From his earliest days on the job, Arne Duncan has said the same thing over and over: somebody dummies down standards, and we have lying to our kids. They are not as bright as they think they are, or as their moms think they are. They are dumb! They are really really dumb!
Jersey Jazzman goes through an analysis of cut scores and bell curves here. Put on your thinking caps and read it.
Then ask yourself why Arne has such a low opinion of teachers and children. Why is he happy that the new tests have been rigged to produce high failure rates?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Arne is a spin doctor for Broad and the billionaires leading this ugly private war on our public schools. He has to tell a story which makes “public” look bad, which poses “public” as the problem,” and which installs “private” as the solution. He has effectively brought the billionaire agenda to the White House with Obama’s okay and the complicity of the Democrats. No candidate has proposed any plan to overcome this terrible assault on the public sector, though Lily and Randi are eager to push Hillary on their beleaguered members.
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Ira,
You are so right on!
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How does Duncan explain away the fact that the U.S. is usually ranked 4th or 5th in the world for the ratio of college graduates in addition to hundreds of thousands of foreigners on student visas coming to the U.S. to attend college annually—of course, I suspect he ignores that fact and never mentions it?
Guess who sends the most students on visas to the U.S.?
I’ll tell you, the education obsessed Chinese. Even China’s president’s daughter attended Harvard and graduated recently in addition to the children of many of China’s other top leaders.
Duncan’s flawed logic follows that if our K-12 public schools are such failures and most or our children are super dumb, then our colleges should be cesspools of failure and ignorance.
And to avoid any bias, I offer evidence from the Shanghai, China ranking of the top universities/colleges in the world by country.
Before you click the link and look, take a wild guess at how many of the top 100 colleges in the world are in the U.S.?
It took me a few seconds to scan the flags and count the ones for the United States.
Hint: of the top ten, EIGHT are in the U.S.
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2015.html
If most of our children are so dumb, then were in the hell does the U.S. get enough students and graduate so the U.S. is ranked #4 or #5 in the world for the number of college gradates.
Did you know that the publishing industry tracks how many Americans read books/magazines and reports that more than 60 million adult Americans are avid readers reading 10 or more books a year? Regardless of the myth that the publishing industry is about the vanish, sales of books have changed little in the last decade.
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Many of the students that grace the halls of ivy covered institutions come from America’s public schools. You said it best. If our public schools are such a failure, why do so many of our students attend such competitive universities? And.. why are our universities the envy of the world?
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I’m not into statistics, but Jazzman is a very good teacher. I loved the movable cut score graphic. He made his point. It all boils down to an arbitrary cut score that can be manipulated. Liar, liar!
If Jazzman ever gets his hands on the mysterious VAM formula, I’d love to be in the “VAM for Dummies” class. I have an inquiring mind that would like examine all the flaws because I have a feeling there are many.
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What a fantastically clear explanation. Diane, I hope you make sure Michael Petrelli gets a link to Jersey Jazzman’s post. Let us know if he has a response for you.
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There is a Twitter convo about it – I think I have the right link (apologies in advance if my pre-coffee bain got it wrong LOL).
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Once my previous comment gets thru moderation (or if it doesn’t), you can look up either Petrilli or Jersey Jazzman on Twitter and see the entire more extended convo from Fri September 25.
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Let me add two cents of logic to Mr. Duncan. He based his career on allegedly improving test scores to show he could usher in meaningful change in Chicago. Now that those illusory unicorn scores are shattered will he wear the mantle of liar proudly? His own success has gone down the drain. We all know he lies…..
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If memory serves me right…
This blog, 5-8-2013, “Chicago Will Close Down Some of Arne’s ‘Turnaround’ Schools as Failures.”
[start posting]
This is an astonishing story.
In 2002, Arne Duncan began his infamous policy of shutting down schools in Chicago with low test scores.
Among the schools he closed was Dodge.
Dodge parents were outraged that their school was handed over to a private turnaround operator, but Duncan assured them it was for the best.
Fast forward to 2008, when President-elect Obama announced that he had picked Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education.
The event was held at Dodge Renaissance Academy, which the President praised as a “perfect example” of a turnaround school, an exemplar of Duncan’s great success.
Sadly, Chicago Public Schools is now closing Dodge Renaissance Academy as a failing school, along with Williams, another of Duncan’s “turnaround” schools.
What do you think this does to the children, the parents, and the community?
When is it okay to say that it is better to help struggling schools than to close them?
[end posting]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/08/chicago-will-close-down-some-of-arnes-turnaround-schools-as-failures/
So this is the rheephorm measure of the putatively greatest civil rights leader since the 1960s?
😳
I shudder to think what the rheephormsters consider real incompetence and failure…
😎
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Thanks, Diane, and everyone else. More to come, hopefully soon…
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This is a fantastic blog post and something that professional researchers should be doing in detail and journalists should be publicizing the results. But it doesn’t happen partly from corruption and partly from the fact that journalists are largely innumerate.
The corruption, which has been, as Trump would say, “unbelievable” dates from NCLB. This immediately politicized scores – some states played gamed to pump up their scores to look good (remember AYP?) and some states held them down, presumably so their schools could be deemed failures. It works both ways and either way, it is disgusting. Your graphs show that little, if anything changed from year to year except who is corrupting what which way.
One small comment – the results each year are approximately normally distributed but that, by itself is not the important part – it is important that the means (and the distributions themselves) are so close from year to year, while the alleged “proficiency” has been manipulated all over the map.
We need parents to understand this (I’ve given up on most clueless mainstream journalists) and when they do they will demand transparency and appropriate funding, not the fraudulent tripe that politicians and hedge fund managers have been trying to feed them for the past ten years.
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The reality is the problem of standards is systemic, including but not beginning with NCLB. The assumption is that all kids are the same. The reality is all kids learn in different ways and blossom at different times. So one standard for everyone that is a deadline for failure is insane!
A standard that is a guideline for success could lead to individual “standards” or learning goals that are an indicator of achievement. That is if those standards are whole child.
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That everyone is the same is one of the “no excuses” school of thought guiding principles.
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I was wondering what happened to the bell curve, but I see it is alive and well, despite being kept hidden from the public – Just like the theories of Piaget, Maslow, Madeline Hunter and such concepts as learning styles, multiple intelligences, and Bloom’s Taxonomy which have been pooh poohed by the rheformists.
I guess if they are kept hidden from view they no longer exist.
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Howard Gardners multiple intelligences,
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“If you really want high performing schools, you have to make sure they have adequate funding. And if you want high-performing students, you need to make sure they come to school ready to learn. Setting the cut scores for proficiency rates may matter, but not nearly as much as funding and poverty.
And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.”
Lying and lining their pockets.
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“Cutting to the Quick”
Let’s cut to the quick,
The cut-score’s slick
Purporting to pick
The “ready” with trick
It’s set after test
At tester’s behest
To pass just the “best”
And fail all the rest
“Cut and Dry”
Set the cut core high at first
So it seems they’re dumb
Move the cut score down in bursts
So it seems we’ve won
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Jersey Jazzman provides more compelling evidence about the reformy fraud. Media joined with politicians, their appointees, plutocratic-funded astroturf, social climbers, villainthropists and profiteers to take down public education. It is the enemy within. National columnist Mary Sanchez, from the Kansas Star wrote, “By falsifying test results educators robbed students”. Where’s national media, moral condemnation for the “robbery”, by Ohio’s Hansen and Indiana’s State Superintendent?
Two justice systems-one for the oligarchs and one for the working people.
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Dear Jersey Jazz.
Thank you for this illuminating article. You really bring home the point about how flexing the cut points have nothing to do with the underlying tests score distribution.
I have a response, however, to your rhetorical question–quote:
“The answer is that changes in a standardized test don’t affect how its scores are ultimately distributed: it’s always a normal, bell curve distribution. The tests have a variety of items: some easy, some moderately hard, some very hard. It wouldn’t make sense to have a test where all the items were of the same difficulty, would it?”
No. It wouldn’t make sense if all items were universally very hard or very easy. Limited knowledge would be gained from tests containing only items at either extreme. Yes. It would make sense to have items that ranged in difficulty. But, according to Robert Ebel, in a somewhat counter-intuitive way, tests containing relevant items near the middle in difficulty yield the most meaningful differentiations among test takers. He gives an example of this in “Measuring Educational Achievement” (1965).
Ideally, if each item was answered correctly by half of the test-takers (i.e. p-value = .50), a normal distribution would result and maximum useful information would be gained about whatever attribute the test was measuring.
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When I took a testing and measurement course to be a reading teacher, I remember reading that the reason we stop when students hit frustration level is that any levels beyond the instructional level yields unreliable information. It seems to make sense to me. Harder is not necessarily better.
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The same message was given to me when I was in school. The diagnostic assessments I remember giving (special ed)had a protocol for when you stopped a test. After a certain number of mistakes in a row, the test would be ended on the theory that it was most likely that the useful information was collected. A string of ten errors would not tell us any more than a string of five. We tried to be careful about not letting kids know if they were correct or not, but after awhile they knew when they didn’t understand or know question after question. You are not accomplishing anything if the student comes out of the screening feeling like a moron.
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You are absolutely right 2 old 2 teach, (which I sincerely doubt) and retired teacher. I fit into both categories. Take it 1 step at a time. However, the system and reformers have no clue. Standards are deadlines for failure rather than guidelines for success.
That system of education can and must be changed to serve kids, not for kids to serve the system as exists now. Peter Greene has asked for ideas how to improve and change the system of education to better meet real needs of children.
Your thoughts about level of frustration applies to all areas as well as reading. Teach in the way kids learn best and take learning one step at a time. Not ever child will be at the same place at the same time. Kids don’t get their teeth at the same time, they don’t start walking at the same time, they don’t learn colors at the same time and certainly don’t learn to read on a common core schedule.
Think how many more kids would be successful if not pushed out of school by an antiquated system. Thoughts like yours must be amplified and shouted to the world!
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Thank you for your kind words. I think I speak for a lot of ordinary teachers–special ed, reading, music, language arts,–who have lived and taught with the same beliefs. I would not advise anyone to go into teaching today although I fully understand why some are still determined to do so. It is in the blood.
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Most teachers are empaths. They want to help. They want to make a difference. They care.
Most if not all of the corporate education deformers and psychopaths. They don’t want to help. They want to manipulate. They want the wealth that buys power over others. They don’t care except for themselves.
This is a war between the empaths and the psychopaths.
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Lloyd,
Are you referring to the Robert Frost write poem about the choice between the “em path” and the “pyscho path”?
“The Path Not Taken” (apologies to Robert Frost)
Two paths diverged in a public school,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, help and tool
I looked down one, like a teaching fool
To how it lent to the student growth
Then took the other, as much more fair,
And having for taps the better claim
Because it was psycho and wanted power,
And as for empathy and care,
Had torn the students apart for game,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this for the Fates
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two paths diverged in a school, and for Gates,
I took the one of Norman Bates,
And that has made all the difference.
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:o)
A century in the future at corporate charter schools, the free or reduced lunch will be the children who didn’t make the grade on the high stakes Common Core test.
Those children will be slaughtered, barbecued, shredded and turned into chili with beef (after all red meat is red meat isn’t it) and/or Sloppy Joes.
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