less time at recess? This is asinine.
I agree with Mrs. Ravitch…one national exam, one national curriculum and one nation standard.
No, no, no, NO!!!!!! Education needs to be able to innovate locally. Without it, we get the stultifying crap that we have right now…
I began to teaching 1963, when the role of the teacher as mentor, was very clear,.
No matter what subject/content there was a LIST of the OBJECTIVES that each student would be able to reach. This was the CURRICULUM that was given to me when I taught 2nd grade. A series of pamphlets that made it clear what each learner would be able to do… so let me make it clear to you what we are really talking about.
LWBA = Learner Will Be Able
When a child exited grade 2, for example, as a he/she LEARNER would be able to: write simple sentences that contain a subject and a verb OR
LWBA to spell ( Dolch List provided)
LWBA to follow basic spelling rules : ex: y becomes i, when adding ed.
In Kg, science objectives: LWBA to grasp the concept of friction. (the recommended exercise was to put and on the sliding pond, and discuss the effect with the kids).
When I taught middle school art, the MY State curricula offered the important skills and understandings for secondary school… including the elements of design (line, form, color and texture, and the principles that affect them… like balance, unity, etc.
We teachers chose the material and exercises that FACILITATED THE ACQUISITION OF THE SKILLS.
When I taught middle school, No one told teachers to use Animal Farm, in the seventh grade.In fact, this book was a staple in high school, but my LEARNERS were very bright kids, soooo I bought class sets!
I knew that we (humanities teammate and I ) were reading the Bill of Rights, and I knew that one of the skills my students needed to master was to ANALYZE text to extract meaning. I figured the kids would love (MOTIVATION FIRST) the animal story, and see how a revolution led to a charter. They would also see how a hero became a villain (boxer) and how the charter was subverted by the power at the top, the pigs.
COMPARING & CONTRASTING is a TACTIC of analyzing. A skill to be practiced… I chose the book, and I assigned the ACTIVITIES, writing journals, group discussions, a short essay, (where the skill of creating clear topic sentences was the task.)
Do you see what a curricula is? I CREATED it, based on the STANDARD for learning at that age, and for my subject. The state sets standards for learning… a RUBRIC with CRITERIA for acquisition. Kids need to be able to acquire information, and apply it to DO WORK!
Does anything I have described here, in any way, seen similar to the crap we are hearing anywhere?
Also, please remember that I was the NYC cohort
http://www.opednews.com/author/quicklinks/author40790.html
for the REAL National Standards research (out of Harvard and the LRDC at the University of Pittsburgh, funded by PEW, on the PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING! (Do you see any reference to teaching there???
That is because it was ALL about effort-based learning! http://ramsey.spps.org/uploads/polv3_3.pdf
I was emersed in real education reform, based on authentic learning by educators whose ROLE WAS TO ENABLE AND FACILITATE LEARNING..
(Do you see the word teaching there?)
The conversations I hear about a “national standard”, or “government this” or ‘evaluation standards, ‘ drive me to distraction.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
Let me be clear… YES we need GOALS criteria which every future citizen (whom we call children) should be able to DO WHEN THEY LEAVE SCHOOL. Mississippi kids and LA kids, and NYC kids all need to be able to acquire the sameTHINKING SKILLS to do work in the 21st century…BUT LET THE TEACHERS TEACH!
Choose bright people, educate them well, help them practice their skills, SUPPORT THEM IN THAT CLASSROOM WITH THOSE KIDS and LET THEM DO THE JOB!
AMEN!
I did NOT need Gates or the government to SET criteria for MY kids. Science of the brain, did that. My students knew what they needed to do, and what a best work looked like, with no help from GATES or tests.
All of them, TOGETHER WITH ME, in SEPTEMEBER, looked at what excellent writing looked like, and THEN THEY set the benchmark for excellent (A), Good (G) Fair (C) and Poor (F)…. then,THEY WORKED hard to be excellent…IT WAS EXPECTED! Their parents were in on this, too…EXPECTATIONS WERE CLEAR… AND THAT was the FIRST PRINCIPLE OF LEARNING… in the real research on learning…CLEAR Expectations.
Their written work, THEIR PERFORMANCE, proved they had mastered the skills!
They were accepted to the top schools, were tenth in the state on the first NY ELA writing exam, won every writing competition in NYC and, — if their emails (NOW) are any indication — many went on to be writers.
No national test was necessary to evaluate what they could do! Performance told the truth. NO principal needed to ‘evaluate my performance by some test… the parents and kids (as John Taylor Gatto said in that interview I transcribed for OEN) knew what I offered and what had been accomplished… enabling every child to do the best work possible!!!!!
Listen, a word again about what the ‘real standards research PROVED:
Genuine Assessment * AUTHENTIC PERFORMANCE EVALUATION was one of the 4 PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING which was evident in the PRACTICE of every successful teacher.
THAT principle was the ONLY one that EVEN mentioned tests!
MOREOVER — the results of ANY tests WERE FOR THE USE OF THE TEACHER, BECAUSE it is the teacher WHO MUST KNOW WHAT EACH CHILD NEEDED TO DO NEXT, and also what they had mastered.
I tell you, my friends here, I begin to think that I have lived on another planet where EVERYONE KNEW WHEN KIDS LEARNED! It was no mystery to a teacher, parent or anyone to know when learning HAPPENED!
Testing babies? Agggh.
I listen to the conversation here and in this country and I am lost!
Then, I see something like this,
which once again puts LEARNING up front, and is a collaboration between educators at the site, and includes parents (how else)!
Suddenly, I realize that this country is under siege by people who are destroying our future. They killed learning!
http://www.brettdickerson.net/investors-still-ready-liquidate-public-schools/
They have perpetrated endless conversation about “curricula”, and “standards” and “tests”, AND NOW…we are having an INSANE conversation about who should control education (which is ALL anyone is talking about)????
Folks, action is needed. They want us to debate endlessly, while they dismantle the schools state by state!
If you have never seen the Grassroots film the-inconvenient-truth-behind-waiting-for-superman-now-online/ that shows how THEY did it to the largest system in the country NYC, get a cup of coffee and watch the beginning of the end.
Let me summarize:
Learning research has been done!
The assault on teachers began the war on public education, because it is the classroom practitioner who KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT WORKS! The voice of the teacher cannot enter the conversation.
They are in full battle mode, now that:
* those of us who still remember schools that worked
* those of us who knew what learning looked like when we were in that classroom–
* those of us who knew ( BEFORE WE STEPPED FOOT IN THAT PRACTICE,) how learning is enabled
* those educated PROFESSIONALS who could be TRUSTED to CREATE A CURRICULUM that did the job,
—–> now that we have been SILENCED, they can end it all
Koch is already re-writing CURRICULA — because ordinary folks do not know what that word means, or that what he is actually doing is RE-WRITING HISTORY!
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/12/03/4374397_state-education-department-used.html?sp=/99/100/&rh=1
Now, Broad and Walton and anyone but PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS can subject us to their own brand of core curricula crap.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2014/10/21/common-core-truth-truer-fiction-guest-post-ann-policelli-cronin/
https://dianeravitch.net/2014/11/21/who-wrote-the-common-core-standards/
And the pubic does not know because the media IS FULLY OWNED AND OPERATED by THOSE oligarchs,
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
So, we must stop the endless chatter and DO SOMETHING before they close the road to opportunity for the middle class, and dumb the nation down to the point that they will not know the charter in the barn has changed, and the pigs are running the government.
We need a film, a viral documentary.
JE SUIS TEACHER! I am free to tell the truth!
Commie!
Good piece where the journalist actually took the Common Core GED test:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/ivy-league-grads-can-t-pass-the-new-ged.html?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
It looks like 12 states didn’t get suckered into buying the thing.
I credit the writer for his honesty, but his piece didn’t really go anywhere at the end. The fact that he as a professional writer and Ivy League graduate couldn’t pass the test should mean something, but I’m missing his conclusion. He seems to be hinting that the new GED is a ripoff piece of junk, but he seems oddly reluctant to just come out and say so.
More nonsense propaganda from the GOP controlled by the privateers. If you are following the real news, the oligarchs are pushing for the TTP which will overrule the authority and regulation of our own US laws governing more that just trade, like the environment.
This is the century when “THEY” establish their rule over a global economy that benefits rulers and rich folks, and impoverishes everyone else. The monetarising of the schools is jut the beginning.
TTP?
Probably meant TPP – Trans Pacific Partnership.
Sigh. Exactly. Not in recent times has any ‘treaty’ that we signed trump our own laws. Google it, for goodness sakes.
or Go to Bernie Sander’s site and listen to the video and read more…
http://sanders.enews.senate.gov/common/mailings/index.cfm?sniv=2100122616.825108.228.1
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.
The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process.
Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.
The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.
For example The TPP will allow corporations to challenge any law that would adversely impact their future profits. Pending claims worth over $14 billion have been filed based on similar language in other trade agreements. Most of these claims deal with challenges to environmental laws in a number of countries. The TPP will make matters even worse by giving corporations the right to sue any of the nations that sign onto the TPP. These lawsuits would be heard in international tribunals bypassing domestic courts.
AND Food Safety Standards will be threatened.>The TPP would make it easier for countries like Vietnam to export contaminated fish and seafood into the U.S. The FDA has already prevented hundreds of seafood imports from TPP countries because of salmonella, e-coli, methyl-mercury and drug residues. But the FDA only inspects 1-2 percent of food imports and will be overwhelmed by the vast expansion of these imports if the TPP is agreed to.
Prescription drug prices will increase, access to life saving drugs will decrease, and the profits of drug companies will go up. Big pharmaceutical companies are working hard to ensure that the TPP extends the monopolies they have for prescription drugs by extending their patents (which currently can last 20 years or more). This would expand the profits of big drug companies, keep drug prices artificially high, and leave millions of people around the world without access to life saving drugs. Doctors without Borders stated that “the TPP agreement is on track to become the most harmful trade pact ever for access to medicines in developing countries.”
Interesting column with a comment from Monty Neill
http://edexcellence.net/articles/playing-the-race-card-wont-save-no-child-left-behind
I know, it’s the Fordham Institute. And Rick.
Well, obviously we must have winners and losers. Right? Isn’t competition what it’s about? A lot of talk about all children being proficient, but those in the well-to-do districts don’t want to be equaled by poor urban districts.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
It all comes back to hedge funds…
Go to the School Reform page of our nonprofit, nonpartisan DEinformedvoters.org web site to understand the research-proven program and cost effective total school system reform organizational arrangement and process all of our nation’s private and public schools need. I worked for over twenty years as a member of a Consultant/Trainer team helping public school districts from Hawaii to Maine train building level staff and parent leaders implement this Quality District Model (QDM). This work was on behalf of the US Department of Education and the nonprofit national/international Partners for Quality Learning organization. The first thing we did with participating school districts was to have a formal ceremony where their standardized tests were buried. Our slogan on this was, “Our children are not things to be rigidly molded by standardized tests, but people to be unfolded by AUTHENTIC assessment of academic and other educational progress. In these reformed school districts, as in the Kentucky Education Reform Act, all program decisions were made by arrangements like they legally mandated in their Act. Which is that ALL program decisions within and between a district’s school buildings would be made by a building level Program Committee comprised of the Building Principal, three Teachers elected by building level peers and two parent Leaders elected by peers at the building level. In these reformed schools, ALL students make solid academic and other personal/social progress as all instruction, curriculum and ongoing, performance-based AUTHENTIC assessment is related to each student’s level, rate and style of learning. I can share research findings that show of these students are never chronically flunked, labeled, sorted, drugged, etc. I can be contacted at (302) 832-2799 or via email at flydmcdwll@verizon.net. I can share articles published in our state’s key newspaper listing the political insanity of superimposing standardized tests down local school’s throats with corporate sponsored projects like “No Child Left with a Properly Functioning Mind nor Healthy Behind” and now Multi-Billionaire Bill Gate’s Common Gore State Standards. ALL designed to destroy public schools so they can be used as cash cows like they’re trying to privatize our safety nets of Medicare and Social Security. The only way to stop this corporate stampede is as a group pf citizens did in Kentucky years ago. Successfully sue them in court. To see their Kentucky Supreme Court’s full decision upholding the lower court’s decision against state educational decision-makers by the Kentucky Council for Better Education, access on your computer Rose V. Council for Better Education. I can also share an article I’ve written about a Delaware Council for better Education now forming to sue our state’s corporate-owned educational decision as the Kentucky Council dis successfully. We have more court evidence for the case we’re developing in Delaware than the Kentucky Council had. EVERY state should be developing a similar case as I sincerely believe this is the ONLY way this corporate/political cabal can be stopped.
“We know that Mississippi has lower scores than Massachusetts”
I suggest that Charles Barone of the hedge fund managers’ “Democrats for Education Reform” add a column to his state comparison and that column would be labeled “poverty rate”.
For instance Mississippi has the highest poverty rate when compared to the other 49 states at 20.1% (poverty rate by household income) compared to Massachusetts at 10.1%—ranked #14.
The source was the United States Census Bureau that gathers all kinds of information.
In addition, the United States Census ranks states by violent crimes per 100,000 population. Massachusetts was ranked 20th out of 50 states. Mississippi was ranked #31.
In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that in 2003, 16% of the adults population in Mississippi lacked basic prose literacy skills compared to 10% for Massachusetts.
For some reason I don’t think the hedge fund mangers for “Democrats for Education Reform” care about any of those numbers that help explain why some schools don’t perform as well as others. The only numbers they care about are the ones behind the dollar sign.
Where I’m mystified is this belief that in order to have “accountability”, EVERY child has to be tested in the entire nation.
In business, we rely heavily on statistical sampling because it’s flat out too expensive to measure every item. Sampling in manufacturing, sampling in store satisfaction, sampling in purchasing, sampling in advertising impact, sampling, sampling sampling.
The NAEP relies on sampling…because it’s EFFECTIVE!
Imagine this: IF we shifted to a sampling test approach an amazing array of issues would be mitigated. The tests would lose their intensely punitive nature – and evolve toward being instructive and enlightening. They would lose the “high stakes” and become simply learning that informs. And, WE could use their reduced presence to focus on the totality of education instead of creating testing farms.
So…why don’t these so-called “business people” behind reform endorse smart business approach like sampling? Mind boggling…unless we embrace the conspiracy to redirect all of that government spending into the profits of private corporations.
They want the tests because the testing company(ies?) have paid the politicians and they want their ROI on testing fees. Hedge funders want charters so they can get the ROI. Gates wants online tests so his company can rake in the tech dollars. Everyone has a hand out for a return.
What made it punitive? The teachers and the union got in the way, so they tried that tack.
I don’t know how the chips will fall. We’ll see.
Well, here’s a shocker. Public schools won’t get the increased funding but public schools will get tests:
“Notably, though unsurprisingly, Alexander’s proposal makes no mention of the investments in early childhood education that Duncan and Murray want included in an ESEA rewrite. What’s more, the increase in funding and resources called for by both Duncan and Murray didn’t seem to make their way into this draft either.”
“That is, he’s introduced a very conservative bill that essentially ignores all of both Murray and Duncan’s key priorities for reauthorization.”
Alexander probably noticed that Duncan and Murray publicly announced they wouldn’t fight for anything besides testing. I certainly did. They’re pro-testing. They’re “agnostic” on everything else, I guess. Agnostics make lousy advocates.
http://www.edcentral.org/alexandernclb/
Here is Barone’s actual quote – “This, by extension, becomes an equity issue,” said Charles Barone, policy director for Democrats for Education Reform. “Any effort to advance equity requires comparability of student circumstances across zip codes, incomes, race, disability, etc. Any accountability system that drives to improve the achievement of those students and target resources toward them is out the window if every school or district is held accountable based on a different set of numbers.” I think you imposed the state comparison observation on his quote. While the NAEP sample testing approach does yield state level results, I would have thought you would have known that NAEP is available only for a few districts. I gather you are not concerned with variability in performance between districts in the same state.
Well, why doesn’t Barone make it conditional on funding then? They put strings on everything else they “give” to public schools. They’re passionate advocates for testing but they turn into potted plants when it comes to money?
They promised funding for the mandates the last time they wrote this law. They reneged. Why should anyone in their right mind trust them again?
Here’s a fun look backward:
“Mrs. Clinton is not the only presidential candidate who has found attacking the act, President Bush’s signature education law, to be a crowd pleaser — all the Democrats have taken pokes. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico has said he wants to “scrap” the law. Senator Barack Obama has called for a “fundamental” overhaul. And John Edwards criticizes the law as emphasizing testing over teaching. “You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it,” he said recently while campaigning in Iowa.”
Remember that? Now Democrats can’t get enough of NCLB. Obama put it on steroids.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/us/politics/23child.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
“You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it,”
“Interesting” analogy.
Just who are the “hogs” they are trying to fatten up for the slaughter? Teachers? Students?
Politicians never cease to amaze me with their idiotic statements.
Why in the word anyone would ever take any of these folks seriously is a mystery hiding in an enigma wrapped in a conundrum buried in a riddle.
..or was that just a Freudian slip on Edward’s part?
There is an absolutely insane effort by those who don’t have an iota of sense about education to determine who is first and last and what state is better. Education is about learning! end of story
“The gap is not changed by knowing about it more frequently…” Excellent way to put that to words.