Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and former principal at South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, has subjected the report of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s task force to a close reading.
But not the kind of close reading where you forget about context and prior knowledge. She notes that Governor Cuomo has no intention of amending or repealing the law he pushed through last June, which requires that teachers are evaluated by test scores that count for 50% of the evaluation.
There is the elephant in the room–the evaluation of teachers by test scores. When it comes to the damage done by APPR, the report is strangely silent. It is as though the committee never heard a complaint on how evaluating teachers by test scores increased both anxiety and test prep. The only place where it is addressed is in Recommendation 21 that states that until a new set of standards are phased in, the results of Common Core 3-8 assessments should be advisory only. Cuomo immediately seized on the ambiguity of that statement and issued the following:
[Cuomo statement] “The Education Transformation Act of 2015 will remain in place, and no new legislation is required to implement the recommendations of the report, including recommendations regarding the transition period for consequences for students and teachers. During the transition, the 18 percent of teachers whose performance is measured, in part, by Common Core tests will use different local measures approved by the state, similar to the measures already being used by the majority of teachers.”
The Education Transformation Act was the bill Cuomo pushed through the legislature to raise the percentage of test scores in teacher evaluations to 50 percent. Like a teenage boy who doesn’t get that the relationship is over, Cuomo cannot let go of his APPR, even though more researchers agree that evaluating teachers by test student scores makes no sense.
And more ominously, she describes the new testing corporation that New York has contracted with for the next five years.
Truth be told, no matter what recommendations the report made, at least half of the horse is already out of the testing barn. The new direction in assessment was set with the July approval of a $44 million contract with Questar that locks the state in for five years. If parents are looking for relief from test-driven instruction, they will not find it with Questar. You can read about the company’s philosophy of continuous assessment-driven instruction here. Below is an excerpt:
…after every five minutes of individualized tablet-based instruction, students would be presented with a brief series of questions that adapt to their skill level, much as computer-adaptive tests operate today. After that assessment, the next set of instructional material would be customized according to these results. If a student needs to relearn some material, the software automatically adjusts and creates a custom learning plan on the fly. The student would then be reassessed and the cycle would continue…
The practice of adaptive, computer-based learning, known as Competency Based Education (CBE), is a reincarnation of two other failed reforms from the last century — Outcomes Based Instruction and Mastery Learning. As the tests roll out, Questar will be marketing their CBE modules for test prep, and schools desperate to increase scores will buy them.
Thus far, Governor Cuomo has gotten the press he wanted: banner headlines in the New York Daily News and Long Island’s Newsday, proclaiming prematurely that Common Core is dead. No, it is not. What happens next is up to the Governor.
The good news is that he has an outstanding educator advising him, Jere Hochman, former superintendent in Bedford, New York. Hopefully, Hochman will help the Governor understand how to get out of the hole he dug for himself and how to take concrete steps to remove the disruption and constant churn that the State Education Department and the Governor’s interventions have imposed on schools. It is time for some stability and sanity at the helm. At the moment, teachers and students see a battle for control of the wheel, and the ship is lurching from side to side. I won’t torture the analogy any more. But I do hope that Governor Cuomo listens to Jere Hochman’s advice and takes the task force report seriously.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The practice of adaptive, computer-based learning, known as Competency Based Education (CBE), is a reincarnation of two other failed reforms from the last century — Outcomes Based Instruction and Mastery Learning. As the tests roll out, Questar will be marketing their CBE modules for test prep, and schools desperate to increase scores will buy them.”
I’m so grateful to Burris for addressing this particular issue in ed reform. It feels like another runaway train to me- like this will be jammed into every public school in the country in a kind of lemming-like “follow the crowd off the cliff!” way.
Is it wise to ramp this up before anyone knows if it has value to justify the cost? Do kids even WANT to do modules online and be “assessed” every 5 minutes? What is driving this, besides the fact that investors have sunk a ton of money into ed tech and are looking for a return? Is there a genuine demand or are various ed reformers in government and the private sector creating demand and growing a market?
To answer your questions of the last paragraph:
No! (and the negative value doesn’t justify the costs)
Guaranteed NO! (and they’ll quickly figure out that it’s a bunch of horse manure, yes even the urban kids will figure that out)
Nothing! (exactly what you wrote)
NO!/Yes! (create demand, sell product at outrageous profit margins while putting the blame if the product is faulty on those implementing it)
The demand for this is not coming from parents. It is coming from those that want to believe technology will solve everything, and it will certainly cut costs. Of course, this is a supposition, not the result of a legitimate study. It is viewed as a gift from on high by those that want to bust the union. Cuomo was quoted as saying he wants to break “the monopoly of public education.” If parents and students will settle for this latest gimmick, Cuomo will be happy to accommodate them.
Carol explains why it is so important not to see these Task Force recommendations as a solution. Until the deep link among assessment, accountability, and genuine learning is addressed–something the Task Force recommendations say nothing about–we will not get a plan that focuses on the on-going learning and development of real, actual children and adolescents. To do this difficult but necessary work, a real commission of educators is essential, not the staffs of State Legislators or of the Governor’s Office, or of education corporations.
Check out the New York Performance Standards Consortium for an important illustration of how assessment, accountability, and genuine learning are connected.
As long as high stakes testing is assumed to be the ultimate tool in an education system, that system will not educate all children; it will only sort them for other people’s purposes.
Do we want schools or training centers?
“Until the deep link among assessment, accountability, and genuine learning is addressed. . . ”
What is that deep link? Please explain further on what you mean with your statement.
TIA,
Duane
Duane:
I will take a quick swat at trying to answer your question in this kind of forum. Please forgive the density of my comments:
I suspect you would agree that the “potential” human beings have is known for certain only as children and adolescents turn their “potential” in actual human skill, knowledge, character and so forth. So becoming the person you will be is, by necessity, an historical process. This reality, in turn, means that the way individuals interact with their surroundings creates people’s actual capacities. The young create themselves–their skills, their capacities, their interests–in the process of deciding myriad questions, such as “what would I have to do to learn a particular skill?” Or, “would doing X to a person be a good act or a bad act?” And so forth. Answers to such questions create one’s personhood–these answers are recognized by others as the person you become. (Learning as self-formation)
Successful teachers do not shape children, and they do not predict what kind of people children will turn out to be. They offer children feedback (hence assessment) about the actions they take, actions that are digested and appear as the “person” who is developing this or that interest, this or that skill, this or that desire. The skills teachers possess, the judgment teachers possess, the knowledge teachers have about the children they teach, the love teachers have for students and for certain subjects–all these capacities enable teachers to ask questions that move children to grow. Children shape themselves, but they do so by interacting with their world. Successful teachers help students form themselves as fully as possible.
Accountability is part of the process I’ve described: as teachers provide assessment, young people judge whether that assessment helps or hinders them as they create themselves. If a teacher’s assessments help children accomplish tasks that children desire to master, those children will behave in certain ways that other adults recognize as “healthy influence.” (Hence the accountability.)
You can see why I do not think real education lends itself to mathematical models that predict certain behavior, predictions that are used to “sort” children into this or that course of life.
Predicting “college and career” readiness is for martinets, not real children.
By this standard, teaching is a way of relating to young people that induces young people to engage themselves in their own formation.
Simple, right? Now for that APPR score….
“Do we want schools or training centers?”
Exactly, with this kind of approach being not much more than quasi-vocational data entry training, tarted up with a lot of College and Career Ready/Civil Rights Issue of Our Time/Data Driven carnival barking.
I have said for years that the tests are the curriculum, the hidden curriculum embedded in the daily practice of fostering tolerance for tedium, powerlessness, authoritarianism, and personal data mining/surveillance. That is an important part of the social engineering component, with its roots in early 20th century eugenics “research,” of so-called reform.
For poor children in under-resourced “failing” public schools (despite fortunes spent on every hare-brained, punitive panacea imaginaable) it amounts to little more than training for dystopian 21st century labor markets dominated by an Overclass that includes those pushing these so-called reforms. They believe with religious fervor, and will do their utmost to either convince or force the rest of us to accept, that There Is No Alternative.
Steve,
Certainly not dense, actually your comments are more common sense than dense. Not that either dense or common sense-meaning simple, is better than one or the other, each has its place in discourse/discussion and many times confusion/error is caused by confusing/conflating the two realms.
What you describe, constructivism, that individuals create their own reality through a combination of inherent wishes, wants and their interactions with others and the environment. To me that is self-evident (common sense) but not the whole story as what constitutes the “environment” is just as important in the Foucauldian sense that what is and isn’t allowed to be a part of said environment also shapes the individual. A child in an isolated Amazon tribal culture will not have the same “options” of those environmental factors as a child in the favelas of Sao Paulo nor as the child of one of the richest families in Brazil. Again, seems obvious.
Accountability for the “teacher” has diverse meanings for each child in the three examples. But, as you state, if the child sees a “benefit” from the advice and counseling they receive they will incorporate it into their being, only as much as the “background” societal forces allow for such. No amount of mathematical machinations/quantification of that information would make such sense to the Amazon tribal culture. And really doesn’t usually have “all the meaning” for the other two as it does for adults in the other two situations.
Now I have purposely used what might be considered foreign learning environments to show that these concepts might be applied to any situation. Whether it is good, ethical, effective, efficient, etc. . . , is another story. And you seem to be saying that this obsession with quantification of accountability isn’t those things (and perhaps not others either). And I concur.
But I’m still not sure how that is a “deep link among assessment, accountability, and genuine learning” unless what you mean is that the ontological and epistemological foundations of the standards and standardized testing malpractices (quantification) are inherently false, error filled, shaky etc. . . . If that is the case I ask if you have read Noel Wilson’s work in this area? If you have read them, what are your thoughts? If not and you would like to read his work I’d be more than happy to help you get through his dissertation. If so you can contact me at dswacker@centurytel.net just reference Wilson’s work in the subject line.
Duane
Scroll down in this piece and look at what kids in Rocketship charters are actually doing. These aren’t customized lessons “created” with online content. They’re canned, commercial products intended to drill them in english and math. The entire focus is on a test score. They are basically testing them constantly, it’s now just thinly disguised as a “lesson”.
Is this what they want to push into every public school in the country? No thanks. I don’t think it’s innovative at all.
http://gettingsmart.com/2015/12/parent-power-fuels-rocketship/
Diane, I don’t know how to forward a new topic. I want you to see this article from the Washington City Paper that a friend just told me about. Fascinating. This is a rough town for “ordinary” people. Mr. Anderson dates mayoral control of education from 2006, but I believe that it actually goes back to the Anthony Williams administration and his pushing for a vote to take control in the year 2000.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/47754/shadow-chancellor-katherine-bradleys-influence-dc-education-reform/
“The doors of District government have remained open to Bradley and her allies. Last month, Loose Lips reported on Henderson’s meetings schedule from January 2013 to August 2015, which contained a who’s who of education advocates and philanthropists who see privatization as the future of education. The chancellor’s calendar shows that Bradley, Graham, and the Post Editorial Board met with her a combined total of 19 times, a frequency not inconsistent with the Post’s editorial support of Henderson, even after Graham sold the paper in 2013. (Two Post editorials in 2013 urged DCPS to make “former or soon-to-be-closed public schools” available for re-use by charter schools, citing a study by New Schools Venture Fund, which, along with Microsoft Corporation, has backed CityBridge’s Education Innovation Fellowship, a pilot based on teaching models from around the country.) DCPEF accounted for 30 meetings with Henderson during that time period, and Venture Philanthropy Partners, which names CityBridge as a principal funder, met with the chancellor six times. The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among CityBridge’s many funding partners, accounted for five meetings.”
This is why people don’t bother to vote. It doesn’t matter. They get the same group of “leaders” either way.
“The Andrew Cuomo Show”
The dog and pony show
Is fooling not a soul
Cuz New York parents know
That Cuomo’s in a hole
. . . Cuz New York parents know
That Cuomo’s a ho . . . .
This is just in from New York. The Regents voted to not include test scores in teachers’ evaluations until 2019.http://ny.chalkbeat.org/2015/12/14/breaking-in-big-shift-regents-vote-to-exclude-state-tests-from-teacher-evals-until-2019/#.Vm9GfL-DBZ1
Yes, but the “local assessments” are still counted toward a teacher’s overall evaluation, acting as a kind of placeholder until Cuomo, or whomever is then representing so-called reform interests, can try to revive a re-branded Common Core.
On a practical day-to-day level, it means continued gaming of the system, since schools choose the assessments they will be evaluated on, and so everyone reasonably cleaves to those that will show them in the best light. It’s incredibly wasteful, makes for junk data and inevitably leads to cynical attitudes and practices in the schools. It literally is, as Norm Scott originally said years ago, the deforming of education.
So, neither testing, nor drill and kill for the tests, are gone. This is a holding pattern for the so-called reformers, unless opt-out doesn’t take the bait, and continues working to drive a stake through the testing vampire’s heart.
The “local” assessments used in conjunction with SLOs have counted for 20% or 40% of our APPR evaluations. The process involves the use of a pre-test and a post-test to show student growth.
“Local” exams are generated in a variety of ways, but it is common for teachers to write their own (or department) pre-tests and post-tests. Teachers with little to no training in test development or psychometrics. The quality and rigor of these tests varies greatly and are a complete crapshoot. Even special area classes that focus on skills (art, music, phys-ed) are required to generate these pencil and paper tests.
These “local” exams are considered by most to be a “joke”. They are easily gamed with some teachers holding extra specific “review” sessions just prior to the administration of their post test. They are given “in-class” with absolutely no test security. Multiple choice pre-tests produce false positives. Teachers are required to predict target goals on the post tests with little to no training or guidance. These are the tests that so-called “non-tested” subject area teachers have been using for the last three years here in NYS. Little if any adjustment is made for students that are absent 20, 30, 40, or more class days.
And most importantly, they continue to support the false narrative that teacher effectiveness and program quality can be quantified using a 40 minute exam.
What about Common Core grade 9 Algebra I and Common Core grade 11 ELA?
These are required by ALL students for graduation in NYS. How do these truly high-stakes tests fit into the so-called “moratorium”?
Parents – these are critical questions that have yet to be answered. The 2014 state passing rate on Algebra I was 63%. The NYC pass rate was about 50%. Just think of the implications as Cuomo’s mess just gets sloppier.
So the HS Regents test scores will not be used in teacher evaluations, yet they will remain a graduation requirement?
“No interest until 2019!”
My kneejerk reaction to this is that if we didn’t enjoy the multi-year run-up to now, why would we enjoy the run-up to 2019 any better?
So all HS Regents teachers will have to administer a “local” test IN ADDITION to the required Regents exam. Brilliant! So the BOR has inadvertently added a battery of extra HS tests that students know will be used to rate teacher effectiveness.
Your lights are on, but you’re not home
Your mind is not your own
Your heart sweats, your body shakes
Another TEST is what it takes
You can’t sleep, you can’t eat
There’s no doubt, you’re in deep
Your throat is tight, you can’t breathe
Another TEST is all you need
Whoa, you like to think that you’ve been blessed, oh yeah
It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get no rest
You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to TESTS
Rage,
“Teachers with little to no training in test development or psychometrics.”
For which they should be thankful for not having wasted the time, tuition and effort to be brainwashed into a practice that needs to go the way of the humours, eugenics, phrenology, etc. . . .
“The quality and rigor of these tests varies greatly and are a complete crapshoot.”
As teacher made tests have always been. And that is okay because “quality and rigor” are complete bullshit terms in regards to the assessing part of the teaching and learning process.
To Michael Fiorillo et al,
It is only a matter of time before the State determines what the local assessments should be or puts them on a a prescribed list with approved vendors.
Mandated local assessments sold by a vendor = cha-ching for crony capitalism choking the democratic process up in Albany.
There.
That was easy . . .
Unlikely scenario. Just think about the number of different tests that would have to be developed by next spring. Logistically impossible. Salvation mat come in the form of . .
Dear RageAgainstTheTestocracy,
That’s the whole point: New markets, new vendors, new products, product research and development, field testing, contracts, money, money, money . . . . . That’s the intention.
And the young ones?
Do they have anything to do with education?
Them?
I cannot see how.
Hey, Rage,
Who is the person in the photo?
That’s no ordinary “person” Robert.
He’s faster than a speedy indictment, more powerful than the Moreland Commission! Able to leap the Federal Courthouse in a single bound. Look up in the sky . . .It’s a bird! it’s a plane! It’s Super-Preet!
Rage,
“It’s Super-Preet!”
And who the hell is that? Please explain for us ignorant ones.
Duane,
Preet Bharara is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who won indictments against two of the most powerful legislators in New York and they were convicted.
Sheldon Silver, majority leader of the State Assembly, and Dean Skelos, majority leader of the State Senate. One D, one R.
Thanks for the info, Diane!
There is also some speculation that Preet Bahara has Governor Cuomo in hid sights. They’re walking on eggshells up in Albany.
Board of Regents vote:
http://www.wgrz.com/story/news/education/2015/12/14/common-core-tests-wont-count-for-students-teachers-until-2020/77300974/
What about HS Common Core Algebra I, Geometry, and ELA Regents tests? These still count toward graduation so this “moratorium” on Common Core testing does not apply to HS students and their truly high-stakes graduation tests.
“Can’t Change That”
You can not change
What isn’t real
Or rearrange
How Cuomen feel