P-Tech is one of the most celebrated schools in recent years. President Obama hailed it in one of his 2013 State of the Union speech. He and Arne Duncan visited the school and repeatedly praised it as “proof of what can be accomplished” if we have the courage and will to do it. P-Tech was created as a partnership between the New York City Department of Education, IBM, and the City University of New York. I don’t take pleasure in reporting that their praise was premature. I would like to see P-Tech succeed. But it is very annoying when the President and the Secretary of Education go out on a limb to hail success before a school has ever graduated a single student.
Gary Rubinstein reports that P-Tech has been a huge disappointment despite (or perhaps because) of the overpraise it received.
In an earlier post, he says, he noted that only 2% of the students at P-Tech passed the Geometry and Algebra II Regents’ exams. Defenders explained that the pass rate was so low because students in sophomore and junior years were taking the tests for practice.
Now, he writes:
I recently followed up on my P-Tech research and found that New York State has revamped their data page extensively. Now all the data including the number of test takers is all available with a very user friendly interface. The P-Tech state data page can be found here.
I’m focusing on Algebra II since P-Tech is an engineering school where students attend for six years to earn a high school degree and an associates degree and a job offer from IBM. Since Algebra II is taken by advanced 10th graders I figure that P-Tech should be able to get a good percent of their students to eventually pass this test.
The first thing I checked was their 2014 scores last year again. They had 128 students take that test, which went against their claim that they made all their freshmen and sophomores take the test. If that were the case, it should have been about 300 test takers. In 2014 only two students passed that test with a score over 65 and four other students got between a 55 and a 65. Pretty brutal — but not as bad as how they did a year later.
In the most recent Regents administered last June, P-Tech decided to only allow the students who were most likely to pass the test, knowing that making too many unprepared students take the test would affect their passing percent. So last year only 41 students took the Algebra II Regents. Of those 41 students exactly one student passed and one other scored between 55 and 65. That’s it. The 39 other students all failed with scores under a 55.
Rubinstein notes that P-Tech, having received so much hype and praise, is now spreading across the country. Some 40 more P-Techs are in the pipeline in other states and in New York City.
Shouldn’t school officials wait for experiments to prove themselves before they replicate them?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I really, really wish they would stop over-selling these experiments. It is reckless to push this stuff as miraculous.
Do they not realize it will discredit them? Just say “we don’t know if it has value worth big investment yet”. Why is that so hard in ed reform?
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Even miracles are not proclaimed before they happen.
Imagine if the apostles had said to the disbelievers “Just wait, Jesus will walk on water in two years. And that water you have there. He’ll turn that into wine.”
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Such a shame. Looks like Ohio gets another ed reform pick for state superintendent:
“At the time, Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols told The Plain Dealer that Sommers would drive an agenda that included expanding “school choice,” getting more money directly into classrooms and encouraging school systems to share services.”
“He left last July to return to Ohio, where he is co-founder and CEO of the Carpe Diem charter school network.
That network of “blended learning” schools that mix online work with classroom time has schools in Cincinnati, Indianapolis, San Antonio and Yuma, Arizona, according to the company website.”
Yay! Replacing teachers in low and middle income schools with canned computer programs and minimum wage aides. Another gimmick pushed by The Movement.
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SomeDAM Poet
April 14, 2016 at 9:54 am
Even miracles are not proclaimed before they happen.
Imagine if the apostles had said to the disbelievers “Just wait, Jesus will walk on water in two years. And that water you have there. He’ll turn that into wine.”
Duncan went to Toledo and claimed credit for a successful vocational high school that was started in 1993 without the help of any of these people. It’s a public school. He acted
like he invented the concept of vocational ed, as if public schools weren’t aware of it.
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The writing was on the walls before hand but that never stops the reformers.
All you had to do was look at Rashid Davis’ MO at his previous school to see that P-Tech would be a sham.
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The Obama Administration are apparently trying to move away from their exclusive focus on “choice” and testing:
“I hear frequently and passionately from educators and families who feel that key elements of what makes up a well-rounded education have been neglected in favor of too tight a focus on math and reading,” King is expected to say. “Sometimes, that’s because of constraints on resources, time and money. Often, teachers and administrators have told me, it’s because math and English language arts were focused on so intensely by some districts and schools under No Child Left Behind that other subjects were under attended to or even ignored.”
I think it’s too late. That’s the President’s legacy- weaker, narrower, poorer public schools and an obsession with charters and testing.
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I agree. I was a supporter of the President, but he has done more damage to public education than any right wing Republican could possible have done. The disaster he left will always remain one of the most shameful parts of his legacy. Unfortunately, President Obama lives in a bubble with his Harvard Law School pals and their crowd who would never send their kids to the public schools he happily has forced middle class Americans to attend. Obama has done more to undermine public education than any Republican in my lifetime. And his legacy should always include the destruction of one of the best things in America.
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This is a “miracle school,” touted by education reformers who never, ever lie.
Please, Ms. Ravitch and Mr. Goldstein, don’t bother us with facts.
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Whoops, that should read, “Ms. Ravitch and Mr. Rubenstein…”
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The new Algebra I Regents has a shocking amount of advanced material that most of us didn’t learn until Algebra II — and only if we were college bound. I can only imagine what the new Algebra II Regents has on it.
Most adults who attended the best Ivy League colleges never had to prove they had learned the concepts in Algebra II. The SAT tested basic math skills. Students in private schools who aren’t mathematically inclined — which probably means 50% of them — would very likely struggle if they were forced to take the Algebra II Regents. Fortunately, we only force public school students who prove they are advanced mathematical thinkers before being allowed to attend college. But if you can afford $50,000/year, your child can attend a myriad of private colleges and never have to know more than the most basic Algebra and Geometry.
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You are undoubtedly right that the new algebra II regents is difficult, but the people who tout these miracles deserve to be criticized (and even mocked) because 1) they are the ones who have set the standards 2) they are the ones who claim test scores tell all and 3) they are the ones who have pushed for high cut scores.
IMO, these people should be held accountable for their hyperbolic claims (if you will excuse the math pun)
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This was not the common core Algebra II. That one is starting this June.
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Is the Algebra II Regents comparable to the old Trigonometry Regents?
Advanced Algebra is a tough subject, even for bright students. Luckily it is not required for a NYS High School Dilploma. No need for the students to even attempt this exam.
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Give them a break. This place is NOT set up to produce kids for 4 year academic BA courses. It is specifically aiming at the technical education for technical jobs, NONE OF WHICH need fancy algebra. I also suspect that the math teaching is aimed at the tech end (I hope).
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You are right that Algebra 2 is not important for most entry (associate degree) level jobs.
So the logical question is why are the students at P-Tech taking the algebra 2 test?
There is certainly no point in allowing students to take a test if they have not taken a course that covers the material.
But I would think that there are at least some students at P-Tech who actually do plan on pursuing 4 year technically related degree programs. For many of these programs, math beyond algebra 1 will certainly be required.
If there are students at P-Tech who have taken a course that covers the algebra 2 material, the school should expect that the school will be judged based on the very same criteria that other high schools are judged on (test scores of their students), especially given that P-Tech is supposed to be a “technically” oriented school.
If the school does not wish to be judged based on that basis, they should not allow students to take the test.
That would seem to be fairly reasonable.
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Bureaucracy probably !
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I’m not a fan of P-Tech. If IBM needs a certain skill set, they should pay for it rather than passing it off to the school district. IBM doesn’t even guarantee employment in this program. The company lays off thousands every year, so even if one student manages to get a job, there is no guarantee he/she will keep it.
The whole false promise of a STEM education makes me crazy. The reality is that most engineers attend four year universities and take advanced courses in high school. The field is very competitive because highly skilled foreign workers will work for less.
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“Shouldn’t school officials wait for experiments to prove themselves before they replicate them?”
It is obvious that too many school officials are not interested in the actual results but what they can do for whoever owns them and that usually means money and profits for the few. In other words, who cares if the children are learning as long as someone that isn’t a teacher and doesn’t work in the public sector is making a lot of money.
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While I share much of the skepticism expressed here about schools like P-Tech, I think Mr. Rubinstein makes a mistake in his criticism. We who are against evaluating schools (and teachers and students) by their test scores need to practice what we preach and resist the urge to evaluate schools whose philosophy and mission we disagree with by THEIR test scores. I am not defending the premature praise of the school by the president and former ed. secretary; rather, I am saying that if there are problems with the school’s model, low test scores say very little about those problems. There is even some interesting research out there correlating high test scores with shallower thinking. Thus, it is at least theoretically possible that the P-Tech students have overall a strong understanding of numeracy concepts, but that such an understanding does not translate into good test scores (especially if the Regency Exam, like most such exams, rewards familiarity with certain problem formats and memorization of formulas and so forth more than anything else–in fact, it is hard for me to imagine a standardized test that does not revolve around these things). Now, I tend to doubt that this is the case, given that the school appears to be governed by reformy principles (at least, that is my guess from what I see here). My point is that by criticizing the school’s test scores we legitimate the idea that test scores say something meaningful about the learning that takes place in a given school or classroom, and thus we inadvertently feed the machine.
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Michael E.
The profit motivated, corporate public education demolition derby uses test scores to rank and fire public school teachers. They also use test scores to close public schools. And when the corporate education industry claims/boasts that they are going to achieve improvements and don’t and the only evidence is the same/similar tests that were used to condemn the public schools, those test score become valid evidence to close down these publicly funded, private sector schools that are competing with the arguably highly successful tradition public schools in this country.
I think that the traditional public education system in the U.S. had done an outstanding job considering the obstacles that have been put in the way by the for profit corporate frauds out to profit off public dollars.
For instance, the United States is ranked 4th in the world for the ratio of college graduates in a country that has almost three college graduates for every job that requires a college education. That is not failure. There should NOT be any corporate charter schools. There should never have been high stakes tests linked to a national Common Core that was copyrighted by for-profit corporations in the private sector.
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Michael E,
I agree that it is wrong to judge schools by test scores, but the reformers can’t have it both ways. They insist that test scores are the means and end of schooling. They fire teachers and principals based on test scores. They close schools based on test scores. They cannot then say, “don’t judge our reforms by the same metric we used to close yours.” I would prefer not to judge any school by test scores, as they reflect many out-of-school variables. But so long as it is public policy, mandated by federal and state governments, then the reformers must expect the same kind of review. Maybe if they get embarrassed by the machine they created, they will help demolish it.
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Mr. Lofthouse,
I agree with what you say here. But I still contend that by citing test scores as evidence of the school’s failure, even when those very scores are what the school and its corporate sponsors want to be judged by, we lend credence to the notion that test scores are what counts. What if the school had managed to get high scores? Would we then say that it is a good school? If the core of our objection is the corporate-style reform methodology, the way that methodology treats students and teachers and the kind of pedagogy that arises from that, then focusing on test scores is a distraction. We should be taking these so-called “reformers” to task for their myopic definition of success, not devoting our time and energy to pointing out every time they fail to meet their own narrow-minded goals.
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We are not talking about “What If?” We can “What If” ourselves for the rest of time.
We live in the real time world of flawed and fraudulent high stakes tests that are used to fire traditional public school teachers and close traditional public schools. What you advocate is creating a double standard where the autocratic, opaque, for profit, corporate charters are not held accountable by the same methods they have forced on the traditional public schools.
Those same corporate charters and their billionaire supporters want what you are suggesting. Two systems: transparent traditional public schools held accountable by laws and now by the results of those flawed and fraudulent high stakes tests, and a second corporate charter system where no one is held accountable for anything and everything is mired in secrecy.
The corporate charters MUST be held accountable by the same standards that are being used to destroy the traditional public schools.
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Diane,
I am sorry that in posting my thoughts about Mr. Lofthouse’s comment I did not see your response; otherwise, I would have addressed my remarks to you and he both. What you say makes a lot of sense. I just worry that pointing out the double standard won’t convince true believers in the reform movement. They will be able just to say, “Well, that one school was no good….” and then point to other equally bad (if not worse) schools like Success Academy that do get high scores. And even if the list of low-scoring examples becomes far longer than the list of high-scoring schools (and those high-scoring schools are essentially cheating), the reformster zealots’ view will be “we just need to try harder, to make more schools like KIPP, Success Academy, etc.” In other words, they will continue to try to tweak the means, when the ends are the problem. It seems to me that if we focused our intellectual fire-power on arguing against those ends, we will have better luck changing hearts and minds.
Thank you–and Mr. Lofthouse, too–for taking the time to offer your thoughts on my ideas. I really appreciate this forum for conversation.
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Imagine, if the test scores used to validate the for profit, cherry-picking Success Academies became invalid, what evidence would Eva have to keep her dictatorial, autocratic, gulag style schools open?
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Agreed, Michael E.
Suppose I said I have discovered a method that always produces higher scores: threaten the children with painful torture if their scores don’t rise. Actually pull out the fingernails of the slackers or beat them. No! That would be totally despicable. The goal of schools must be to build an intrinsic motivation to learn, not a system of rewards and punishments that produces higher scores by coercion.
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Michael E,
The point, as Lloyd and Diane point out, is that even by the debased standards of so-called reform, these schools are failures, since so many of them boast of their harsh, punitive and joyless environments.
If these schools were doing poorly on tests, but providing their students with art, music, drama, dance, sports, community engagement and a variety of clubs, that would be one thing, but they don’t. These Skinner Boxes make no bones about their sole focus on test scores. And they fail even at that limited, unreliable and easily gamed metric.
That makes for a very valid source of criticism.
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Mr. Fiorillo,
I completely agree. I never meant to suggest that the critique was invalid. My concern is about how we frame the larger debate. On the one hand, die-hard reformers who really believe in test scores need to be convinced otherwise. On the other, and perhaps more importantly, the public at large sees a conversation about schools that appears to revolve around the question, “Which schools are good schools?” Put this way, it looks like a choice between traditional public schools and charters/reformatoriums. But that is a misleading dichotomy. There are plenty of public schools, too, that have become little more than test-prep factories (and let me be clear, I am not trying to blame those schools–they are, of course, under stupendous pressure, largely because of the reform movement). But I think a better question to put at the center of the conversation is this: “What makes a good school?” If this is our starting point, then communities will be more likely to engage with the process of making their schools better places to learn, and less likely to fall for the reformy nonsense.
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If you are the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize about 5 minutes after you took office, you may be used to the idea of premature praise.
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Oh, ouch! 🙂
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“Premature congratulation”
Premature congratulation
Is nothing to extol
And Nobel-Prize infatuation
Is really full of bull
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I’m waiting for the reformers’ apology to regular public schools that were slurred as “bad” for having such low pass rates.
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Perhaps we could have the “pass rate” for the Algebra 1 test.
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The Algebra 1 was much better. Follow the link on the original post for all the data.
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Thanks Gary. I found the alg 1 finally. Much better. I also got this from the P-Tech site, What I was saying earlier:
What classes can I take at City Tech? What can I study?
P-TECH students will be able to take core courses in English, science, mathematics, and the arts. In addition, students will work toward an associate degree in applied science (AAS) in computer systems technology or electromechanical engineering technology.
Algebra 2 is an irrelevance for this stuff.
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