Blogger Educational Alchemy sees behind the Department of Education smokescreen. The goal of the Obama administration’s “Testing Action Plan” is not what it appears.
Now that almost every school is testing online, it is time to move on to the next stage of the education revolution. Outsourcing online testing to vendors.
The wave of the future: Competency-based assessments.
Here is an excerpt:
This is what the “Testing Action Plan” (TAP) says:
The new plan will “include competency-based assessments, innovative item types.” It states also “The Department will also share tools already available to do this work, including The Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) Comprehensive Statewide Assessment Systems: A Framework for the Role of the State Education Agency in Improving Quality and Reducing Burden and Achieve’s Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts.”
This is what it means:
Remember CCSSO? They are the ones who crafted the Common Core State Standards. The standards were developed to create a “standardized” system that allows third-party companies to develop systems for outsourcing education. Now with a set of “national” standards as benchmarks, instruction can be metered out by online edu-tech companies who provide new “competency” based instruction and assessment. No teacher required.
In 2010, the Foundation for Excellence in Education (who supported Common Core) convened the Digital Learning Council, a diverse group of more than 100 leaders in education, government, philanthropy, business, technology and members of policy think tanks led by Co-Chairmen Jeb Bush, and Bob Wise (both integral in the creation and promotion of Common Core). It’s an ALEC model-endorsed comprehensive framework of state-level policies and actions “designed to advance the meaningful and thoughtful integration of technology into K12 public education.”
This idea is stated again toward the end of the Testing Action Plan (TAP): “Congress should continue to require the Department to work with external assessment experts to ensure states are using high-quality assessments that are aligned with state-developed standards and valid for the purposes for which they are used.”
TAP Says:
“…the Department granted a temporary waiver to New Hampshire to pilot a competency-based assessment system in four districts ….” as a way to set a national example. (and), “The Department will work with external assessment experts…”
What this means:
The department will outsource education curriculum and assessment to corporations just like it did in NH where they “…have adopted unique and innovative learning approaches, such as digital learning, that create a more flexible learning schedule that extends beyond the school day.”
The Alliance for Excellent Education (Bob Wise serves as president) in 2013 stated: “Competency-based advancement is an important part of New Hampshire’s strategy for implementing the Common Core State Standards.”
Read the post with care. Every element is there for a transition to the next stage of relinquishing control of curriculum and assessment to the vendors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wondering if I will even have a job in the next year or so……….very depressing news.
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“Meet the new test, the same as the old test.” Now the tests will have the states’ seal approval to ram the same common core down the throats of public school students. Of course, let’s not forget to make big money for a third party vendor. When did research equal a “think tank?” A think tank can have an agenda at its core. While research may begin with a hypothesis, the research procedure should be free of bias and partiality. The only meaningful response to this semantic game is opt out!
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Sounds like many teachers will lose their jobs the same way many others around the country in other fields have – through automation..
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Do you think this will happen soon?
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Well, we already have “credit recovery” where students can get credit for missed classwork by using a computer program. They’re also getting remediation from computer programs. So, I think we’re well on our way.
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What’s so magically profitable for these vendors is that they are allowed to claim that the test questions are ‘intellectual property’ and they refuse to disclose them to teachers, parents, and other stakeholders. Anyone who works with them must sign a non-disclosure agreement and they face serious criminal charges if they violate that agreement.
This goes for minor players who make online ‘benchmark’ assessments and the big players (like Pearson) who are making millions from the CCSS high-stakes yearly assessments used for VAM and student promotion.
The tests are not, as claimed, in any way useful or even available to students, parents, or teachers for determining what students know and what they need to learn because teachers are never allowed to see the tasks the students were asked to complete.
Teachers must now become psychics who predict what to teach their students based entirely upon vague standards that the questions are attached to and without any knowledge of specifics, content, style, or substance.
The only use for these tests is data mining and punitive measures against students, teachers, and schools while making huge profits for the vendors who do little work indeed to produce their ‘effective assessments’.
Just like the national charter school grift no one will ever be able to tell if any of these assessments are good or bad because the grifters have made sure the laws protect them from scrutiny and accountability measures.
We are fast approaching the tipping point where the grifters overreach.
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The CCSSO ought to either stop taking private money or be disbanded.
And as a parent, I find it unbelievable that the head of the Iowa State Education Association, Tammy Wawro, hasn’t come out against Iowa adopting the Smarter Balanced tests with their big price tag
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We will be “tapping” out of TAP like a wrestler being smothered by 5 opponents. The divide of trust between real educators and edu-pols or edu-sales is growing wider by the week. Should we be excited that we may cut 112 standardized tests on average for students in half? Will we merely worry about standardized tests without standardized funding? Standardized professional development? Equity without adequacy is not even a band aid. We can have open source improvement and allow all IT experts to develop and make suggestions to the Linux operating system, but that same universal access won’t exist for test items? Smells like CCS fish to me.
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Congressional hearings?
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