Carol Burris, experienced educator and executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes hereL about the 2015 NAEP scores.
She reminds us that Arne Duncan crowed about the scores in 2013. His Race to the Top states proved he was right. Now he says, it takes time to absorb the changes I have imposed on the nation’s schools. Wait until 2025 to judge.
As usual, a brilliant piece.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Because math tells us: bad idea plus bad idea = A BAD IDEA!
It took a lost generation of kids for the results to show themselves according to their own “metrics”.
Do not allow them to spin it to say we didn’t teach it right, or it takes time for kids to figure it out, or it was poorly implemented.
TELL THEM IT WAS A BAD IDEA GONE WORSE! Now is the time to END CCSS and the HIGH STRESS, HIGH STAKES, STANDARDIZED TESTS.
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MORE FROM ARNE DUNCAN:
http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education
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POLITICO:
“Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggested there might be an ‘implementation dip’ as teachers and students adjust to higher standards and more rigorous tests.”
…
“Did the Obama administration time the release of its testing action plan this weekend to head off the bad news about NAEP?
“American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and Mark Schneider, a vice president at American Institutes for Research who served as NCES commissioner under former President George W. Bush, suspect that’s the case.
“Duncan said no, the efforts to combat excessive testing have been in the works for a while.”
…
“Baltimore and Maryland saw some of the biggest drops in scores, ‘but as counterintuitive as it seems, those are actually good news,’ Duncan argued.
“ ‘Why? Because some of those drops reflect the state including many more special-needs students.’ ”
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You mean those sadly disabled kids THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE BEEN TESTED IN THE FIRST PLACE, and WHO ARE BEING TRAUMATIZED BY YOUR STUPID NOTION THAT TESTING THEM ON THINGS THAT ARE FAR BEYOND THEIR CAPABILITIES IS A GOOD IDEA?
So what? They’re now fair game for you to use to try and talk your way out of this?
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Duncan is the one who should be fair game.
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So when the real professionals were in charge and explanations were proffered we were told: NO EXCUSES! Now that Arne and others have hijacked American education, we’re told: Wait 10 years. Oh, I’m confused. How does that work? We’re in a crisis without a moment to lose. Did they lie to us? Again, confusion reigns. They’re legacy. :>)
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The must be the fault of those lazy, greedy, obstructionist teachers, right?
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add union thug as a descriptor
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Fordham’s Petrilli, told USA Today that the reason for the decline in scores was, as follows, “When families are hurting financially, its harder for students to focus on learning.” Uh…Gates opposed an increase in the minimum wage. The Waltons reflect the gold standard of working family exploitation. Is Petrilli biting the hand that feeds him? Or, Is he a spin doctor without a soul? No reply necessary.
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The heart of the matter remains, simply, that kids are not widgets. Learning, particularly in childhood, is not a mathematic equation to be tested and solved. If it were this way, we’d have found the solution generations ago. Suggesting it is, belittles the very people seeking to better the education of children of this country.
Instead, like other shortcomings in our country, we need to focus on supporting families and communities. They are drivers of social normative behavioral within our students.
Policy development that starts with the end in mind is crucial and yet often simply overlooked to create environments in which we ensure the safety of children in families experiencing the myriad of crises that affect families in our modern world.
The turmoil of education is merely the reflection of historical and current political turmoil that affects our communities.
The only solvable part of this rich educational ecosystem is finding clearly stated outcomes for our families, for our communities, and setting policy from the national to local levels that reflects those outcomes. This truth makes searching for answers painful, complicated, and beyond the capacity of our lawmakers.
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The four cornerstones of education reform cannot be 1) bad tests used to threaten, 2) bad tests use to punish, 3) bad tests use to stigmatize, 4) bad tests used to support lies.
End of story.
TESTS-AS-WEAPONS reform now has a 15 YEAR record of abject FAILURE.
The sample size is way too large to claim that their “excellent” ideas were delivered badly. An idea that can’t be implemented successfully by millions of practitioners is simply a BAD, unworkable. idea.
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“Since 1990, scores had generally edged up with each administration, though achievement gaps between white and minority students have remained large.”
How do we measure LARGE?
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
“Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.”
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
If this Stanford study/comparison of the international PISA tests was correct, then that large gap in the U.S.between white and minority students is much LARGER in most of the other OECD countries.
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I should have said, “How do we define LARGE?” Sorry.
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Duncan’s call for TEN more years of this Common Core high-stakes testing CRAP is a ploy to gain more time until more than one generation has gone through K-12 based on high stakes tests built around punishment and failure so it seems natural to them and then when they area parents they will shrug and tell their children when they come home and throw up and can’t sleep, “That’s what we experienced so get used to it. You have to suffer the programmed failure of the Common Core to learn grit and only losers don’t learn grit. If you area a loser, you deserve to lose and go to prison.”
Will the children of today grow up in this Scary New World to have no compassion for the suffering of their own children and their grandchildren?
That is Duncan’s real goal—ordered by his masters: Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, the Koch brothers and all those hedge fund billionaires.
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I believe they are hoping in 10 years, no one will remember when teachers actually were allowed to teach. Then, test and punish with flawed tests will be status quo, if not already.
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In ten more years they hope that all teachers that taught before the takeover will be gone. They already have young teachers talking in deformster terms. I read the words of a local teacher discussing the education that has “higher standards” and holds children accountable for their learning. Gag!
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We must be sure as many people read Carol Burris’s piece as possible. Childhood and human development is not linear. It is not a surprise to me that “in one ear out the other” test prep, masquerading as educating is not producing the results the outsiders have promised they would. The focus should be on the learning. Yes, it is a national issue, but the real work is local. Public schools can and do work. Those that don’t and principals and teachers that don’t work out should be identified and helped or dealt with on the local level. I would love to see excellent educators making policy. I hope that is not a dream.
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In my opinion, the most interesting aspects of the NAEP tests are the background questions asked of students and how they respond: e.g. Grade 4:
“How often does your teacher ask you to read a book you have chosen yourself?
Or another: “How often do you read for fun on your own time?”
Most of these background questions deal with at-home resources and interactions about the subject and in-school practices that are likely to support a strong or poor showing on the test. To me, whether or not the answers to the background questions bear on test scores is not as important as other insights.
So there is much more to NAEP than looking at the rise in fall scores. Unfortunately the NEAP website does not make it easy to track and extract all of the background questions with summaries by subgroups and other demographics. I hope someone will offer some highlights from that information. It should matter a lot whether kids are reading for pleasure, and getting to select what to read in school, not just passing tests or not.
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10 more years of faulty ideas= 1 more generation of this ridiculous scenario. Get all politicians out of education. In NYS, get all Cuomo apointees out.
Math Sentence: Too much test Prep+lack of teaching time=reduced scores.
Are the reformists surprised? No one else had a doubt years ago.
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