Kevin Welner, head of the National Education Policy Center, debates Patricia Levesque, Jeb Bush’s chief education aide.
Welner cites research to show that 13 years of high-stakes testing has had little or no benefit. Levesque maintains that testing is the key to academic progress.
It is a good exchange.
But I am reminded of what I call the Ravitch challenge. To those who advocate for the benefits of testing, take the 8th grade math test (released items) and publish your score.
I double dare you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
There’s actually a Heisenberg Effect at work here —
The more you measure a developing process,
The more you interfere with its natural evolution.
Or Campbell’s Law (Go Bucks!)
Reforminberg Effect: the more reformers say, the less we (and they) know what they are actually talking about.
Diane, for years I have challenged education reformers who are in state legislative, Congressional, school board, local government, and even Executive offices (President, Governor) to take for example the Maryland High School Assessment in Government and publish their results.
If they got a failing score, I suggested they had only two options open to them
1. Resign as unqualified
2. Admit that the test bore little relevance and stop requiring students to take it
Students still must take it, although they no longer have to pass it in order to graduate from a Maryland Public High School.
One more thought. I have also pointed out that this test, the Maryland HSA in Government, regularly is full of errors. For example, it is prone to be requiring students to think that Brown v Board overturned Plessy v Ferguson or ended segregation completely. It did neither. It only applied to segregation in public schools, and did so by saying public schools segregated by race were “inherently unequal” and therefore were unconstitutional even under Plessy, which required separate but EQUAL. Warren made clear the court was ready to overturn Plessy but it was unnecessary to do so in order to achieve the results reached by the decision. How fair is it to be testing students with questions that are so inaccurate?
That’s a good point re: overturning Plessy. I don’t think Plessy was ever actually explicitly overturned in any case.
But I don’t think you’re correct that the Court in Brown found that segregation by race was unconstitutional under Plessy. Plessy was a case about tangible accommodations or facilities. Under the Plessy doctrine, racial segregation was permissible as long as each race was given equal accommodations or facilities. In Brown, the Court in flat-out rejected that doctrine in the context of public schools. So Brown did not find that racial segregation in public schools was “unconstitutional even under Plessy.” Brown announced a new rule, and the new rule was a complete rejection of Plessy school segregation cases.
Sorry, cx, meant to type “the new rule was a complete rejection of Plessy [in] school segregation cases.”
Reformers are dogs chasing their tails. Use scores on standardized tests as a means to improve standardized test scores. I do believe physics tells us perpetual motion is impossible. So why am I getting dizzy?
From the circular reasoning.
I love how Levesque pulls the wool over the eyes of the readers by excluding multiple factors for Florida’s “stunning success.” No mention of the Bush-opposed referendum on class size limitations. And, of course, the shameful and manipulative statistical data by focusing on 4th grade reading scores which improved as a function of holding back third graders who tested poorly the year before.
But, see, the casual reader doesn’t know this information. If they did, they would see that Levesque’s constant refrain of “look at Florida’s fourth grade reading scores” ring very hollow.
Thanks so much. I’ll remember that when they trumpet Ohio 4th grade reading scores. They chopped off the bottom 10%. I’ll look for it.
“Successful policies include school choice for parents, accountability for every child, early-grade literacy, elimination of archaic teacher tenure policies and adoption of college-and-career ready standards measured with quality assessments. ”
As usual, no mention of any additional support for existing public schools. I love how she lists “choice” first, too. That’s clearly been the priority in ed reform. Other than testing our kids, public schools are an afterthought.
If they’re wondering why public school parents believe they only care about testing, it’s because they only fund and promote testing for our schools. Other than politically motivated anti-union screeds, that’s about it for “ed reform” and existing public schools. I’m not really interested in enlisting my child as a warrior in the ed reform “movement’s” crusade against labor unions.
Ohio public school teachers are labor union members. I’ve been attending a series of community meetings on our public schools for almost a year, teachers, parents, administrators, clergy, members of the business community, and not one person mentioned labor unions. I heard about project based learning, ed tech, facilities upkeep, state budget cuts, the Common Core, the fact that our school population has lost ground in family income so there are more low income children, but no labor union screeds.
Yes, “choice” is often listed first on the wish lists of so-called reformers, but somehow that never includes the choice of an adequately-funded neighborhood public school.
If she wants any credibility, Ms. Levesque needs to take the Peter Greene challenge: name one school anywhere that has ever benefited from low test scores showing that poor/minority/special needs kids are “not learning”. When has any politician or any other powerful person or entity ever looked at low test scores and said, “we need to get more resources to that school to help those poor/minority/special needs kids right away”? There’s a very long and sorrowful record of low test scores being used to harm poor/minority/special needs kids by pulling resources from their school, “turning their school around”, privatizing it or simply closing it. If Ms. Levesque (or anyone else) has any evidence of test scores being used to help rather than punish, I’m all ears.
“Deeper, broader learning” is something we all support.”
They support it. They just don’t want to pay for it.
Chiara: if I may be so impertinent, let me amend your observation—
‘Their rhetoric supports it. They just don’t want to pay for it.’
As is shamelessly evident, they are all in when it comes to providing whatever it takes to ensure a world-class education for THEIR OWN CHILDREN. It’s just OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN that, to paraphrase, Ms. Levesque, ‘need to be measured and discounted’ so that only the students that ‘count’ are allowed to succeed.
Proof? This blog, 3/23/2014, “Common Core For Commoners, Not My School!”—
[start posting]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Shameless. Double think. Double talk. Double standards.
“Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
Even old dead French guys knew the rheephormster type.
😎
My daughter is superior in Math, and she was in tears after the 8th grade Math PARCC test…….as was her young, excellent Math teacher. I think we need to publish the results of Ohio Governor John Kasich’s 8th grade Math PARCC test….and then see if he is still cocky and unfeeling towards his toxic educational policies he has created for Ohio teachers, students, and parents. I think that would work perfectly. If his score was not at an advanced level, I think he needs to clear the decks for a more competent, skilled Ohio governor. I mean he should at least be at the 10th-11th grade Math level…right?….that is the level the 8th grade Math PARCC test is at.
You could even go as low as a 3rd or 4th grade test, especially in ELA. Theoretically they should easily get the highest score and it would remove all excuses (like we’re supposed to)
One of the pieces by Patricia Levesque is entitled “Every Child Must Be Measured, Every Child Must Count.” She is simply rebranding the “thinking” behind NCLB and its current rebranded kin.
Hasn’t she read the comments of Sandy Kress? This blog. A posting entitled “NCLB Architect Defends NCLB.” It includes excerpts from a POLITICO article.
[start]
Politicians and pundits from left, right and center have been beating up on No Child Left Behind. And Texas lawyer Sandy Kress has had enough. Kress, a longtime adviser to George W. Bush, was an original architect of NCLB. He stands by the law – and says it’s being blamed for a heap of problems that it did not in any way cause. “It’s sad to see all the brickbats,” Kress told Morning Education. “And worrisome.” Kress argues that the federal testing and accountability provisions were designed to prod district bureaucracies into demanding more qualified teachers, better instruction and top-notch materials. Instead, he said, administrators took the easy way out and bought loads of practice tests and test prep products in a frenzied rush to boost student scores. Kress used to lobby for Pearson, which of course sells many of those tests and test prep products. He doesn’t work for the company now, though, and says he can freely share his view: Yes, there are too many tests (and too many bad tests) – but no, it’s not the fault of NCLB. “Why [states and districts] chose to have tests on top of tests on top of tests” instead of improving instruction “is beyond me,” he said. The testing mania not only spurred the anti-NCLB backlash, but it flat out didn’t work, Kress said: “If you spend all your time weighing your pig, when it comes time to sell the pig, you’re going to find out you haven’t spent enough time feeding the pig.”
[end]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/01/13/nclb-architect-defends-nclb/
Ms. Levesque: Sandy Kress knows your talking points better than you do. You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it. [I included the entire paragraph with its delusional defense of NCLB so I would not be accused of taking the last sentence out of context.]
Or as Linda Darling-Hammond put it in the slim 2004 paperback MANY CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND: HOW THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT IS DAMAGING OUR CHILDREN AND OUR SCHOOLS (p. 9): “The biggest problem with the NCLB Act is that it mistakes measuring schools for fixing them.”
The entire approach of the self-proclaimed “education reform” crowd also deflects attention away from the real issues at hand. Let me reframe it in a way that even the shills and trolls that visit this blog can understand—
Want a Lakeside School-style education for all? You can’t get a Mercedes-Benz world-class education at the Rheephorm 99¢ Store in the testing aisle. You want quality, it doesn’t come cheap. So whatever it takes. No excuses. Put up or shut up.
Increasingly, their answer is some variation of the cliché made famous by the NJ Commissioner of Education: rheephormsters will just double down on whatevers.
The positive alternative? Opt out of the misuses and abuses of high-stakes standardized testing, opt in to genuine teaching and learning. How to get there against the education establishment and the self-serving “education reformers”? It’s in the best American tradition:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass. Right then. Right now.
Right on.
😎
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-soccer-mom-revolt-against-common-core-1430867989#livefyre-comment
If a married man is all alone in the forest and talking, would he still be wrong?
If Levesque is speaking, then she is lying.
She carefully avoids the talk about the continual retooling of the FCAT due to the political machinations behind the yo-yoing cut scores and how the scores have had to be continually readjusted and reissued year after year due to parental outrage and impending elections for her chosen political party. Little more than a poltical football used to bludgeon teachers and weaken the FEA.
She doesn’t mention how her boss played 3 card monte with lottery school funds, lauding himself for adding millions to education spending while secretly deducting the same dollar amount from the General Fund that pays for Florida public school operations.
She erases the State Supreme Court’s repeated smackdowns of Bush’s overreach with vouchers even when code-named “opportunity scholarships”.
She forgot how the voters twice rejected her boss and his reforms by passing a constitutional class size amendment despite Bush having tantrums and spending millions against it. Even now she and he are trying to circumvent the will of the voters by passing laws that weaken or nullify the amendment.
She is little more than Sauron’s Mouthpiece for Bush and no doubt has her eyes on the prize of Secretary of Education or some such sycophantic appointmtent in his hoped-for presidential administration.
She crows about destroying teacher tenure/due process without admitting they still can’t remove the right to collectively bargain from the state constitution despite spending millions trying to do so.
They are vindicitve, vengeful, and cruel, tone deaf to any criticism and unwilling to compromise on anything or to learn from past mistakes. They are dangerous!
Trust neither of them and beleive nothing they say. They are vile and untrustworthy. I have suffered under their failed reform plans for 14 + years. They took a once vibrant and exciting school system and turned it into hell on Earth for teachers and students and they continue to foist their greedy idiocy on us despite Bush having left office over 9 years ago.