Archives for the month of: April, 2015
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EduShyster: In PARCC Place, There Are No Conflicts of Interest, Except When There Are

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2015 //
6

EduShyster takes a hilarious look at the complicated landscape of Common Core testing in Massachusetts. The state is soon to make a decision about whether to stick with its MCAS exams or switch to the Common Core PARCC exams.

 

Is it a conflict of interest when the State Commissioner Mitchell Chester also happens to be chair of the governing board of PARCC?

 

She writes (with marvelous illustrations):

 

You see, Commissioner Chester wears more than one hat, as they say. Sporting his fedora of excellence, he has just presided over the start of an ambitious two-year effort to test drive the PARCC tests in more than 1,000 Massachusetts schools so that the state Board of Education, which Chester also advises, can vote in 2015 on whether to replace the old, outdated and outmoded MCAS tests with the cool new computerized PARCC edition. Still with me? But in his second hat—let’s call it his readiness beret—Chester serves as chairman of the governing board for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers otherwise known as PARCC: the *multi-state consortium* tasked both with developing the new tests and relentlessly flogging them until all *multi-states* adopt them. Did I say two hats? Make that three. Chester is also a director as well as the president of PARCC, Inc., a nonprofit that’s been created to make the development and implementation of the new PARCC assessments *more effective and efficient.* (See exhibit A). Got it? Good. Because it’s test time.
Now, exercising the career-and-college-readiness skills of observation, deduction, and proper use and evaluation of evidence would you say that Commissioner Chester’s dueling headgear as described above constitutes a. a conflict of interest b. a breach of trust c. just good common cents or d. time for more scotch? If you are a member of the Peabody School Committee [note to out-of-towners, correct pronunciation is Pea-buh-dee], the answer to this high-stakes question couldn’t be clearer. *It’s an outrageous conflict of interest and a breach of public trust,* says School Committee member Dave McGeney. The Committee recently voted unanimously to ask state officials to investigate the matter. McGeney says that Chester needs to pick a hat, any hat, but he can’t wear them all. *How can he be chairman of PARCC and also entering into agreements with PARCC on behalf of Massachusetts? It defies logic,* says McGeney.

 

Except that we’re in PARCC Place, where the old fusty logic about things like breaches of public trust and conflicts of the interest variety no longer apply. Someone has to get these kids college and career ready and apparently it’s not going to be you (hater.) Besides, Commissioner Chester took it upon himself to seek advice from the State Ethics Commission about a possible conflict of interest. In 2013. Three years after Chester signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to join PARCC and became chair of its governing board. And just to be extra, extra sure, Chester also checked his hats with Secretary of Education Matt Malone and the Chairwoman of the Board of Education, Maura Banta, who was also signatory to the MOU and who will eventually vote on whether the state should adopt the new PARCC assessments.
Meanwhile, some 80,000 Massachusetts students in grades 3-11 recently wrapped up the first round of PARCC piloting; they’ll resume test driving in May. Which brings us to the only question that really matters: how great are the PARCC assessments at measuring readiness, college and career style? Really great, reader. You see, drop the pesky *A,* which stands for Achieve, and the *CC*, which stands for Common Core, and you’re left with *PR,* as displayed in this handy informational assemblage of quotes, purporting to be from educators, parents and students, like Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester, *responding positively to their early experiences with the assessments.*

 

 

What do you think Commissioner Chester will decide?

 

 

Categories Common Core, Massachusetts, Testing

Juan Gonzalez: Remember the Number 999!

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2015 //
27

Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News says that 999 is the code for students who opted out in New York state, and their numbers are huge. At last count, with slightly more than half the districts tallied, protest organizers estimate that about 180,000 students opted out of the English language arts exams. In some districts, 70-80% of the students did not take the tests. State officials, acting with all due speed, as usual, said that they won’t know how many students opted out of the test until the summer, maybe.

 

Remember that these are not the tests that we took when we were in school. They are tests that last several hours over a three-day period for each subject. Two full weeks of school are devoted to testing, one week for ELA, one week for math, three days of testing each week. Why can’t the testing companies figure out what students know and can do with a one-hour test, as our teachers used to do by themselves?

 

Parents opted out despite threats from state and local officials that their child would jeopardize his/her future or the school would lose funding.

 

Gonzalez writes:

 

Whatever the final number, it was a startling act of mass civil disobedience, given that each parent had to write a letter to the local school demanding an opt out for their child.

 

It’s even more impressive because top education officials publicly warned school districts they risk losing federal funds if nonparticipation surpasses 5%.

 

“To react to parents who are speaking out by threatening to defund our schools is outrageous,” said Megan Diver, the mother of twin girls who refused their third-grade test at Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

 

Gonzalez sees the game that the state is playing with the tests:

 

Back in 2009, the old state tests showed 77% of students statewide were proficient in English. The next year, the pass level was raised and the proficiency percentage dropped to 57%. A few years later, Albany introduced Common Core and the level plummeted even more — to 31% statewide.

 

Same children. Same teachers. Different test.

 

The politicians created a test that says all schools are failing, not just the ones in the big cities, then declare a crisis, so they can close more neighborhood schools, launch more charter schools, and target more teachers for firing.

 

Meanwhile, the private company that fashioned this new test, Pearson, insists on total secrecy over its content.

 

This week, test instructions even warned teachers not to “read, review, or duplicate the contents of secure test material before, during, or after test administration.”

 

What kind of testing company forbids a teacher from reading the test he or she administers?

Categories New York, Opt Out, Resistance, Standardized Testing

The New York Times Misses the Story: Opt Out Came from Parents, Not Unions

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
90

In a story published in the New York Times, Kate Taylor and Motoko Rich describe test refusal as an effort by teachers’ unions to reassert their relevance. This is ridiculous.

Nearly 200,000 students opted out. They were not taking orders from the union. They were acting in the way that either they wanted to act or their parents wanted them to act.

I emailed with one of the reporters before the story was written and gave her the names of some of the parent leaders of the Opt Out movement, some of whom have spent three years organizing parents in their communities. Jeanette Deutermann, for example, is a parent who created Long Island Opt Out. I gave her the names of the parent leaders in Westchester County, Ulster County, and Dutchess County. I don’t know if any of them got a phone call, but the story is clearly about the union leading the Opt Out movement, with nary a mention of parents. The parents who created and led the movement were overlooked. They were invisible. In fact, this story is the only time that the Times deigned to mention the mass and historic test refusal that cut across the state. So according to the newspaper of record, this was a labor dispute, nothing more. Not surprising that this is the view of Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the Board of Regents, and of everyone else who opposes opting out.

By taking this narrative as a given, the Times manages to ignore parents’ genuine concerns about the overuse and misuse of testing. Not a word about the seven to ten hours of testing for children in grades 3-8. Not a word about the lack of transparency on the part of Pearson. Not a word about data mining or monitoring of children’s social media accounts. To the Times, it is all politics, and the views of parents don’t matter.

The great mystery, unexplored in this article, is why the parents of 150,000 to 200,000 children refused the tests. Are the unions so powerful as to direct the actions of all those parents? Ridiculous.

How could they get it so wrong?

Categories New York, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Parents, Standardized Testing, Unions

New York State Education Department Issues Statement Disparaging Opt Outs as Meaningless

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
44

In the midst of a story about a teacher who walked 150 miles to deliver a letter to Governor Cuomo, there was mention of a statement about the opt outs by the State Education Department.

Basically the SED said that the opt outs will not derail its determination to rate teachers based on test scores.

The State Education Department released a statement saying, “We are confident the Department will be able to generate a representative sample of students who took the test, generate valid scores for anyone who took the test, and calculate valid State-provided growth scores to be used in teacher evaluations.”

The SED did not say how it will generate valid ratings for teachers whose students opted out, especially in districts where the majority of students did so; nor did it say how it would generation valid ratings for the 70% teachers who don’t teach the tested subjects. Even if only 10% opted out, how will the SED know if they were high-scoring students or low-scoring students? The SED will succeed in making a process of dubious value even less valid. The SED is determined to do the wrong thing with or without adequate data.

Read More at: http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/as-common-core-testing-enters-second-week-controversy-still-abounds-24810.shtml

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations

NYC Parents: Meet and Join the Opt Out Movement Tomorrow!

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
7

PRESS ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Contact:
Liz Rosenberg
917-697-1319
liz@girlray.com

Parents from Schools Across the City Stand Together:
Announce Latest Opt-Out Numbers and Launch New Grassroots Campaign

WHAT: On the day before NY State administers the Common Core Math tests to city 3rd-8th graders—thousands of whom refused the English exam, with even more expected to refuse tomorrow’s tests—NYC public school families will gather in Prospect Park to celebrate the unprecedented growth of the opt-out movement and to launch their latest grassroots campaign.

WHEN: Tuesday, April 21st at 4 P.M.

WHERE: Prospect Park bandshell, closest park entrance @9th Street and Prospect Park West.

VISUALS: Parents and children playing in park, holding posters that question putting profits before children. Weather is supposed to be gorgeous!

WHY:
Despite threats and deep-pocketed corporate ad campaigns to discourage test refusal, the opt-out movement in New York City has grown, reaching an unprecedented number of schools in neighborhoods throughout the city. Parents, the David, in this David & Goliath scenario, are demanding that children receive an enriching education, rather than be used to enrich corporate profiteers, who care most about their own bottom line.

WHO:
NYC OPT OUT is a loose coalition of parents throughout New York City who have come together to share information about the New York State tests and their effects on children, teachers, and schools. They support each other via the NYC Opt Out Facebook page. On Tuesday, both families who have refused the tests and those who are considering opt out will be present and available to speak to press.

Categories New York City, Opt Out, Standardized Testing

How the For-Profit Education Industry Avoids Regulation by Government

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
7

In response to a post about the predatory for-profit higher education industry, reader Chiara sent the following comment to remind us of how the for-profit industry buys influence in Washington, D.C. and avoids regulation:

To get a sense of how powerful the for-profit lobby is, read this:

“Anita Dunn, a close friend of President Obama and his former White House communications director, worked with Kaplan University, one of the embattled school networks. Jamie Rubin, a major fund-raising bundler for the president’s re-election campaign, met with administration officials about ATI, a college network based in Dallas, in which Mr. Rubin’s private-equity firm has a stake.
A who’s who of Democratic lobbyists — including Richard A. Gephardt, the former House majority leader; John Breaux, the former Louisiana senator; and Tony Podesta, whose brother, John, ran Mr. Obama’s transition team — were hired to buttonhole officials.
And politically well-connected investors, including Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the Washington Post Company, which owns Kaplan, and John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix and a longtime friend of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, made impassioned appeals.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/us/politics/for-profit-college-rules-scaled-back-after-lobbying.html

This is why I cannot believe anyone is seriously suggesting we can contract out public schools and it will be on the up and up and “well-regulated”. No, it won’t. Lawmakers will be captured and it will be a free for all. The big losers will be poor people, just as the big losers are poor people in the for-profit college scams.

Ed reformers are freaking kidding themselves with this “well-regulated! non-profits!” fantasy. It’s a weirdly arrogant assumption that they are all honorable and well-intended, so immune to this stuff. They’re not immune.

Categories Accountability, Higher Education, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

David Berliner Speaks Out About the Teaching Profession and America’s Future

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
22

Gene V. Glass posted the following words by David Berliner on his blog, Education in Two Worlds:

When a profession as large and necessary to society as teaching is insulted by state and federal Secretaries of Education, judged negatively by the nation’s presidents and governors, see their pensions cut, receive salaries that do not keep up with inflation, often cannot afford to live in the communities they work in, cannot always practice their profession in ways that are ethical and efficacious, are asked to support policies that may do harm to children, are judged by student test scores that are insensitive to instruction and more often reflect social class differences rather than instructional quality, see public monies used to support discriminatory charter and private schools, yet still have a great deal of support from the parents of the children they teach, then there is a strategy for making teachers’ lives better. It is called unionization. The reasons for unionization could not be plainer. New and veteran teachers should band together and close down school systems of the type I have described. It will be difficult, of course, and some teachers will no doubt be fired and jailed. But if teachers do not fix this once noble profession, America may well lose its soul, as well as its edge.

Categories Teachers

CNN: Excellent Reporting on Opt Out Movement Gone National

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
11

CNN ran an excellent segment about the burgeoning opt out movement. It is especially strong in New York, but it is rapidly spreading across the country as parents recognize that the tests provide no information other than a score and have no diagnostic value. For some reason, the defenders of high-stakes testing continue to say that the tests are helpful to our most vulnerable children, who are likeliest to fail the test, because until now we have neglected them. We didn’t really know that they were far behind and now they will get attention. After years of No Child Left Behind, in which no child was left untested, this is not a credible claim. Every child has been tested every year since at least 2003. How is it possible to say that no one knows that special education students need extra time and attention and accommodations? How is it possible to say that without Common Core testing, we will not know that English language learners don’t read English? In New York, we have had two administrations of the Common Core. Five percent of the children with disabilities passed the test; 95% were told they were failures. Three percent of English language learners passed the test; 97% were told they failed. How were they helped by learning that they had failed a test that was far beyond their capacity?

Categories Common Core, English Language Learners, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Special Education, Standardized Testing

School Board in Springfield, Oregon, Mulls District Opt Out from SBAC

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
6

The school board of Springfield, Oregon, may propose a moratorium on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. In other words, the whole district may opt out.

State officials have warned the district it may lose state and federal funds, in a blatant attempt to intimidate the elected officials of the district.

“Board member Jonathan Light proposed a motion at a meeting earlier this week that would place a moratorium on the more challenging tests, called Smarter Balanced. Light, who is a music teacher in the Pleasant Hill School District, said he determined that the computerized tests “are not good for kids.”

“Not good for kids” is a good reason not to do it.

““There’s a whole lot of agreement about not liking this test,” said Light, citing concerns for students who don’t have access to computers at home to practice the tests. He criticized the state Department of Education for requiring students to take the test when state officials predict that 70 percent are expected to fail.

The five-member Springfield board is currently the only one in the state to consider such action. The board is expected to discuss the topic again at an April 27 planning meeting and may vote on the motion at a later date.

In addition to placing a moratorium on the tests, Light also proposed that the district create a committee to study the tests and the Common Core State Standards to “either accept, modify or introduce an alternative testing system that would directly serve our students and satisfy state requirements.”

“I think it is a risk, but hopefully other boards would step up,” he said.

“We could really change things,” he added….”

“Some parents have criticized the tests because they say students are not prepared to take them, and younger students don’t have the keyboarding skills to type their answers. Some parents and teachers say the tests give school districts incentive to focus more on reading, writing and math — topics students are tested on — rather than a more well-rounded education that includes, for example, the arts.”

Categories Common Core, Opt Out, Oregon, Standardized Testing

Michigan: What Is Paul Pastorek Telling Governor Snyder? Shhh.

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2015 //
7

Paul Pastorek, former state superintendent of schools in Louisiana, has been advising Michigan Governor Rick Snyder since June 2014, less than a year. Pastorek’s claim to fame was his “success” in eliminating public education in Néw Orleans. A liberal advocacy group filed a Freedom of Information request for all emails between Pastorek and certain state agencies. It received a bill of $52,000 +. Information, it seems, is very costly, costly enough to bankrupt anyone who asks for it.

“Progress Michigan, a liberal think tank based out of Lansing, requested all communications between Paul Pastorek, one of Snyder’s education advisers, and employees of the Michigan Department of Education, Education Achievement Authority and Michigan Department of Treasury.

“The Department of Education and EAA both turned over emails between Pastorek and their employees for free, but the Department of Treasury sent Progress Michigan an estimated cost of $52,108.72 for the same bill.

“According to the letter to Progress Michigan, obtained by MLive, the department estimated each of its 1,286 employees would need to spend two hours searching their emails for communications with Pastorek. Each of those hours would cost the state $20.26 per hour, according to the letter.”

This is very odd. It takes me about four seconds to search my emails for a name. Why would every single employee of the state Department of Treasury require two hours to locate correspondence? Surely 90% or more had none.

Why the Department of Treasury?

“Some in the field already question the Department of Treasury’s role in education. It appoints emergency managers that control five Michigan school districts and so-called early warning legislation in the Michigan Legislature could give the Treasury more power over oversight of schools in bad financial shape.”

Categories Michigan
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