Archives for the month of: April, 2015
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Sara Stevenson: The Texas Voucher Proposal Should Be Killed, Now!

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2015 //
10

Sara Stevenson, librarian at O. Henry Middle School in Austin and a member of the honor roll of this blog, is a relentless thinker and doer. She writes frequently to set the record straight when rightwing ideologues and reformers attack public education. In this post, she questions the rationale behind voucher legislation in Texas, which comes back session after session, a true zombie. Texas is a conservative state, for sure, but every time the subject of vouchers has come up, it has been beaten back by a coalition of rural representatives, mostly Republicans, who value their hometown schools, and urban representatives, mostly Democrats, who don’t want to drain money away from their underfunded public schools. The voucher proponents are back, and Stevenson says it is time to stop them again.

 

She writes:

 

Even though this latest version states that eligible students must
have attended a public school the previous year, once the door opens,
this bill will achieve what it was originally designed to do all
along. As a rural Republican in the Texas House said recently,
“Vouchers are just tax breaks for people who already send their kids
to private schools.”

 

I spent ten years teaching in a private Catholic school in Austin. I
admire greatly the work of private schools and the communities they
serve. However, if parents choose to send their child to a private
school, they do not deserve a tax credit. Just because their child
does not attend a public school does not mean they are not obligated
to support public education. Millions of Texas citizens with no
children of school age pay taxes to support our public schools, which
educates 5 million children. Every citizen benefits from an educated
populace. We used to refer to this concept as the common good.

 

It’s important that we citizens respect our own traditions. The United
States was the first country in the world to enact compulsory, free
education. By this important 19th century innovation, our nation
became a world leader, dominating the 20th century. This value is
inscribed in Article VII of the Texas Constitution.

 

The main difference between public and private schools is that the
latter have enormous freedom to teach what they want. They are
completely free from any state-imposed curricula, accountability, or
punitive testing schemes. They are also exclusive. You must apply to
a private school, and these schools can reject or expel students for
any reason. They do not have to accept the students who wipe their
feces on the bathroom walls or those with a mental age of one and a
half. Will private schools be equipped and willing to serve these
severely disabled children? Will they be able to teach students who
speak languages other than English, a group that comprises almost 20%
of the current Texas public school population?

Categories Texas, Vouchers

The Utter Uselessness of the Common Core Tests: Opt Out

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2015 //
64

Parents are told that their children should take the new online Common Core tests because doing so will help their children.

 

The president of the State University of Néw York said students should not opt out:

 

“When it comes to whether students should opt out of standardized testing, no one is actually talking about what’s best for our kids. Standardized tests have become a pawn in political debates about teacher evaluations and we have lost sight of what they are: a way to measure what students know so we can help them improve,” President Nancy Zimpher wrote.”

 

Advocates and defenders of the tests assert that parents and teachers will learn about how the children are progressing, and teachers will be able to use this information to tailor instruction to meet the needs of individual children.

 

None of this is true. The information provided by the tests is worthless. It is a score. It offers no information about how to help students improve. It gives a score and a ranking compared to others in the state.

 

There is nothing individual in each student’s report. The teacher can’t see what the student got right or wrong. The teacher and parent learn nothing except the student’s score.

 

A test is valuable to the extent it is diagnostic. If a test is diagnostic, it identifies strengths and weaknesses so the teacher can help children do better. This report is not diagnostic. It says nothing of importance.

 

This is akin to going to a doctor with a painful stomach ache. He gives you tests, then says he will get back to you in four months. When you see him again in four months, he tells you a score, and he compares you to other patients with similar symptoms, but he has no prescription, no advice about how to feel better. Why would you want to know that you are better or worse than others with similar symptoms? Wouldn’t you prefer to have treatment?

 

Knowing that the test consume a large part of the school year, knowing that they are designed to fail most kids because of their absurdly high passing mark, knowing that the tests have no diagnostic value, the best decision for parents is to opt out of the testing. Send a message to the state capitol and to D.C.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Opt Out, Testing

NY: A Member of the Assembly Explains Her “Yes” Vote

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2015 //
20

Patricia Fahy, a member of the Néw York State Assembly, tries to explain her vote on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget bill. The worst part of the budget, she knew, was his demand to make 50% of teachers’ evaluations dependent on test scores. If no budget passed, Cuomo could impose his plan by fiat. Democracy, anyone?

The Assembly got the Governor to agree to allow the state Board of Regents to make the final determination on teacher evaluation, although they still must rely on an “independent evaluator” (an unfunded mandate) and test scores. Fahy refers to the Regents as “education professionals.” That is true of some, not all, of the Regents.

Readers in Néw York, how many Regents are “education professionals,” people who have had careers in education? To the credit of the Assembly, they recently elected four new members who are education professionals. In the past, that has not been a requisite. (Several years ago, my name was suggested as a candidate for the Regents. I talked to elected officials in Brooklyn, and they encouraged me to meet with the Speaker of the Assembly, whose word was determinative. Accompanied by an elected official, I was interviewed by Speaker Sheldon Silver’s top assistant. After half an hour of questions, she told me I knew too much to be a Regent. Unbelievable but true.)

From Fahy’s article:

 

“In the final few days of the budget negotiations, the most contentious part was the teacher evaluations (APPR) linked with excessive testing – an issue which has been debated for the last three out of four years in the legislature. I had and continue to have serious misgivings about this final bill language and have been actively advocating to ensure the most flexible interpretation of the language along with amendments where needed. While the language was troubling and rushed, one positive was delegating the evaluation issue away from the legislature and the Governor to the Board of Regents, who are the appointed education professionals. Despite having strongly opposed some of the previous work of the Regents with regard to testing and implementation of the common core standards, we have a slate of new Regents, who have been given parameters to work within.

 

“We need to change the conversation about education. We can no longer look at the very people who can help our children – our teachers – as the scapegoats for problems in education. We can no longer continue to value a standardized test that is so flawed parents are more concerned about their children taking it than passing it. We can no longer focus on underperforming schools and expect the teachers and staff to correct every social ill of the community and society. The solution must be multi-pronged and go beyond the school doors.

 

“I understand the frustration and the concern, I share it, and have already reached out to the Regents and more to begin work to maximize flexibility and seek changes where needed. This omnibus bill was not an easy vote and our work does not end with this vote.”

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, New York, Teacher Evaluations

Confidential Report: EduProfiteers See a Big Market in Education

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2015 //
53

This arrived in my email box today. The author, who owns a literacy company, asked to remain anonymous. He is describing an entrepreneurs’ conclave at Arizona State University, cosponsored by GSV Capital, whose leader, Michael Moe, has been bullish about the education sector as a profit opportunity for many years.

 

My correspondent writes:

 

Dear Dr. Ravitch,

 
I’m a longtime fan of your work and your blog (which I have recommended to many colleagues and in my company’s blog).
My name is ……

 

I’m writing to you today to tell you about a conference I just returned from called the ASU GSV Summit. It should really be called the Taxpayer Funded Education Business Con-ference (with an emphasis on “con”), because it was filled with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists claiming to want to do “social capitalism” but who actually were participating in an event filled with corporate dominated “school reform” propaganda that placed its focus on charters, accountability (ie testing), and corporate solutions such as Teach For America. While a great deal of lip service was paid to the great work of teachers (including an appearance by the hip-hop star, Common, along with his mother, a Chicago school board member), far more attention was given to pro-corporate propaganda. For instance, one of the hosts, GSV’s Michael Moe (http://investors.gsvcap.com/management.cfm) gave a lengthy keynote in which he compared education reformers to former Notre Dame coach, Lou Holtz and then extolled the virtues of companies such as Dreambox Learning, an online math program, that owes its existence to the fact that its owners also own a chain of charter schools that purchase its software. Not coincidentally, Dreambox won their ROE (Return on Education) award for the 3rd year in a row.

 

I think Dreambox is well worth a look because it exemplifies the kind of corporate reform darling that has success based completely on smoke and mirrors. If you read this report: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.epi.org/files/2014/school-privatization-milwaukee.pdf, it outlines Dreambox’s relationship with the Rocketship Charter Schools. It also details how: “When the U.S. Department of Education reviewed DreamBox in December 2013, researchers found 11 studies claiming to assess the program’s impact, but immediately rejected 10 of them as statistically meaningless. While the 11th study used sound methods and reported “significant gains in overall mathematics scores,” DOE staff found that the authors—whose work was commissioned by Rocketship—had arbitrarily excluded students they deemed “outliers.” When DOE staff reran the study with all students included, they concluded that DreamBox has “no discernible effects on mathematics achievement for elementary school students.” Following publication of the DOE’s report, the Rocketship-commissioned authors produced additional data that convinced federal researchers to upgrade their assessment of DreamBox’s impacts to “potentially positive effects” based on “small evidence.” (You can see the DOE report here: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/intervention_reports/wwc_dreambox_121013.pdf.)
I can’t keep track of how many awards Dreambox has won – all based completely on fraudulent studies and fraudulent marketing claims (e.g., “analyzes over 48,000 data points per student, per hour” – how on earth could any elementary school math program have over 48,000 data points in one hour? They used to say that they had “millions” of data points, so I guess 48,000 is their way of being conservative).

 

Another particularly odious presentation was made by billionaire Vinod Khosla who regaled the audience with his fact-free, research-ridiculing view that “We spend too much on education – if we cut education funding in half we would get a better result.” He also told us how “tenure” is a dated concept, and he lamented how teachers using Teacher Created Materials charge around $5 for their lesson plans, because “they should be free” and produced “from passion and not a desire for profit.” This from a man worth $1.7 billion! Apparently, the only people who should make a decent living in the education field are VCs like himself and the tech companies he chooses to fund.

 

I could go on, but you get the point. I’ve been to many, many education conferences that promote entrepreneurialism and technology solutions (SIIA, ISTE, NSBA, FETC, etc.). This one was the most overtly pro-corporate I have ever seen.

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit

Texas Voucher Bill Proposed by Politicians Eager to Harm Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
16

The details of the Texas voucher plan were released, and the politicians pushing it can’t wait to siphon money away from the state’s underfunded public schools. They show no remorse for cutting $5 billion from the public schools in 2011, and now they are back looking for ways to drain even more money away from the public schools that enroll about 90% of the children in the state.

 

As a graduate of the Houston public schools (San Jacinto High School, class of 1956), I resent that these men are tearing down their community’s public schools. They claim they want to “save poor kids from failing schools,” but the schools aren’t failing: the politicians are failing the schools. Poor kids can’t learn when they don’t have access to decent medical care, when they don’t have enough to eat, when they are deprived of necessities that advantaged families take for granted. Poor kids will learn better if they have smaller class sizes, experienced teachers, and a full curriculum instead of incessant testing. By cutting funding and sending it to religious schools, the Texas legislators will guarantee larger classes and a stripped-down curriculum. Furthermore, while they won’t pay for what kids need, they have set aside millions for the inexperienced temps called Teach for America, most of whom will disappear after two years.

 

I am proud to be a native Texan, but I am not proud of the men who are destroying the public schools that educated me and my family and made it possible for me to go to a good college.

 

If I were in Austin, I would say to State Senator Larry Taylor and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick that vouchers and tax credits (backdoor vouchers) hurt the great majority of children who attend public schools. I would say to them that they should take a trip to Milwaukee, which has had vouchers for 25 years, and is one of the lowest scoring cities on the NAEP federal tests. I would tell them that poor black children in Milwaukee are doing worse in voucher schools than they were in public schools. I would tell them they are cheating the children of Texas, to placate their ideology and their pals in the corporate world.

 

I would tell them to hang their heads in shame.

 

Categories Cheating, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Texas, Vouchers

What If? What If Every Parent Opted Out Their Child from the State Tests?

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
88

What if every parent said, “I refuse”?

 

What if every parent said, “My child is not taking the test”?

 

What if everyone said, “No, thank you, I’d rather not”?

 

The message would resound from one corner of the nation to the others. It would be heard by the Congress, now about to impose another seven years of annual testing on the nation’s children, even though no high-performng nation in the world tests every child every year. It would be heard by the President, who says teachers should not teach to the test, but that teachers who can’t produce high test scores don’t belong in the classroom. It would be heard by Arne Duncan, who said that testing is taking the joy out of learning, but nonetheless insists that every child take the test every year, no excuses. It would be heard by governors and legislators. They would hear the voice of the people. This is what democracy sounds like.

 

And what then? Teachers would be judged by their peers and supervisors, not by test scores. Teachers would write their own tests, to see whether children learned what they were taught. Standardized tests would be used sparingly, preferably on a sampling basis. Students would have time to explore, time to play, time to read, time to experiment, time to learn without test prep and interim assessments, without fear and anxiety. Pearson would have to reduce its profits for the year.

 

Send a message. Save your children. Save learning. Stop the machine.

Categories Joy, Real Education, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Part 4 of Her Close Reading of the Alexander-Murray Bill to Reauthorize NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
5

Here is Mercedes Schneider’s fourth installment in her monumental task of reading and analyzing the 600+ pages of the bipartisan Senate bill to reauthorize NCLB.

 

She writes:

 

 

As was true of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Alexander-Murray reauthorization is an assessment-centered document. A principal difference between this draft and NCLB is in the role of the federal government, with the federal role being much more prescriptive (and punitive) in NCLB. The Alexander-Murray draft mandates assessments; however, the particulars it leaves up to states without the punitive outcomes of NCLB.

 

Thus, state selection of assessments is critical. What a state chooses as its assessments largely determines the focus for the rest of the Alexander-Murray programs and “competitions.”

 

The “competitions” in the Alexander-Murray draft are optional to states; nevertheless, when coupled with a state’s choice of assessments (which could be assessments specific to the “competition”), state involvement in many of these “competitions” could mimic the oppression of NCLB or even US secretary of education Arne Duncan’s NCLB “waivers.”

 

A state could go the way of NCLB oppression. Or it could not.

 

It all depends upon the preferences of a state’s governor, or legislature, or board of education, or superintendent.

 

The Alexander-Murray reauthorization leaves room for states to implement assessment systems that require a lot less classroom time lost to testing, for example, or to even further downplay the importance of standardized tests by also incorporating projects and portfolios in the assessment process. However, the important piece here is that the states must be willing to pursue these avenues and include them as the official assessments selected for inclusion in the state ESEA application.

 

The state-level choice of assessments is critical in determining the degree to which education in that state will continue to be “NCLB-like” or even “Common Core-PARCC-SBAC-like.” Beyond that, the state’s choice of Alexander-Murray “competitions” can set the same NCLB/CCSS “stage.”

 

The mandate of annual assessment aside, under the Alexander-Murray draft, the state is the principal decision maker and therefore the primary entity for determining the degree of pressure brought upon public education by both the assessments it chooses and the ESEA “competitions” in which it participates for ESEA-related funding.

 

The state is even able to change its standards and assessments after receiving ESEA money by submitting the changes for re-evaluation by the US secretary– who does not have the authority to mandate a particular set of standards or particular assessments. According to the language of the Alexander-Murray draft, there is no rigid, seven-year lock-in to state standards and assessments. That noted, it would be best for a state to be certain about its choice of assessments at the outset of the application process for the proposed Alexander-Murray reauthorization.

 

Stay tuned. She will slog through this leviathan to the very end and inform us all.

 

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Testing

A Teacher Writes to the Néw York Board of Regents

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
17

The following was posted as a comment on the blog:

 

Dear Dr. Ravitch,

 

I have spent the last week and a half reeling from the shot across the bow that public education took on March 31st when the New York State Legislature ostensibly signed off on its destruction with the passing of the New York State Budget, and its attached legislation, S2006B-2015. As a teacher who is passionate about what she does, with two years of failing State Growth Scores, I know my days as a teacher are numbered. I am left with only one choice, to continue to act out of love for my students until the day comes when my district will be forced to remove me from the classroom and students I graciously serve.

 

My first act of love for my students, since the passing of this legislation and the absolute betrayal of my own elected officials, is the following letter I sent to the Board of Regents this afternoon.

 

Dear New York State Board of Regents:

 

This letter is in response to New York State Law S2006B-2015, dated March 31, 2015. I write you as a teacher of thirteen years who loves her profession and her students more than words could possibly capture. There has not been one day in the classroom that I wished away. Not one paycheck that I did not regard with awe over the fact that I could be paid to do a job I loved so deeply. Not one August that I did not greet with excitement in anticipation of new students, new challenges and new victories. Nor one end of school year I did not confront with sadness over the end of a ten-month partnership with my students filled with reading and writing and thinking and questioning.

 

Teaching is my passion. Every single day I ask myself what went wrong? Who did I not reach? What can I do tomorrow to push harder and support the growth of my students? I sincerely love teaching because after thirteen years, I am clear on only one thing – I will never have all of the answers. And I like that challenge. Each year brings new students, new families, new strengths and new areas of opportunity into my classroom. My voracious appetite for meeting their respective needs is confronted by the infinite possibilities that education offers.

 

This year, we had an interesting scenario. It became very clear on reading comprehension assessments that students understood what they were reading, but of the fifteen students in my class receiving Academic Intervention Services (AIS) for reading, out of a total of twenty-seven students, eight continuously earned failing scores on weekly assessments. We asked ourselves, is it the vocabulary in the questions? No. Is it vocabulary in the choices? No. We realized that students could not see the correct answers in the choices because they lacked the transferal skills to get themselves from what they knew the answers were to the choices given. We started giving the students the questions without choices, and having them write their own answers. Then we gave them the choices and they had to select the choices that most closely resembled their answers. Our failure rate dropped substantially from eight students to one to two students. This is what teaching is. Every single day we must go in, assess what our students need from us, and devise ways to meet those needs.

 

I often tell people that a teacher’s job is never, ever done. I could work around the clock twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and still have things I want to accomplish in the classroom. As teachers, we have to eek out as much time as we can before school, during school and after school, and spend that time on the work we determine offers our students the greatest return on investment. This is why grading assessments we provide is so important to us. Students and teachers require continual assessment feedback so instructional time can best serve students’ needs.

 

Where is all of this going? It boils down to assessment. Your board has been asked to craft an APPR plan that bases 50% of a teacher’s APPR on assessments you deem appropriate for this purpose. Much of what I am about to discuss pertains solely to the current grades three through eight state testing program, but please keep in mind that these thoughts relate to any assessment we deem appropriate for removing a child’s teacher from his/her classroom.

 

Any assessment we use for the state’s 50% of the APPR must:

 

1. Include reliability and validity testing that demonstrates the instrument’s ability to measure what we are asking it to measure. Assessment in New York State public school classrooms must measure a student’s progress toward New York State Standards.

 

2. Be created by an entity that does not also sell curricular materials to school districts. The 2013 New York State 6th ELA exam included proprietary material that Pearson had also included in its series, Reading Street, which it sells to districts. This is a serious conflict of interest.

 

3. Have the ability to measure all growth a student experiences during a school year. The current methodology provides simple scores of one, two, three and four limiting its ability show us where growth has or has not transpired, for a variety of reasons.

 

4. Inform teachers and parents of information both parties do not already know. We know who has difficulty reading and who does not. We must use an assessment that offers rich details about where our students struggles are, as well as what students are doing well.

 

If we continue on our current path, teachers like me who love what we do, and have an innate desire to be the best teachers we can for our students, will be gone. For the last two years, I have been given a one and a two respectively for my State Growth Score. If you proceed with the State Legislature’s plan, and your current method of assessments, you will be taking good teachers away from the students who need them, using fraudulent instruments. With your June 30th deadline looming, I beg you to contemplate the gravity of this system, and as the law prescribes, use the next few months to speak with teachers and parents who are invested in this system, to craft a plan that places children first.

 

In all earnest, I am willing to meet with you anytime to discuss the frailties of our current system and measures we can take to meet the law’s deadline in a way that best serves public school children. They are what matter most.

 

Warm wishes,

 

Melissa K. McMullan
6th Grade Teacher
Comsewogue School District
Port Jefferson Station, NY

Categories New York, Resistance, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, Testing

Peter Greene: More Craigs’ List Advertising for Test Scorers at $11.20 an Hour

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
20

Peter Greene reports on another test-scoring company looking for test scorers.

 

Measurement Incorporated boasts ten scoring centers, which is a good thing because “to guarantee test security, all work has to be done at one of our Scoring Centers in Tennessee, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Kansas and Washington or from a secure work station in your home.”

 

The ad, which went up ten days ago, is part of a recruiting drive for the test-correction high season of March and April. “These projects may include scoring test items in reading, math, science, social studies, or written essays. The tests come from many different states representing students at all grade levels.”

 

The job starts at $11.20. After logging 450 hours, workers are eligible to bump up to $11.95. Day and night shifts are available, and workers are expected to put in five days a week.

 

Peter Greene’s summary:

 

I expect we’ll continue to see many of these smaller companies scarfing up sub-contracts for the Big Guys and handling the business of hiring part-timers to help make decisions about the fate of America’s children, teachers, and schools. Only one of two things can be true here– either the system is so simplified and so user-proof that it doesn’t really matter who’s doing the scoring work (in which case it’s a dopey system that gives back very little information and is easy to game) or it does matter who’s doing the scoring (in which case, the use of part-time temps who are available only because they couldn’t find a real job is not exactly comforting). Either way, this is one more big fat reminder that the Big Standardized Test is a dumb way to assess any part of America’s education system.

 

Yet another reason to opt out of this system.

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Opt Out, Testing

Steven Singer: Parents Have the Power to End Test Abuse

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2015 //
35

Steven Singer is a National Board Certified Teacher of secondary school in Pennsylvania, he is also a parent of a kindergarten student. He didn’t want her to take standardized tests, and he went to her school to meet with the principal and her teacher. One of the tests is DIBELS, the other is GRADE. He thought both were useless.

 

He writes:

 

“I think standardized testing is destroying public education. It’s stressing kids out by demanding they perform at levels they aren’t developmentally ready to reach. And its using these false measures of proficiency to “prove” how bad public schools are so they can be replaced by for-profit charters that will reduce the quality of kids’ educations to generate profits.”

 

The principal said:

 

“I’ve never had a parent ask to opt out of the DIBELS before,” he said.

 

He said the DIBELS is a piece of the data teachers use to make academic decisions about their students. Without it, how would they know if their children could read, were hitting certain benchmarks?

 

Singer replied:

 

“I know I teach secondary and that’s different than elementary,” I said, “but there is not a single standardized test that I give my kids that returns any useful information. “I don’t need a test to tell me if my students can read. I don’t need a test to know if they can write or spell. I know just by interacting with them in the classroom.”

 

The principal looked to the teacher, and the teacher agreed! She knows how her students are doing without the standardized tests.

 

Singer left feeling elated.

 

“It wasn’t until then that I realized the power parents truly have. The principal Smith might have refused a TEACHER who brought up all of the concerns I had. He’s their boss. He trusts his own judgment. But I don’t work for him. In fact, he works for me. And – to his credit – he knows that.

 

“I know everyone isn’t as lucky as me. Some people live in districts that aren’t as receptive. But if parents rose up en masse and spoke out against toxic testing, it would end tomorrow.

 

“If regular everyday Dads and Moms stood up for their children and asked questions, there would be no more Race to the Top, Common Core or annual standardized testing. Because while teachers have years of experience, knowledge and love – parents have the power. Imagine if we all worked together! What a world we could build for our children!”

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Parents, Standardized Testing
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