Vermont continues to be amazing.
It recently issued a letter to parents telling them not to worry about the Common Core tests because the passing mark is set so high that they are meaningless. No national the world has ever reached the level expected of students on these tests.
This is an excerpt from the letter:
These tests are based on a narrow definition of “college and career ready.” In truth, there are many different careers and colleges, and there are just as many different definitions of essential skills. In fact, many (if not most) successful adults fail to score well on standardized tests. If your child’s scores show that they are not yet proficient, this does not mean that they are not doing well or will not do well in the future.
We also recommend that you not place a great deal of emphasis on the “claims” or sub-scores. There are just not enough test items to give you reliable information.
The Vermont Board hits on a bizarre aspect of the Common Core and the associated tests: There is no single curriculum or test that can test for both college and career readiness. The student who plans to go to an Ivy League school, the student who plans to be an electrician, and the student who plans to join the military, the student who plans to be a farmer, cannot be judged by a single measure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But they will plan to still spend billions on the technology platforms to continue an unproven model for both students and teachers. We all know what the definition of insanity means.
Jeremy in Georgia
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Besides the above critique does anyone in their right mind expect children with an IQ of 80 to do the same level of academic work of someone with an IQ of 120? That is not fair to either group and to expect both groups to test the same is abysmal ignorance
but
what can we expect from the politicians and corporate CEOs who have never been there, done that?
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Diane,
I’m not sure how else to contact you, but I wanted to let you know of some good news out of Colorado.”State appeals court reinstates lawsuit challenging provision of educator effectiveness law”. Here is the link: http://co.chalkbeat.org/2015/11/05/state-appeals-court-reinstates-forced-placement-lawsuit/#.Vj5Qr9KrTIX . The CO appeals court held that due process must be considered under the new educator evaluation law in Colorado. Hopefully the Colorado Supreme Court will agree…
And in regards to this news from Vermont, if many successful adults do not score well on standardized tests, and the results should not be taken seriously, then the only relevant follow-up question is, what is the rationale for giving them at all?
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This news is encouraging Janet!
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Now maybe if they can just send the letter to Bernie Sanders and disabuse him of his delusions about testing exemplified by his support for the Murphy/Warren amendment to the “Every Child Achieves (aka “No Pearson Left behind”) Act”
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I clicked on the link, read the Vermont Board of Education letter, and I must admit that my mind is still reeling:
Sanity in high places!
😱
And just when I was becoming convinced that the rarefied atmosphere up there in the Education VIP seats was too thin to support intelligent life!
😏
This turns just about everything in the rheephorm universe upside down.
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
Admit it: we knew she would say that. And besides, it still doesn’t change the fact that (as virginiasgp so evisceratingly pointed out) she couldn’t possibly have taken “her” [forget that pesky co-teacher!] students from the 13th to the 90th percentile in one year.
Go figure…
😎
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It is important to remember that the total population of Vermont is that of a medium size city. In 2014, the population was 626,562. It is also important to remember their reputation for “down home” common sense, which the BOE seems to be exhibiting. Not that everyone marches lockstep to the “Vermont way.” Being a practical people, in general, they do not suffer fools kindly, especially when some bureaucrat tries to tell them how things are to be done.
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This seems like a good time to revisit the John Oliver piece on testing:
With almost 6 million views to date, this has had enormous influence since it debuted a few months ago.
A good measure of how powerful this piece is, is how it provoked so many angry corporate reformer attempts to rebut it — Peter Cunningham (through one of his minions Megan Something-or-other) , Alexander Russo (“not funny”), and many others… including the spokesman of the testing behemoth company Pearson, who responded in an op-ed in the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/05/07/pearson-responds-to-criticism-about-its-standardized-tests/
Pretty good for an 18-minute comedy video.
Why?
Teacher-historian John Thompson explains why the Oliver piece has had such an impact;
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2015/05/thompson-how-john-oliver-hit-a-nerve.html#.Vj5a1nv_r-W
———–
JOHN THOMPSON: “When I finally found time to watch the video, it became clear that Oliver had done his homework, but that that wasn’t what drove reformers up a wall. I had previously joked that reformers should have to watch videos of students reduced to tears and explaining how the testing mania had cost them a chance for a meaningful education. Oliver showed videos of the ‘human consequences’ of test, sort, and punish.
“And it’s not pretty.
“The real reason why Oliver hit a nerve, I believe, is that his opening videos were so sickening. Russo, the curmudgeon, sees school testing pep rally videos as ‘like something you might see on America’s Funniest Home Videos.’
“But, to many or most parents and educators, I bet they are viewed as documentation of the repugnant practices that ‘reform’ has inflicted on children.
“Oliver hit a nerve by displaying the repulsive unintended consequences of high stakes testing. Under-the-gun (and I believe otherwise decent and caring) educators are shown mis-educating children, training them to be easily manipulated, outer-directed persons. He shows children being indoctrinated into compliance. He shows children being socialized into a herd mentality.
“It’s hard to say which is more awful – the way that stressed out children vomit on their test booklets, or schools trying to root inner-directed-ness out of children. On the other hand, even reformers should celebrate the way that students and families are fighting back, demanding schools that respect children as individuals. Even opponents of the Opt Out movement should respect the way it embodies the creative insubordination that public schools should nourish.
“Before watching Oliver’s indictment of high stakes testing, I assumed that it had merely provoked the standard corporate reform spin machine to spit out its off-the-shelf, pro-testing message. But, I believe this anti-Oliver campaign is more personal than that.
“How can reformers hear a child tearfully say that she feels like she has been punched in the stomach without accepting blame – or finding others to blame?
“Only if reformers can shift the blame to parents, teachers, and union, then they won’t have to look in the mirror and take responsibility for the damage that toxic testing has done to children.
“But, reformers need to understand two things.
“First, their obsession with the punitive is showing. The more they condemn others for not understanding that George Bush was right and ‘accountability must have consequences,’ the more they convince the general public that their devotion to reward and punish is bad for children.
“Second, we live in the United States of America, not some sort of command and control system imposed by social engineers. Public education is supposed to prepare students to think and express themselves as individuals. Schools aren’t a farm club for the corporate world. They shouldn’t socialize children into being Organization Men and Women, conforming to dictates from above.
“Reformers may believe that they know the one right answer, but they should be ashamed of that their policies seek to produce only square pegs for square holes.”
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“There is no single curriculum or test that can test for both college and career readiness. The student who plans to go to an Ivy League school, the student who plans to be an electrician, and the student who plans to join the military, the student who plans to be a farmer, cannot be judged by a single measure.”
Of course not, but the writers of the Common Core and contractors who invented the tests for the Common Core managed to spin a web of lies about that. I say lies because Achieve,Inc. arm twisted representatives from less than twenty states to say their standards met Achieve’s benchmarks. Those benchmarks were based on a “convenience” sample of interviews with executives and human resource personnel in a few states, and a “convenience” sample of community college and higher education faculty, most of these legacies from the American Diploma Project the forerunner of the Common Core.
The key publication for a retrospective look at the tissue-thin basis for the “common” in the Common Core is here http://www.achieve.org/files/OutofManyOne.pdf
The “evidence” that was marketed as if a solid basis for the Common Core was so bad that in 2014, a big pot of money was put in to play in order to get higher education administrators to say: “yes” to the Common Core, and “ yes” to a passing score on the associated tests. Both are just fine and dandy for entry into post-secondary programs without the need for remedial courses.
This 2014 campaign to reinvent the history and revitalize the “promise” of the CC and tests was funded by Gates, others in the “Common Core Foundation Working Group” including the GE Foundation, The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Lumina Foundation, and Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.
This campaign, under the banner of “Higher Ed for Higher Standards,” is one branch of a huge publicity machine, organized as Collaborative for Student Success, that also includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and thirty other groups. The Collaborative churns out push surveys and news to shore up the Common Core and associated tests.
It works. On June 10, 2014, Nancy L. Zimpher, Chancellor of the State University of New York (with 64 colleges and universities) joined more than 200 college and university leaders from 33 states to market the Common Core and tests of college and career readiness. Other participants in the “Higher Ed for Higher Standards” marketing campaign include the Association of American Colleges and Universities (1300 members) and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities (106 members), the latter magically and belatedly serving as an “approver” of the Common Core and associated tests of college-and career-readiness.
The higher education campaign to bolster the Common Core included work by the National Governor’s Association. The NGA enlisted Harold G. Levine (dean of the school of education at the University of California, Davis) and Michael W. Kirst, (president of the California state board of education and emeritus professor of education at Stanford University) to promote the virtues of the Common Core. Their commentary in EdWeek recycled all of the old and misleading boilerplate about the origin of the CC. These scholars became the public face for a marketing campaign with bullet points designed to sustain the myth that these standards were state-led and praiseworthy.
Both also veered off topic. They implied that the CC had some bearing on science education. They also took a few swipes at “failing schools” as if that caricature applies to all public schools. They said that the opt-out “refuse the test” movement was misguided. Unfortunately, both of these scholars functioned as willing shills for a document with 1,620 standards (counting parts a-e) they probably did not read and for tests that were so bad they triggered the opt-out movement. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/04/15/why-colleges-should-care-about-the-common.html
I have found little concern among higher education “messengers” (many senior administrators) about the loss of academic freedom engulfing their institutions. Administrators who joined this marketing campaign have, in a real sense, pre-empted the right of their faculties to study, discuss, debate, and decide about the merit of the CCSS and tests. That is the tragedy too rarely grasped within higher education—-the loss of academic freedom on a scale not seen in recent history, and with a corresponding vice-grip on the freedom of action among workers in K-12 education.
And the worst part is that Gates (and anyone he can buy) is determined to continue the waste, fraud, abuse and aggrandizement of test scores. Only more straight up talk, from Vermont, and elsewhere can kill this grand, costly, and arrogant experiment in standardized education.
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PLEASE, please, read the book or at least the synopsis of “Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You’re Told to do is Wrong.” We all have something to learn from seeing eye dog training. Seriously. Read the book. You won’t be disappointed.
And if we all start using our innate ID abilities, then maybe we can turn this train wreck around…
It comes down to decisions made in the face of insane, illogical dictates.
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do you mean everything including CCSS are reactions to NCLB?
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For a fun visual illustration:
Copy, print, and pass out to all those who would support the testing insanity.
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Diane, this is such a beautifully clear point. I’m sending the column to Governor Cuomo’s panel on the Common Core!
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Let us never forget that this was never about college and career . This was only about “opening up new markets” to make money. Mammon is their god.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrp-Bu2SLp8
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And the G(o)atster holds those who only have finite greed in great contempt, considering that he considers himself infinitely greedy.
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Thanks for this YouTube post. Save the young from the likes of Gates. Evil Gates …
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When will federal-level players ever understand the value of federally supported local communities? Local schools and teachers are highly respected by their neighbors & constituents. They care about local children, but they cannot provide everything children need today. It should be a consortium, and feds should apply $ where classroom teachers need. Ask them! They are Highly Qualified!
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Agree, Robin. Problem is teachers are NOT part of the .01%. In today’s undemocratic society, it’s okay to lie, cheat, kill for $$$$$. That was actually Jimmy Carter’s hope … to put $$$$$ in our neediest schools. Unfortunately, the rich don’t want to share their wealth without strings attached so they can make even more $$$$$. There’s got to be “greed” gene. I don’t understand all this insanity except to say, “It’s about being selfish, arrogant, and greedy.” This is the only thing that makes sense to me.
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” …the student who plans to be an electrician, and the student who plans to join the military, the student who plans to be a farmer, cannot be judged by a single measure.”
But then these are just jobs.
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I’m pretty sure I read something from the US Dept of Educ that baldly claims that “college ready” and “career ready” are the exact same thing….
Wrong on so many levels, and yet it is the foundation of Gates’ standardization-worshipping disastrous plans….
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It figures that the state that is really trying to do things right with public education is also the state Bernie Sanders lives in and represents.
Feel the Bern!!!!!!!! Don’t get too near, Tim. You might get a first degree Bern. Ouch . . . .
I’m sure Raj, Tim, TE, Rudy Schellekens and Joseph Nathan would be loathe to vote for Bernie Sanders. They’re just not that smart enough. So opinionated are they and so dumbed down have they become. Those poor, poor, individualists. They just can’t stop themselves, can they?
Good for Vermont. I am on the Massachusetts/Vermont border and admire how Vermonters have always maintained a fierce don’t-dictate-to-me-what-I-should-do-when-you-yourself-are-evil streak. I guess it’s all that cold weather and intense snow that motivate them to understand the notion of surviving the brutal forces and sticking together in defending their rights against big bad, corporate-controlled government.
Southerners are just as steely and firece. Why can’t most of them get it? I think they are beginning to.
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My middle son wouldn’t have passed the Common Core test. I don’t think he finished a single standardized test in the time allotted and he took tens of them from kindergarten to 12th grade. He did a 9 month certificate program at a community college after high school and took an apprenticeship with an electrician’s union- they have many, many more qualified applicants than available openings in that apprenticeship program. Two of the 15 people in his “class” of apprentices have bachelor’s degrees.
Politicians should stop telling young people there’s a “skills gap”. There’s a “jobs that pay decent wages” gap that politicians are doing absolutely nothing to address. They should tell young people the truth- it will be much more difficult for them to enter or stay in the middle class than it was for their parents, and that has nothing to do with their lack of “skills” or effort or merit. It has to do with a political and business “leadership” class that values the work that the top 10% of earners do much, much more than the work that the bottom 90% does. They overvalue their own work and devalue everyone else’s.
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“Politicians should stop telling young people there’s a “skills gap”. There’s a “jobs that pay decent wages” gap that politicians are doing absolutely nothing to address.”
Thank you, Chiara.
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Young people might also question the ed reform “movement” employees in both government and the private sector on this:
“Nearly two-thirds of all registered apprentices in the U.S. are trained in the construction industry
• Among construction apprentices, roughly 75 percent are trained in the unionized construction sector – known as the joint apprentice training committee (JATC) system.
• Every year, North America’s Building Trades Unions and our signatory contractors direct over $1 billion in private investments towards this JATC system.
• If the Building Trades training system, which includes both apprentice-level and journeyman-level training, was a degree granting college or university, it would be the largest degree granting college or university in the United States — over 5 times larger than Arizona State University.
• If we were a public university system, we would be the third largest public university system in the United State — almost twice as large as the University of Texas system.”
If they’re really about “middle class jobs” and higher wages for young people, why are they so vehemently anti-union and taking big piles of cash from the Walton family and other anti-labor, low wage employers? One would think paid activists and advocates and think tankers who were focused on low and middle income young people would celebrate and promote labor unions that train people instead of actively working to destroy them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-mcgarvey/its-national-apprenticesh_b_8450300.html
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Bravo for a Board of Education who takes a stand on a failed system. Too many others are sheepish.
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