Archives for the month of: April, 2015
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EduShyster Interviews a Repentant Reformer

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
6

You may recall a post about a disillusioned reformer, Jorge Cabrera, in Bridgeport, Connecticut,who quit “the movement.”

EduShyster located him and interviewed him about his life in the movement and his reasons for leaving.

Here is her last question and his answer:

“EduShyster: Last question. Do you think it may be necessary to burn the education reform movement in order to save it?

“Cabrera: At this point I would say yes. It makes me a little sad to say that because I definitely know people in the movement who have good motives. I think the education reform movement needs to be challenged, first of all, about the definition of reform. Right now all it seems to mean is charter schools. And that’s not the solution.”

Categories Charter Schools, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers

Mercedes Schneider Is Reading the Alexander-Murray NCLB-ESEA Bill, Line by Line

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
20

I am happy to say that Mercedes Schneider is reading the 600+ page bill written by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, under the bipartisan leadership of Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patti Murray of Washington State.

She is reading every word of it, a daunting task. She is up to page 136. What she sees is that the bill restricts the powers of the Secretary of Education and prohibits him/her from telling states what to do unless specifically authorized by the law. Thus far, she is pleased with what she has read.

We can anticipate more posts, as she goes through the bill. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it, other than committee staff in the Senate.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Standardized Testing

Ira Shor on Senate Revision of NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
36

Ira Shor writes:

“Big winners are private charters b/c they are authorized to loot even more public school funds. Leaving annual testing in place makes Pearson second big winner b/c they can buy politicians and state/local DOE’s to keep testing in place. Third big winner is Hillary–this ridiculous renewed bill so muddies the waters that Hillary can slither past having to explain where she stands on the last 5yrs of destructive ed reform. Rest of us need to push opt-out relentlessly along with campaign against private looting of public funds. The private war on public education has accomplished massive disruption of education, so a fed attack led by Duncan no longer needed, went far to finance, legalize, and privilege the Eva school world, all that’s needed from Eva’s pt of v now is constant stream of tax revenues, constant financing of charter sites, and constant exemption from public oversight, all of which are in place. For us, time to plan next big moves to rescue and renovate public education.”

Categories Charter Schools, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization

FairTest: Call Your Senator to Demand Less Testing in New NCLB

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
15

Many people ask, “What can I do to reduce the testing that is making my children’s lives miserable and ruining their love of learning?” This is a democracy. Call your elected representatives in Washington. FairTest recommends citizen action NOW to Reduce Testing Requirements:
National Day of Action Today -April 8
Overhaul ESEA/NCLB: Less Testing More Learning
What: Call your U.S. Senators and join the Twitter storm/Thunderclap. If we raise our voices together, we can persuade the Senate Education Committee to reduce testing requirements as it debates renewal of Elementary and Secondary Education Act/No Child Left Behind.
When: April 8, 2015
Who: Testing Resistance and Reform Spring alliance, convened by FairTest, and including many national and state organizations.

Call your Senators: Take a few minutes today, April 8, to phone your U.S. senators in Washington, DC. Ask to speak to the staffer who works on education policy. If no one is available, leave your message with the person who answered the phone. Find the phone numbers at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.

Tell your Senators: Here is a model message. Feel free to use it, modify it, or say something entirely different.

Hello. I’m [your name], calling from [your town]. I’m calling to ask Senator [name] to support changes to No Child Left Behind that will promote a saner approach to public school testing. I urge [him/her] to support a switch to testing once each in elementary, middle and high school, and to remove high-stakes consequences from federally required standardized tests. Both these measures will help address the current over-emphasis on testing at the expense of learning.

If you have specific stories about problems with over-testing, please relate them. Personal stories are the most effective.
Twitterstorm: Today at 1:00 PM Eastern time, send a tweet, help build the storm. Here is an example. If you modify it, be sure to include #cutfederaltests and the link to getting your Senators’ numbers:

“Join FairTest, Testing Resistance 4/8 #CutFedTests. Call Senate http://thndr.it/1P6DfEf. Cut back tests, end high stakes.”
The link is to Senate phone numbers. The last ‘sentence’ is the basic message.
To tweet your Senators, find their Twitter handles at:
https://twitter.com/gov/lists/us-senate/members

Email: Join the email campaign as well. To send a letter to your Senator, go to:
http://fairtest.org/roll-back-standardized-testing-send-letter-congres.

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Resistance, Standardized Testing

Merryl Tisch Says Opting Out Hurts Neediest Children; Celia Oyler Disagrees

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2015 //
65

Merryl Tisch is the Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents. She has been a Regent for 20 years. She is a strong supporter of high-stakes testing. In this article, she criticizes those who opt out and who encourage others to opt out. She says they are hurting the kids who need help the most. She thinks the schools would neglect the neediest children if they were not tested every year. Since no high-performing nation tests every child every year, they must be overlooking their neediest children.

 

She writes:

 

“It used to be easy to ignore the most vulnerable students. Without assessments, it was easy to ignore the achievement gap for African-American and Latino students. Without an objective measure of their progress, it was easy to deny special education students and English Language Learners the extra resources they need. Obviously we still need to do more for those students, but now is not the time to put blinders back on.

 

“Without a comparable measure of student achievement, we risk losing track of the progress of all of our students in all of our schools. This risk applies not only to students of color, urban and rural students, and students with special learning needs. Many students from affluent districts do not make the year-to-year progress necessary in today’s world and need early support to get back on track. It’s far better to find that out while they’re still in the classroom than wait until they’re out of school and faced with real world challenges in college or the work place without the skills they need to overcome those challenges.”

 

One would think after a dozen years of high-stakes testing that there might be evidence that the children she names have benefitted, that poverty has decreased, but she fails to mention any evidence of the benefits of high-stakes testing.

 

Celia Oyler, a faculty member at Teachers College, Columbia University, read Chancellor Tisch’s letter and drew different conclusions. She wrote the following comment to The Hechinger Report, where Tisch’s article appeared:

 

Professor Celia Oyler wrote:

 

“Very few parents would be refusing the New York State Pearson tests if they were decent measures of learning. And if they were decent measures of learning from year to year there would be no Teachers of Conscience movement of teachers who are refusing to administer the high stakes tests. There are so many flaws with what Chancellor Tisch and Commissioner King have done:

 

“(1) These tests are not measures of what an individual student has learned from year to year: they are not vertically aligned. State Ed has created what they call growth scores, but calling something by a name does not make it real. In fact, these scores do not measure growth from year to year, but measure the score on the test one year and the score on a different test the next year.

 

“(2) The NYS tests are too blunt to measure learning of the students Chancellor Tisch proclaims to care most about: the children who do not do well on standardized measures (whether due to horrible stresses that often accompany poverty and affect learning, or from a print or language or intellectual disability, or because they are learning English as an additional language). And we also know from numerous adequately designed studies that a teacher accounts for only about 10-15% of test score variance on any child: to hold one teacher 50% responsible for a single test score is scientifically unjustifiable. And doing so damages the chances for such children to receive the education they need. Children who struggle with school tasks do not need more test prep curriculum (which is what they are mostly getting — get out to schools more, Chancellor Tisch!), they need more rich, integrated, experiential, three-dimensional learning that is organized around meaning and not memorization. Punishing children, their schools, and their teachers for poor scores on poor tests is not the way to promote the rich learning environments they desperately need.

 

“(3) The misuse of so called Value Added Models or Measures takes lousy tests and then puts them through a formula not even designed to measure one teacher’s influence on the score from year to year: VAMs have greatest reliability when used on groups of teachers across multiple years. To make matters worse, most all researchers continually agree that a teacher accounts for about 10-15% of any standardized score variance. So teachers in NYS are punished by giving them a score that was not even designed to measure what Chancellor Tisch has made it measure. Study after study after study demonstrates that VAM has confidence intervals of as much as 60%! This is utterly insane and has enraged educators who understand what is being done to them.

 

“(4) Chancellor Tisch has just announced that some districts and schools should be exempt from this high stakes bad math folly that she and her cronies have wrought upon the children and teachers of New York State. This is an abomination. We have decades of research demonstrating the link between wealth and standardized test scores. Yes, there are exceptions: we have schools where children from low-income schools have learned to do well on a high stakes test. We need to learn more from these anomalies. But even within the anomalies researchers continually find that doing well on one high stakes test does not transfer to other high stakes tests. This means that students can be taught how to do well on a high stakes test. It does not mean they are learning content, concepts, and skills of value, that transfer. This raises the question: Do we want learning, or do we want achievement test scores?

 

“It is apparent to many parents who are refusing the tests, and to many teachers who are taking up activism against these brutal educational “reforms,” that Chancellor Tisch and her ilk care way more about a reductive number on a spreadsheet than they care about real learning and about actually improving the possibilities for the most marginalized children in our society. New York State teachers and children deserve support and assistance, particularly in economically distressed communities. Tisch and her millionaire friends can do much better than punish us all with their willful ignorance.”

 

—
Celia Oyler, PhD
Box 31 Teachers College
525 W. 120th Street, NY, NY, 10027
office phone: 212.678.3696
office location: 312 Zankel Hall

Categories New York, Opt Out, Students, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Colorado: Test Advocate Says that Most Who Opt Out Are Low Income and Minorities

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2015 //
38

The Colorado legislature, as noted in a post earlier today, is debating whether to cut back on standardized testing and whether to permit parents to opt their children out of tests.

A Republican state senator who is a sponsor of the opt-out bill said that he and his wife had opted their own children out of the tests.

State Senator Michael Johnston, author of the infamous law that makes test scores count for 50% of teachers’ evaluations, defended high-stakes testing.

Johnston likened the bill to a ban on school coaches running their athletes through sprints, and said that the bill threatened to cut off $360 million in federal funding if the participation rate drops below federal requirements.

He also stressed that the students who skip the tests tend to come from lower-income and minority groups.

“Has it been a lot of upper middle class white folks,” Johnston said. “No.”

Easing the ability to opt-out, he argued, will prevent the state from helping to measure and serve those who struggle.

Likening a mandate to take tests whose reliability and validity have not been established to banning athletes from sprinting is illogical. It actually makes no sense. Coaches don’t need a law to have their athletes run sprints.

And like others who are desperately fearful of the Opt Out movement, he makes the spurious claim that testing is exactly what is needed to help struggling students. But tests don’t teach. Teachers teach. They teach even better in an atmosphere of respect and collegiality.

The other curious thing about his statement is that it is opposite what other reformers are saying; they claim that only whites are opting out. Johnston claims the opt outs “tend to come from lower-income and minority groups.” The reformers have different songbooks.

Categories Education Reform

BREAKING NEWS: Rahm Emanuel Re-Elected Mayor of Chicago

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2015 //
63

Rahm Emanuel was re-elected to a second term. Preliminary estimates show a 56-44 win. He had a huge financial advantage over his opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

This is a defeat for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and a big win for the Status Quo corporatist wing.

“The mayor raised about $20 million through last week, easily outpacing Garcia, who brought in about $4 million. The hefty cash advantage enabled the mayor to run a steady stream of ads that raised questions about his challenger’s résumé and his plan for remedying the city’s problems.”

Categories Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm

Peter Greene on the Senate ESEA Bill

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2015 //
30

Peter Greene read the Alexander-Murray bill with care and finds reasons for hope. It slices away most of the ugly features of NCLB. It puts an end to Duncan’s reign as the national superintendent of schools. It transfers back to the states the responsibility for their public schools and tells Washington to butt out.

He was disappointed to find a giant Xmas tree for the charter industry, with three grant programs to help them expand.

“The third grant program is also awesome if you are a charter profiteer– the feds would like a grant program to help pay for the buildings that charters squat in. No word on whether Senators Alexander and Murray considered a bill to cut up charter operators food for them or hire federal agents to wipe the charter CEO’s chin when he’s drooling with glee…..”

“So, What Do We Think?

“All in all, this is a more pointed rebuke of the Obama administration’s ed farfegnugen than I might have expected, but while [it] still keeps those stupid, worthless Big Standardized Tests enshrined, it frees states to make their own peace with them (and that testing requirement might reduce the possibility that the test manufacturers would loose their lobbying dogs to oppose the bill– they can rest happy now because their payday is intact). Now, that will mean different things in different states– I’m pretty sure Andrew Cuomo will be a giant ass to education whether the feds are pushing him to or not.

“And while Common Core is all but dead, this certainly frees everyone up to slap it around some more. This bill wouldn’t end the ongoing education debate, but it would break it up into fifty little arguments and if that doesn’t do anything more than divide up the reformsters money and forces, that’s a good thing.

“Of course, we still have the onslaught of amendments and the bill from the House and the President’s desk to get past. And the enshrinement of the rapacious charter school industry is not good news. So this is by no means perfect.

“But most of all, a new ESEA completely chops the back-door lawmaking of USED waivers off at the knees. If Congress can actually pull this off, it will be a gamechanger. There’s much to hate about the new game, but there are some pieces of hope as well. Let’s just see what happens next.”

Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Colorado: “Reformers” Fight Opt Out Bill, Defend Testing

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2015 //
6

The Colorado legislature is considering legislation permitting parents to opt their children out of state testing. The legislation is opposed by corporate reformer State Senator Michael Johnston and corporate reform groups like Colorado Succeeds.

Johnston, drawing on his experience in Teach for America and a brief stint as a principal, was author of legislation passed in 2010 that made test scores count for 50% of teacher evaluations.

I was in Denver the day his dreadful legislation came to a vote, and we were supposed to debate before about 100 civic leaders. Johnston waited outside the room for me to finish my presentation, so he heard nothing to contradict his love of high-stakes testing. As soon as he entered the room, he told the audience about the passage of his “great schools, great teachers” bill.

I was happy to see this part of the AP story about legislation in Colorado:

“Several more testing-related bills await hearings this week, including proposals to reduce social studies testing and to eliminate all statewide tests not required by the federal government. Another bill would dismantle a 2010 requirement that teacher evaluations rely at least 50 percent on student test scores.”

That last item is Mike Johnston’s “historic” bill.

Categories Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Opt Out, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Senate Committee Reaches Agreement on Néw ESEA

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2015 //
64

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Senator Patti Murray (D-Wa.) announced agreement on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently called No Child Left Behind).

The new legislation is called “The Every Child Achieves Act of 2015.” This nomenclature continues the custom of naming the federal aid law with its aspirational goal.

The act maintains annual testing but leaves to states the authority to decide how to use the scores. AYP is gone. The act prohibits the federal government from dictating to states and districts how to “reform” or “turnaround” or “fix” low-performing schools. It allows, but does not require, states to create teacher evaluation systems. “The federal government may not mandate or incentivize states to adopt or maintain any particular set of standards, including Common Core. States will be free to decide what academic standards they will maintain in their states.”

Secretary Duncan will not be pleased. The act specifically prohibits him from meddling in the states’ choice of standards and tests. He also can’t rewrite the law with his own waivers, because the states are given wide latitude, not subject to his control. Basically, the bipartisan bill repudiates almost all of his initiatives; notably, it does not authorize Race to the Top.

If states choose to enact punitive accountability programs, they can, but the federal government won’t force them to.

What do I think? I would have been thrilled to see annual testing banished, but President Obama made clear he would veto any bill that did not include annual testing. The cascading sanctions of NCLB and Race to the Top are gone. There is no mention of portability of funds to nonpublic schools.

One may quibble with details, but the bottom line is that this bill defangs the U.S. Department of Education; it no longer will exert control over every school with mandates. This bill strips the status quo of federal power to ruin schools and the lives of children and educators.

Now the battle shifts to state legislatures, where parents can make their voices heard. This is a far better bill than I had hoped or feared.

***************************************

Alexander, Murray Announce Bipartisan Agreement on Fixing “No Child Left Behind”

Schedule Committee Action for 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 14

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 7 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today announced a bipartisan agreement on fixing “No Child Left Behind.” They scheduled committee action on their agreement and any amendments to begin at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 14.

Alexander said: “Senator Murray and I have worked together to produce bipartisan legislation to fix ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Basically, our agreement continues important measurements of the academic progress of students but restores to states, local school districts, teachers, and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about improving student achievement. This should produce fewer and more appropriate tests. It is the most effective way to advance higher standards and better teaching in our 100,000 public schools. We have found remarkable consensus about the urgent need to fix this broken law, and also on how to fix it. We look forward to a thorough discussion and debate in the Senate education committee next week.”

Murray said:“This bipartisan compromise is an important step toward fixing the broken No Child Left Behind law. While there is still work to be done, this agreement is a strong step in the right direction that helps students, educators, and schools, gives states and districts more flexibility while maintaining strong federal guardrails, and helps make sure all students get the opportunity to learn, no matter where they live, how they learn, or how much money their parents make. I was proud to be a voice for Washington state students and priorities as we negotiated this agreement, and I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to build on this bipartisan compromise and move legislation through the Senate, the House, and get it signed into law.”

The senators’ legislative agreement would reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the chief law governing the federal role in K-12 education. The most recent reauthorization of ESEA was the “No Child Left Behind Act,” which was enacted in 2001 and expired in 2007. Since then, nearly all states have been forced to ask the U.S. Department of Education for waivers from some of the law’s most unworkable requirements.

The senators’ bill would fix the problems with “No Child Left Behind,” while keeping successful provisions, such as the reporting requirement of disaggregated data on student achievement. The bill would end states’ need for waivers from the law.

What the Every Child Achieves Act does:

· Strengthens state and local control: The bill recognizes that states, working with school districts, teachers, and others, have the responsibility for creating accountability systems to ensure all students are learning and prepared for success. These accountability systems will be state-designed but must meet minimum federal parameters, including ensuring all students and subgroups of students are included in the accountability system, disaggregating student achievement data, and establishing challenging academic standards for all students. The federal government is prohibited from determining or approving state standards.

· Maintains important information for parents, teachers, and communities: The bill maintains the federally required two tests in reading and math per child per year in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, as well as science tests given three times between grades 3 and 12. These important measures of student achievement ensure that parents know how their children are performing and help teachers support students who are struggling to meet state standards. A pilot program will allow states additional flexibility to experiment with innovative assessment systems within states. The bill also maintains annual reporting of disaggregated data of groups of children, which provides valuable information about whether all students are achieving, including low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners.

· Ends federal test-based accountability: The bill ends the federal test-based accountability system of No Child Left Behind, restoring to states the responsibility for determining how to use federally required tests for accountability purposes. States must include these tests in their accountability systems, but will be able to determine the weight of those tests in their systems. States will also be required to include graduation rates, a measure of postsecondary and workforce readiness, English proficiency for English learners. States will also be permitted to include other measures of student and school performance in their accountability systems in order to provide teachers, parents, and other stakeholders with a more accurate determination of school performance.

· Maintains important protections for federal taxpayer dollars: The bill maintains important fiscal protections of federal dollars, including maintenance of effort requirements, which help ensure that federal dollars supplement state and local education dollars, with additional flexibility for school districts in meeting those requirements.

· Helps states fix the lowest-performing schools: The bill includes federal grants to states and school districts to help improve low performing schools that are identified by the state accountability systems. School districts will be responsible for designing evidence-based interventions for low performing schools, with technical assistance from the states, and the federal government is prohibited from mandating, prescribing, or defining the specific steps school districts and states must take to improve those schools.

· Helps states support teachers: The bill provides resources to states and school districts to implement activities to support teachers, principals, and other educators, including allowable uses of funds for high quality induction programs for new teachers, ongoing rigorous professional development opportunities for teachers, and programs to recruit new educators to the profession. The bill allows, but does not require, states to develop and implement teacher evaluation systems.

· Reaffirms the states’ role in determining education standards: The bill affirms that states decide what academic standards they will adopt, without interference from Washington, D.C. The federal government may not mandate or incentivize states to adopt or maintain any particular set of standards, including Common Core. States will be free to decide what academic standards they will maintain in their states.

For more details on the bill:

Click here for the legislation.

Click here for a summary of the bill.

# # #

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), U.S. Department of Education, US Education
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