Peter Greene notes that Margaret Spellings, one of the architects of NCLB, still vigorously defends annual high-stakes testing.
Forget the parents and teachers who are fed up with non-stop testing. Forget the fact that no high-performing nation tests every child every year starting in grade 3. Spellings is not a quitter.
After reviewing Spellings’ claims, Greene writes:
“The “we can’t turn back and waste our accomplishments so far” argument is special because it is an argument used to oppose NCLB back in the day and Common Core more recently. But somehow back then the reformsters thought that new and awesome things were worth a little chaos and disorder. Now suddenly they are huge fans of inertia. It should not be news to anybody that when you are doing something that doesn’t work, you should think about not doing it any more.
“Look, some of these would be great things to say if they represented reality. But the standardized test does not become an accurate measure of a student’s entire life prospects just because you say so, and while it would be nice if the test results were used to improve education for underserved students, we’ve been at this for over a decade and it hasn’t happened yet.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When you’re knee deep in harmful waste, its past time to get out of the pit. I’m sure there are useful analogies for stopping the madness, and stating that we have come so far and its too late to stop is BS. Really is it all about the money and the sleight of hand that poverty can be overcome by TFA teachers?
They are coming for Pre K soon enough. Universal Pre-k isn’t going to be all that it needs to be; instead, those TFA and like-minded a-holes will get their hands on it and standardize it and test it, and all the monies funding it will be tied to that nonsense too. First of all, a person should WANT TO BE A TEACHER; not make it a roadstop en route to a career of choice (on Wall Street or as a Principal of a Charter chain, etc.). Teaching is HARD WORK. It isn’t about drilling information into sponge brains, it is interacting with personalities, discovering strengths and weaknesses in each child, dealing with their hardships – for crissakes, my kid was teaching a little girl who lives in a shelter with her mother until they moved in with relatives and left town. How would a TFA have handled that? Send the kid to detention for being unprepared? Teachers need to have compassion. It is about more than data drilling and charter that treat the kids like future prisoners.
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“When you’re knee deep in. . .
. . . the Big Muddy”
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A “one trick pony” who hasn’t learned a thing in all these years. Don’t confuse me with the facts…I’ve had my mind made up for two decades.
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And in other news, Margaret Spelling continues to defend the use of leeches to prevent and cure illness and disease. “Bloodletting” claims Spellman, “can also be used to measure the effectiveness and skill level of the doctor administering the procedure.”
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How entirely predictable that Spellings would use the “sunk cost” fallacy as a boogie man in a fear mongering defense of the status quo of reforms failures.
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So if I’m on my way from New York to Miami, but I take a wrong turn and head toward Seattle I shouldn’t turn back because I’ve gone so far. What a stupid argument!!!!!!
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Should anybody even care any more what Margaret Spellings says?!
Recede into the background & go away, Ms. No-Longer-Anybody Spellings…just like Michelle what’s-her-name (no, I’m not referring to FLOTUS, here).
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This blog, less than three weeks ago, the NJ Education Commissioner:
[start excerpt]
What’s astonishing is to read defenders of “reform” finding silver linings or straws to grasp at. Some claim that Cami has plenty of supporters, others say that success is around the corner. Just be patient. Christie’s state commissioner says, “Christie, through a spokesman, declined to comment. According to Christie’s education commissioner:
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
[end excerpt]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/04/lyndsey-layton-governor-christie-fails-in-newark/
Yes. When 2 x rheephorm = 0 then 2(2X) x rheephorm is sure to succeed.
Double think. Double speak. Double standards.
So when your program of “things will improve only if the beatings will increase” fails over and over and over again, the only response from the thought leaders of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement is—
Double down on failure.
But what can you expect of folks that think Henny Youngman was seriously encouraging not satirically admonishing:
“If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.”
😎
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KTA, I thought of Hespe’s “need to double down” when I read Bob Braun’s Ledger 3/10/15 post re L Pugliese’s review of Newark PSs attendance rate as reported on NJ School Report Card. 31 schools had 100% attendance, 8 had 99% attendance. Double down and the attendance rate will be 200%.
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Why wouldn’t she? She has no accountability.
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Let’s just look at cost alone–$2.4 billion spent annually on testing. Where is the justification when about 50% of US students come from low-income families. Talk about no accountability.
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I am one of the few supporters( 50 year as a teacher/researcher in the STEM disciplines) of the NCLB law and Margeret Spellings with a few modifications to the NCLB law and her comments.
The state of California began yearly testing of all K-12 students in grades 2-11 in 1998, four years prior to the NCLB, 2002 law. The mean student in all major ethnic groups- blacks, Latinos, whites and Asians– made significant incremental learning progress, until 2013, when the California State Department of Education, Superintendent, of Schools, the State legislature, and Governor terminated the program called STAR. The state replaced NCLB- STAR model with the Common Core Standards model, that eliminated K-12 student, school, and district testing for at least two years. Therefore, no K-12 student, school, nor district in California obtained an outside form of evaluation for the past two years, which is in violation of the federal NCLB law, that is still in effect!
Most all K-12 schools in all states failed the NCLB law mandate for at many reasons.(1) K-12 students were not promoted by proficiency, as the NCLB law mandates. (2) However, the State nor federal government provided the schools and teachers with many of the “TOOLS” that R & D documents that are needed to implement, the yearly proficiency requirement of the law (3). In addition, the printouts were not truly diagnostic-prescriptive(D/P) that would define specifically what topics the students, teachers, class , school and district must know or are deficient in, that requires correction to achieve the proficiency requirement. (4) Equally important, the printouts should have been evaluated twice, once at the local, county level and returned to the school, teacher, student, and parent within a week for effective instructional application and corrections. The second evaluation of the NCLB or Common Core results could then occur at the state level to gain all the traditional composite information on the social-economic comparisons and data collection. In the summer, the more complete analysis could be sent to the schools. By the way, high stakes tests are simply tests that promote students by proficiency, which the public and tax-payers expect, but the K-12 system does not seem to understand nor know how to develop, implement, and evaluate..
(5) Another improvement in NCLB law would be to have more teacher input in the test development, so that the student readiness is more appropriate for the level being evaluated.(6) In addition, since students learn academic material at different rates for a variety of reasons, students should be promoted by attendance grades as done currently, but by academic proficiency LEVEL separately, so that the material being taught is at an appropriate level,so the student can effectively learn the material being taught. (7) Currently, which is documented by the NAEP and local R & D, by 8th grade math, the mean non-proficient student, who many times are the educationally disadvantaged, are academically four years behind, having academic skills of a fourth grade student. Question : Is this fair, honest, desirable, and a form of “academic abuse”, of the student, teacher, parent, and the tax-paying public?
(8) As mentioned previously, the K-12 system is not using many of the latest innovations required by the NCLB law. Some of these include diagnostic-prescriptive, norm and criterion reference exams with printouts; learning textbooks, the RISC model of promoting students by proficiency independent of age, the Khan Academy Internet model, and the Kumon mastery math/ English learning model, to name a few. If many of these innovations were understood and applied effectively at the K-12 levels, possibly all K-12 students could be promoted by proficiency as the NCLB mandates and public desires.
(9) One very important addition to the NCLB law or the Common Core Standards model would be to correlate each state’s standards to the five academic standards of the NAEP model and test, our national report card, at the 4th, 8th and 12th grade levels. If the correlations are done correctly and empirically with all the states, the NAEP-NCLB- Common Core K-12 system model would be in effect, a national report card, empirically determined.. This researcher could explain how to do the correlations empirically, if anyone is interested. (10) This instructor-researcher did this type of correlation relating four math level exam- general math to algebra 2- to the ACT-SAT math results, empirically. The model allowed us math instructors to monitor student’s DP scores and composite scores in real time with ACT/SAT scores. Obviously much research, the Navy BOOST Program, opportunity was required to obtain the data to obtain the correlations.(11) However, since each state has student NAEP data, the empirical correlation to NCLB data or Common Core Standards is possible. Just do it!
(12) Obviously, a new model is needed for K-12 based upon the latest innovations that allows PLACEMENT and promotion by proficiency CHOICES independent of age and attendance to occur.. However, is any educator, politician or the media really serious about educating all K-12 students using any or all of these innovations- at least it does not seem so at this time, at least. based upon current thinking, practices, and blog discussions.
Unfortunately currently there does not seem to be a mechanism to formally debate the discussion in public or include replication opportunities to support or repute the above comments. Former president, Ron Reagan, made a rather interesting and insightful comment in this regard: “Trust, but verify”. ekangas @juno.com
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