In their effort to slow Donald Trump, GOP statisticians have created a new methodology.
Archives for the month of: March, 2016
The March issue of the “Monthly Review” is devoted to education, to standardized testing, opt out, and resistance.
Donald Cohen writes a website called “In the Public Interest,” where he reports on privatization of the public sector: hospitals, schools, prisons, etc.
In this article, he demonstrates that charter schools are accountable to no one. If a parent is unhappy, she can’t go to a superintendent or to the district officials. Nor can she go to the charter board. The board is not elected and will be happy to see the parent go away. No one is accountable.
The recent video scandal at Success Academy, he writes, starkly demonstrates the complete lack of accountability to parents and to the public that pays the bills:
“Several weeks ago, the New York Times published a surreptitiously recorded videoof a charter school teacher berating a first grade student and ripping up her work in front of the class for being unable to explain how she solved a math problem. The publicly-funded school, the Success Academy founded by Eva Moskowitz, circled the wagons and launched a public relations blitz.
“According to the Times, the girl’s parent tried to raise questions at a meeting organized by the school to get parent support for the teacher in the press. She was concerned that the parents were being asked to help without even being shown the video. “She’s like ‘You’ve had enough to say’ and [Ms. Moskowitz] tried to talk over me,” the mother told the Times. Frustrated, she gave up and walked out of the meeting.
“The student’s parent went to the NY Department of Education to file a complaint. She was told that Success was independent from the school district and that she needed to contact the school’s board of trustees. But the board, chaired by hedge fund CEO Dan Loeb, that gets to spend taxpayer dollars aren’t elected by nor accountable to New York voters. They have no obligation to neither listen to her nor take action. They are a group of hedge fund and private equity investors, lawyers, public relationships professionals, philanthropists and one full-time educator.
“Here’s a few of the Wall Street investors on the school’s board of trustees who the girl’s mother was told to petition:
Joel Greenblatt is a Managing Partner at the hedge fund Gotham Capital and former Chairman of the Board of Alliant Techsystems, a NYSE-listed aerospace and defense company.
Steven M. Galbraith is a former Chief Investment Officer at Morgan Stanley who now runs Herring Creek Capital, a Connecticut based Hedge Fund.
John Petry is the founder and managing principle at the hedge fund, Sessa Capital.
Richard S. Pzena is the founder of Pzena Investment Manager, a global investment firm.
David Roberts has been for the last 21 years with the investment firm, Angelo, Gordon David, responsible for helping to start and grow a number of the firm’s businesses including opportunistic real estate, private equity, and net lease real estate.
John Scully is a founding partner of SPO Partners & Co., a private investment firm and a director at the Plum Creek Timber Company and chairman of Advent Software.
Paul Pastorek, the co-executive director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation founded by billionaire Eli Broad, who is leading an effort to turn half of Los Angeles schools into charter schools. Pastorek led the post-Hurricane Katrina effort in New Orleans that converted all elementary and secondary schools into charter schools. Recent research has shown that the New Orleans school system is now a multi-tier system that works for some, but leaves many behind.
“They are private citizens who get to spend taxpayer dollars to educate children. They argue that the market will determine success. Unfortunately, they get to define what success looks like — not the public whose taxes fund the school, nor voters who are the ultimate policy makers in a democratic society. The problem is that the market doesn’t need to pay attention to the whims of democracy that demands public accountability, high quality and inclusive education for every child — even the ones that struggle with math problems.
“The mother ultimately removed her daughter from the school. It’s the Donald Trump “you’re fired” brand of education. There’s no room for those that can’t take the heat – even if they are a 6-year old first grader struggling with math. That’s not America and it’s certainly not how a democracy should function.”
Do you think the mother or any other parent could get a meeting with the board? Who could she turn to? Who would listen?
Tennessee is testing the Common Core for the first time this year, but the tests are not cooperating. First, the state tried to give them online but the computer breakdowns were so numerous that the entire test was delayed. Then the state ordered tests to be available on paper, but several districts didn’t receive them.
The original testing period was supposed to begin on February 8 and March 4.
This schedule, which is common across many districts, raises one big question:
The tests are supposed to assess nine months on instruction, but the tests are offered after only five months of instruction. This means that the tests are not correctly aligned with what children learn.
To make matters worse, the test results are not reported until the fall, when the student has a new teacher.
Harvard Magazine published an interesting article with fresh thinking about school choice. No blue-sky claims, like the Friedman Foundation. No fear-mingering. Some thoughtful comments about unintended consequences.
“A recent paper models a choice system that assigns schools according to families’ preferences, allotting seats at more sought-after schools by lottery. Parents would compete for access to the best schools, so that each school would not only reflect the socioeconomic mix of the community but also become perfectly equal—and average—in quality, Avery explains. But such a result, the model shows, would encourage wealthy families to abandon the system for better-than-average schools that are either private or in another district—a “flight” phenomenon widely documented already.
“Pathak and Avery also show a second mechanism—the effect of school quality on home prices—that forces flight not by wealthy families, but by the poor. “When you introduce school choice, school quality compresses…so the house-price distribution compresses as well,” Pathak says, meaning that low-income families are priced out of their own neighborhoods as the schools in their community improve. Home values reflect differences in school quality so faithfully that prices spike and fall along district boundaries. “You see this at the border between [the Boston public school system] and Brookline…if the houses are almost identical, they’re still very different prices because people perceive the schools to be much higher quality in Brookline,” he explains.
“In reality, though, researchers know that school choice hasn’t worked this way. Because of variation in families’ school preferences, imperfect information, test-based admissions systems that favor advantaged students, and other frictions, cities that have embraced choice systems are very far from producing perfectly equal schools. In some cases, school lotteries do help underserved students gain access to top schools. What, then, of the model? “What happens in practice is, we think, some combination of things,” Avery suggests. Real-life choice systems resemble something between neighborhood schools and a perfect-competition choice system. If schools remain sufficiently unequal, then people can afford to continue to live where they’re living. Says Avery, “It’s sort of a paradox.”
The most elusive yet most important goal is to increase the supply of good schools in every neighborhood.
Here is a very funny video that says in 2 minutes what the public needs to hear as more and more community public schools are run by corporate charter chains. I could explain the same thing with footnotes in a chapter, but skip the chapter and watch the video. It was produced by the Progressive Magazine.
This video was made by the same team that created this video. It’s all about the money.
A reader in Florida describes how she was transformed from a librarian to a test supervisor:
Dear Diane,
I’m a library media specialist in Florida and have taught for 25 years. In those years I have experienced the degeneration of school library media programs which has accelerated with the advent of Race to the Top. With “testing season” upon us, the school media center will be closed to book checkout, research, information literacy lessons, enrichment activities, etc. and I will become a test administrator for weeks at a time. School-wide, instruction will come to a halt. Students will be regrouped into “testing groups” and very quietly marched in and out of the library and computer labs for long sessions of testing. Even the most behaviorally challenging students know the drill and march to the testing orders. It’s scary how compliant they are. If nothing else, we have taught our children how to take a test – not pass a test, because we already know a high percentage will fail thanks to the arbitrarily set cut scores – but they have been taught since 2nd grade (and now Kindergarten) how to BEHAVE during a test. Is this our educational legacy?
The most distressing aspect of becoming a robotic, script-reading test administrator in a high poverty school is seeing the resignation to failure on the faces of many of our students. They know they’re going to “fail”; they fail every year. The year we switched from FCAT to FSA (Common Core), I told my students, “Congratulations, you’ll never have to take another FCAT test again.” They cheered. Then I told them the bad news – that the new tests will be longer and harder and on the computer. One girl asked, “Why they going to make us take a harder test when we can’t pass this one?” A good question and one I could not answer.
This year, during the FSA Writing Assessment, a student raised her hand and asked, “What are they asking me?” I told her I couldn’t help her with that. I suggested she go back and reread the prompt. She was a very low level reader and the article on which prompt was based was too hard for her. She knew it, I knew it, her reading teacher knew it. Her teachers know because they work with her every day, so how does taking this test help her in any way? She raised her hand again, “How am I supposed to answer when I don’t know what they’re asking.” I encouraged her to try. At that point, she huffed, turned off her monitor, and put her head down. She didn’t realize it, but she had opted-out.
What are we doing to a generation of students who are repeatedly being told they’re failures? How do these tests inform the people that can actually help them with their academic or emotional needs? (And the emotional needs are great and must be met before meaningful academic progress can be made. No standardized test can address this.) They don’t inform, they label. Parents and teachers know from working with their children on a daily basis the needs of the child, so who benefits from the massive amounts of data the tests are producing? When I think of the money one district alone, even one school alone, must spend on computers, tests and materials aligned to the tests – new tests mean new textbooks, hardware and software – I believe the answer is obvious. Hint: It’s not the kids.
I’ve become so disheartened by billionaire reformers meddling in public education and the trend toward privatization that I’ll be attending NPE’s conference in Raleigh next month. I’m looking forward to seeing you and meeting others that are trying to push back against reforms that are hurting our children.
Anna Thoma
Florida superintendent Pam Stewart sent a stern message to every district:
“We all know there have been questions about opt out and that there were situations where this occurred last year. Section 1008.22, F.S., regarding statewide, standardized assessments, states clearly that participation is mandatory for all districts and all students attending public schools. My belief is that students that do not want to test should not be sitting in public schools, as it is mandatory and required for students seeking a standard high school diploma. Statewide, standardized assessments are part of requirement to attend school, like immunization records. That is our message and what we send to you to be shared with your staff.”
Opting out of state tests is not allowed. Taking the standardized tests is mandatory. Parents have no right to refuse the tests for their child.
Remember that Florida is the state where a dying boy with severe disabilities was expected to take the test. His parents had to present proof that he was in hospice to the state.
The test was more important than his life.
Kate Taylor reports in the New York Times on a report released by the New York City Department of Education, showing that thousands of students were denied the special education services to which they were entitled.
The bad news is that kids have been maltreated. The good news is that the DOE is issuing a report that acknowledges its failures. After a dozen years of slick PR in which every initiative was a great success on day one, candor is refreshing.
Taylor writes:
“As many as 40 percent of students in New York City recommended for special-education services may not be getting them, the Education Department said in a report released on Monday.
“But even more striking, the department said that its data systems were so unreliable that it was not exactly sure what percentage of students were not receiving the services.
“The report, released to comply with a law passed by the City Council last year, said that “major deficiencies” in the design of the Special Education Student Information System, which is supposed to track students receiving special education, “continue to affect the D.O.E.’s ability to reliably report specific compliance metrics.”
“That for us is one of the biggest takeaways,” said Maggie Moroff, the special-education policy coordinator at Advocates for Children, which helps at-risk students. The lack of reliable data is “hugely important,” she said, “because you need the data to figure out where the holes in the service delivery are.”
“Based on the available data, the report found that at the end of last school year, 5 percent of the students who were recommended for services, or nearly 9,000 students, were not receiving them at all. Thirty-five percent, or more than 60,000 students, were receiving only some of the services recommended for them.
“The department said, however, that inconsistencies in course labels in a second data system could lead to overstating the number of students receiving no services or incomplete services.
“The report also found that 30 percent of students whose parents or teachers requested initial evaluations for them, to see whether they needed special-education services, were not evaluated within 60 days, as mandated by state law….
“Last month, the city’s public advocate, Letitia James, sued the Education Department, saying that the flaws in the computer system for disability services led to students’ being deprived of services and the city’s missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements….
“The system was created by the Bloomberg administration for $130 million and implemented in 2011.
“In the last school year, 187,672 students had what are known as individualized education plans, which entitle students to certain special education or related services.”
Peter Greene read an article written by a spokesperson for the National PTA and reacted with a combination of dismay and disdain.
The article, written by Shannon Sevier, vice-president for advocacy for the National PTA, echoes the talking points of the testing industry, Greene writes.
Sevier is pleased that her own children took the standardized tests because, while they had trepidation, she can now remember “the importance of the assessments in helping my children’s teachers and school better support their success through data-driven planning and decision-making.” You would expect to hear that sort of talk from a Pearson rep, not a parent. Or as Peter Greene might say, “Said no parent ever.”
Greene quotes from her article some more, and responds:
Did I mention that Sevier is a lawyer? This is some mighty fine word salad, but its Croutons of Truth are sad, soggy and sucky. While it is true that theoretically, the capacity to withhold some funding from schools is there in the law, it has never happened, ever (though Sevier does point out that some schools in New York got a letter. A letter! Possibly even a strongly worded letter! Horrors!! Did it go on their permanent record??) The number of schools punished for low participation rates is zero, which is roughly the same number as the number of politicians willing to tell parents that their school is going to lose funding because they exercised their legal rights.
And when we talk about the “achievement gap,” always remember that this is reformster-speak for “difference in test scores” and nobody has tied test scores to anything except test scores.
More to the point, while test advocates repeatedly insist that test results are an important way of getting needed assistance and support to struggling students in struggling schools, it has never worked that way. Low test scores don’t target students for assistance– they target schools for takeover, turnaround, or termination.
The Sevier segues into the National PTA’s position, which is exactly like the administration’s position– that maybe there are too many tests, and we should totally get rid of redundant and unnecessary tests and look at keeping other tests out of the classroom as well, by which they mean every test other than the BS Tests. They agree that we should get rid of bad tests, “while protecting the vital role that good assessments play in measuring student progress so parents and educators have the best information to support teaching and learning, improve outcomes and ensure equity for all children.”
But BS Tests don’t provide “the best information.” The best information is provided by teacher-created, day-to-day, formal and informal classroom assessments. Tests such as PARCC, SBA, etc do not provide any useful information except to measure how well students do on the PARCC, SBA, etc– and there is not a lick of evidence that good performance on the BS Tests is indicative of anything at all.
Well, actually, I disagree here. It is not true that test scores tell us nothing at all. They are actually a pretty good measure of family income. There are variations, of course, but the correlation between test scores and family income is strong. And the “achievement gap” is itself a product of standardized tests. The tests are normed on a bell curve, and the ends of the curve never converge. The curve is designed to be a curve, so there will always be an upper half and a lower half.
Greene adds:
Did the PTA cave because they get a boatload of money from Bill Gates? Who knows. But what is clear is that when Sevier writes “National PTA strongly advocates for and continues to support increased inclusion of the parent voice in educational decision making at all levels,” what she means is that parents should play nice, follow the government’s rules, and count on policy makers to Do The Right Thing.
That’s a foolish plan. Over a decade of reformy policy shows us that what reformsters want from parents, teachers and students is compliance, and that as long as they get that, they are happy to stay the course. The Opt Out movement arguably forced what little accommodation is marked by the Test Action Plan and ESSA’s assertion of a parent’s legal right to opt out. Cheerful obedience in hopes of a Seat at the Table has not accomplished jack, and the National PTA should be ashamed of itself for insisting that parents should stay home, submit their children to the tyranny of time-wasting testing, and just hope that Important People will spontaneously improve the tests. Instead, the National PTA should be joining the chorus of voices demanding that the whole premise of BS Testing should be questioned, challenged, and ultimately rejected so that students can get back to learning and teachers can get back to teaching.
I agree with Peter here. If there is one thing we have learned over the past 15 years, it is that policymakers are entirely out of touch with children and classrooms. They make laws and regulations and mandates with little or no concern for their practical consequences on real children and real teachers. They listen only when parents make noise. Which is reason for opt out to increase, because otherwise they won’t listen at all.
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