Celia Oyler, professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, posted a biting commentary by an anonymous teacher about the flaws of PARCC. She received a letter from PARCC threatening legal action unless she removed the post because it contained copyrighted material —and divulged the name of the author.
Oyler left the post on her blog but removed anything that might be copyrighted. She has not given up the name of the author. Many people who posted a link to Oyler’s original post or tweeted it received an email warning that they should remove the link or expect legal action.
Peter Greene posted about the test, based on Oyler’s blog, and flew under the radar. He didn’t receive a threat from PARCC, and I feel badly for him.
He wrote, in his inimitable fashion:
“You know what kind of test needs this sort of heavy security? A crappy test.”
As Leonie Haimson said in a tweet, it is crazy to give a test to millions of students and expect that no one would write about it or talk about it.
There is something worse than disclosure of “secure” test items. There is loss of reputation. And that is what PARCC is putting at risk with its heavy-handed tactics.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s a symptom of the madness of education reform.
Not a symptom, IT IS THE MADNESS OF EDUCATION DEFORM.
The company has nothing better to do than to hire a full department of people who monitor blogs, twitter, and facebook just to check for copyright infringement.
All this so they can recycle the same test year after year and make the profits in the education market.
Isn’t PARCC on life support already? Instead of monitoring social networks, they should be trying to sign up new states to replace the 18 they already lost.
“loss of reputation?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
How can you lose what you don’t have?
A PARCCollapse is upon us
Loss of reputation? And in this topsy-turvy world of standardized test pineapples and hares and Daniel Pinkwater, what could possibly cause the sustainers of faux accountability forms to lose their good name?
Not on the Kommon Kore required reading list of informational texts, but perhaps an old dead French guy could give us a clue:
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
And just what would he have said about self-ridicule?
😎
P.S. I sense a disturbance in the [rheephorm] farce as the words “hoisted” and “own” and “petard” are voiced…
😏
Why would parents have any interest in seeing the questions that their kids are being judged by? We should trust that the people who make billions (in our tax dollars, no less!) from the “reform” movement have nothing but the best intentions of our children at heart.
I know when it comes to whether my child is an ignorant 8 year old, I much prefer to trust Bill Gates and Whitney Tilson than my child’s classroom teacher. After all, Bill Gates and all the toadies he (and other billionaires) have paid to fawn over his brilliance in reforming education definitely have my child’s best interest at heart, and the public school teachers are just in it for the money.
I trust the billionaires! Please don’t let me see any test questions. Any parent who really cares about their child’s education understands that if we aren’t kept ignorant of the tests, we might be misled into trusting our own judgement over Bill Gates and the people hired to do his bidding. They know best. The more we are kept in the dark, the more assured we all are that those brilliant billionaires will see to it that our children are learning properly.
The thanks of a grateful nation of public school parents salute you, oh knowledgeable billionaires and the reformers are getting paid quite handsomely to spout the nonsense that meets your approval. Thank you! From the bottom of my heart.
Big Data, censorship, privatization to the point of absolutist corporatism… This is big, brother. BOY, billionaire, the world is all coming together now! (Excuse my blatant sexism.)
everyone should post it on their own social media
I tried to post this to Facebook and guess what? The link could not br found. Things that make you go hummm.
I hope every parent asks his child about the content of the test and then shares the information with someone else.
No, the kids shouldn’t see the tests at all because their parents should OPT THEM OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!
I gave my daughter a copy of Fahrenheit 451. When she finished it asked if she and her friends her could be like the book people and devote their test taking experience to remembering just one question each so the parents could reconstruct it afterwards.
I was joking – but maybe next year I won’t be.
Well, in that case, better prepare them also for a trip to the Ministry of Love.
… thinking about overseas ephemeral nimbus clouds inside a defunct insane asylum.
Are you in a think tank?
Are you in the U.S. Department of Education? You have to say yes or no if we’re going to play 20 questions, John.
Here is one more reason to be a very serious and unrelenting critic of PARCC.
It has “teamed up” with greatschools.org, a website that rates schools and leases data for commercial exploitation (about which I have commented before).
MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2015 ( from http://www.parcconline.org/news-and-video/382-greatschools-parcc-launch-new-parent-tool)
“PARCC states have partnered with GreatSchools to launch the GreatKids Test Guide for Parents, a new resource to assist parents in helping their children prepare academically for college and careers, and for the next grade level. “…”The Guide gives … information about what a child needs to know at each grade level and how parents can help their children succeed academically, based on how their child performed on the PARCC assessment.”
“About GreatSchools. Founded in 1998, GreatSchools is a national nonpartisan nonprofit helping millions of parents find quality schools, support great learning and guide their kids to great futures. GreatSchools offers thousands of articles, videos and worksheets to help parents support their children’s learning. Last year, more than 59 million unique visitors accessed the GreatSchools website including more than half of all US families with school-age children. Headquartered in Oakland, California, GreatSchools partners with cities and states across the country.“
Do not be deceived by sweet talk about “partnerships.” This non-profit is a sophisticated and well-funded system for gathering test scores and other information reported by schools, converting this information into ratings, and selling the data and ratings. The website literally sells ads and licenses for access to test scores and other data on schools—public, private, and charter—with expansions planned for pre-school and daycare-centers.
This national data hog is funded by billionaire foundations unfriendly to public schools. The logos of the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations are prominently displayed. A list of 19 other supporters includes the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund among others. All of these supporters want to make public schools an artifact from the past.
Here is what GreatSchools does with the test scores, now including PARCC scores.
“The overall GreatSchools Rating is an average of how well students at a given school do on each grade and subject test. For each test, ratings are assigned based on how well students perform relative to all other students in the state, and these ratings are averaged into an overall rating of 1 to 10.”
“The distribution of the GreatSchools Rating in a given state looks like a bell curve, with higher numbers of schools getting ratings in the “average” category, and fewer schools getting ratings in the “above average” or “below average” categories.”
The ratings are based on the manipulation of data classified in one of three ways: As a proficiency measure, a growth measure (including discredited VAM), and a rating for “how well schools are preparing students for success in college and beyond” (high school graduation rate, SAT, ACT scores). The system is rigged so most schools are rated average or below.
Click to access New_Ratings_Methodology_Report.pdf
The fraudulent rating system gives the notoriously test-driven Success Academy in NY the highest possible rating here http://www.greatschools.org/about/ratings.page
This non-profit is the front for a mega for-profit operation serving big box stores, and multiple industries— financial, real estate, charter expansions, testing and text publishers. It is designed to capture the interest of media outlets and merchandizers as “partners,” co-opt entire school districts and federal agencies into “partnerships.” The gigantic “partner” basket includes Walmart, Target, Yale Center for Social Emotional Intelligence, Survey Monkey, Forbes, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Dunn & Bradstreet, US Department of Education, Goldman Sachs, and more
JUST a sampling.
CONTENT 321 Fast Draw; Algonquin Books; Ashoka Foundation; Bay Citizen; California Watch; College Board; Common Sense Media; DK Publishing; Film Sight Productions; IDEO; Learning Ally; Learning and Leadership Center; Mind/Shift; National Center for Learning Disabilities; Parenting.com; Reading Rockets; Scholastic; Treasure Bay, Inc.; UCLA Department of Psychology; US Department of Education; Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
COMMUNITY AND FAMILY ENGAGEMENT Families Empowered; Hillsborough County Public Schools, Iridescent Learning; KIPP; Magnet Schools of America; Miami Dade County Public Schools; Rocketship Education; Stand Up for Students; Step Up for Students; US Department of Housing and Urban Development
RESEARCH Gallup Education; SurveyMonkey (see also Licensees); SRI; Rockman Et Al.
MARKETING & OUTBOUND MEDIA Care2.com; Common Sense Media; Forbes; NBC News Education; The Bully Project; Univision.
LICENSEES Apartments.com, Brain Pop; Digital Map Products; Dunn & Bradstreet; Fannie Mae; Maponics; Michael & Susan Dell Foundation; Military Child Education Coalition; Move Sales, Inc.; National Association of Charter School Authorizers; National Housing Trust; Onboard Informatics; Policy Map; Realtors Property Resource; SurveyMonkey; Target, US Department of Housing and Urban Development; Walmart; WolfNet; Zillow.
What do these “partners get” for signing on? At minimum, it is the opportunity to become an advertiser or license holder who can gain access to your student’s test scores—for a fee. You can find some of the ad rates here. https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/advertise3/products/29619
At the bottom of the rate page you can see that these “packages” are offered via the Rubicon Project. Click on Rubicon Project to see what this “project “is. The Rubicon Project is the name for a company that scoops all of greatschool’s data and ratings and comments from users and puts them in Rubicon’s “Advertising Automation Cloud.”
This data warehousing operation “brings buyers and sellers closer together on a robust advertising technology platform. One of the largest cloud and Big Data computing systems in the world, the Automation Cloud leverages over 50,000 algorithms and analyzes billions of data points in real-time to deliver the best results for sellers and buyers,” with 300 real-time data-driven decisions per transaction.”
Follow the money. The billionaire foundations gather the test scores and other information about schools. They are notoriously in favor of market-based education. The scores are translated into a their dubious but “custom” rating scheme with direct links to the great red-lining guru, Zillow (who has paid for a high end license). The data and ratings migrate out from the greatschools website to Rubicon. For a fee, Rubicon facilitates rapid and custom access to the data and ratings from their “cloud,” (a data warehouse), promising their clients they can “Efficiently find your target audience;” “build brand awareness,” “acquire new customers, and re-engage existing customers.”
https://selfserve.rubiconproject.com/advertise3/products/29619
I hope that this information gives parents another reason to opt out of the tests and especially PARCC. Greatschools has test data from every state, has a map of district boundaries searchable by zipcodes, and it is seeking data well beyond that required by state or federal regulation such as such as schools safety, cleanliness, and parent involvement. Next up: Scores for school climate and social-emotional learning, and “customer satisfaction surveys.”
Remember, taxpayers made PARCC possible. Time to say bye, bye and good riddance.
It’s bewildering for people. The sheer number of ed reform orgs and “partnerships” and conflicts and how they all move between the government agencies and the various lobbying groups makes NONE of the information reliable.
It’s a shame the US Department of Ed endorses every ed reform org and initiative. It lessens their value as an honest broker of information- they’re lobbying like all the other groups. I wouldn’t accept student loan advice from them at this point if I were an 18 year old. I literally don’t know who they work for.
The US DOE was sold to billionaires when Obama came into office and is now a privately owned corporation embedded in the US government.
Diane, please consider posting Laura’s comments as a seperarte post so that it can be easily accessed and linked to.
Wow … This is fascism!
Kinda like Thousands Standing Around (TSA).
Dang right, Yvonne. I was thinking Ferdinand and Isabella, but Adolf and Joseph fit too.
Does any one know what the opt out numbers for NY and other states are?
Are the available at this point? I have not herd much on actual opt out numbers.
heard as in hearing, not herd as in herds of people opting out….
If people had not decided to opt out before perhaps this action will push some more over the edge. Their children (teachers and schools) are being judged and found wanting by a test that no one is allowed to see or discuss. Huh?
It just seems like another contradiction from PARRC. If the tests can’t be prepped for because the questions depend on the student engaging and understanding the broader process of analyzing the text releasing the specific prompt shouldn’t matter.
I knew DC was moving towards “backpack funding”:
“In addition to the new reporting requirements, ESSA is introducing a Flexibility for Equitable Per-Pupil Funding program that will allow fifty districts to start pilot programs to implement student-based budgeting (or weighted-student funding, or “backpack funding” as some refer to it). Regardless of the terminology, the bottom line is that such policies ensure that dollars follow students to the schools they attend. Boston, Chicago, Denver, and other districts across the country are already experimenting with weighted student funding. ESSA’s efforts will drastically enhance this growing trend.”
Is is stunning how often (and consistently) Democratic politicians lie to their voters.
There is not one bit of difference between DC Democrats and DC Republicans on public schools- they are both hostile to the continued existence of public schools.
Union leaders should be ashamed that they tell rank and file members different- it is a lie – they are taking advantage of their members by promoting and endorsing these politicians.
http://edexcellence.net/articles/more-money-more-outcomes
I’ve seen it. My own children will NEVER be allowed to take it. Ridiculous. And the fact that I can’t discuss it makes me feel like first amendment right means not a darn thing.
I haven’t heard a word from Hillary Clinton on public schools since her (mild) charter criticism was shut down by the ed reform lobby.
Is she not permitted to mention public schools? Trump has probably never entered a public school, so we won’t hear anything from him.
Does DC plan to ignore the schools 95% of kids attend for yet another “cycle” and once again dupe public school supporters into voting for them?
Are we getting Bush/Obama again no matter who we vote for and whether we vote at all?
“A Tale of Two Interests: The Superintendent and the Union Chief vs. the Teachers in the Classroom.” A School Board Talk by Andy Goldstein, May 14, 2016
Transcript:
Good evening. My name is Andy Goldstein. I’m a teacher at Omni Middle School and the proud parent of an 8-year-old daughter who attends one of our public elementary schools. I’m also the elected Secretary of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association–one of four elected officers. I’m speaking as an individual.
I’m speaking tonight about the DROP extension for the President of CTA. DROP is Florida’s Deferred Retirement Option Program. The teacher makes the choice to go into DROP in return for receiving certain benefits. And at the end of the DROP period, the teacher agrees to retire. DROP is entered into voluntarily, by the teacher’s choice.
I’m speaking tonight, because as the Secretary of CTA, I was asked by both the CTA President and the CTA Executive Director, to sign off on a letter to the Superintendent, saying that our Board had approved the DROP extension request for the President. I refused to sign the letter, because I believe the DROP extension for the CTA President is unethical. Both for the CTA President, and for our Superintendent.
While a teacher can ask for, and the Superintendent can grant, a DROP extension, the CTA President is in a special position that makes this unethical. As the head of CTA, the sole collective bargaining agent for all of our teachers in Palm Beach County, there must be no appearance or actual quid pro quo going on between the President and the Superintendent.
The Preamble to our CTA Constitution states one of the prime missions for our union—obtaining for our members the benefits of an independent, united teaching profession.
A DROP extension makes the President, and the Union, dependent on our Superintendent, instead of vigorously representing the interests of our members and our teachers in collective bargaining.
Our CTA Board, which met on Monday, has not heard from our President whether the DROP extension has been granted by our Superintendent. But we have heard rumors that it has.
A granting of a DROP extension to the CTA President, puts the Superintendent in the position of occupying our union and raises the question, is there a quid pro quo going on between the heads of these two large organizations at the expense of the teacher in the classroom?
Our District has destroyed the livelihood of our teachers and created a dead-end profession. Our District has created an environment of ever-increasing stress for our teachers as they work at two, three and four part-time jobs to make ends meet. If it’s harming our teachers, it’s also harming our students.
Is this the quid pro quo for the DROP extension agreement for our CTA President?
I don’t know. But it certainly raises the question.
Other Union presidents, such as Richard Smith of Brevard County, do the right thing and retire when their DROP is over, rather than try to make a second career at the expense of our teachers.
I am here to announce that I believe the CTA President’s DROP extension is unethical, and to ask the Superintendent not to extend DROP for the CTA President, or if he already has, to rescind the DROP extension. And I ask the CTA President to do the right thing and resign.
Thank you.
Thanks for calling out the often times unspoken and fairly well hidden unethical practices that are occurring in your district!
How did that work out?
In Sarasota, the union President is retired, collects a pension, collects a salary based on her years in, and collects $30k a year from union dues towards her “retirement”, or the union 401k plan.
After hearing me complain about the 3% being taken out of our pay for our pensions, VAM scores, and the politicians who are killing us in Tallahassee, her response was:
“Argue with someone else
I’m not interested”
I kid you not.
SomeDAM Poet
May 15, 2016 at 8:40 am
The US DOE was sold to billionaires when Obama came into office and is now a privately owned corporation embedded in the US government.
They actually endorse specific ed tech product now- they link to product websites.
It’s appalling- as far as I’m concerned they’re no more reliable than any other commercial actor. Duncan should have been removed for his University of Phoenix/Starbucks promotion. Why in the HELL is a publicly-paid employee endorsing product -selling online learning to low income 18 year olds? Have they gone mad? The last thing 18 year olds need is another scam to separate them from their money. They’re freaking SURROUNDED by product promotion. I feel bad for them. I can’t keep up with the ways they get robbed. I would have had 50k in debt by the time I was 20 in this “every man for himself” environment. I look at the contracts they sign and I want to cry. They just don’t know any better.
of course, the US DOE has also become a “pay day lender”, charging exorbitant fees for student loans.
It’s all part of “value investing”. Whitney Tilson, whom Diane “debated” a few days ago, wrote a book about it.
Billionaires like Gates scooped up the US DOE at bargain basement prices (a few hundred million to develop Common Core) in order to take control of a $600 billion a year public education “market”.
The DOE exploited mechanisms like NCLB waivers and VAM to keep the states and teachers in their place . They expected them to just roll over and submit.
But they miscalculated. Teachers — and especially parents — have pushed back and effectively ruined their plan.
Bill Gates must be raging mad at this point. While a few hundred million is not a lot for him, the “loss” is basically a stick in his eye. I would not want to be living in his household these days. I’m sure Diane’s name comes up a lot in his cursing.
SomeDAM Poet, you are so right. That’s why they are furious with those “suburban moms” as Gates acolyte Arne Duncan expressed when he attacked them. But it isn’t nearly as easy to attack suburban moms as they thought. Because when it comes to a choice between whether you think Bill Gates or a child’s mother is more concerned about the welfare of their child, and the “reformers” are claiming Mr. Gates is the one who cares more than they do, it is sure to backfire.
They got away with a decade of bashing teachers as not caring about the kids and only caring about their paycheck. So it never occurred to Arne Duncan he couldn’t do the same with suburban parents. So they sent Arne out to claim that suburban parents cared more about the re-sell value of their home than their own children’s education.
Oops! I’m surprised Bill Gates didn’t fire Arne from his DOE job right there and then, but he had been so very good up to then at following orders and he did deserve another chance to make it right. It would take far too long to train a successor to do quite as good a job.
“A crappy test.” I think he meant “A CRAPPy test!”
Crappy is a test?
I thought it was a fish.
Didn’t catch any of them crappie last weekend, just a bunch of stunted largemouths and some decent bluegills! So we had a bluegill fry.
Who we vote for…
“What is made evident by the documents leaked by Greenpeace is that electoral politics are largely irrelevant to the business of ‘governing.’ The U.S. representatives negotiating ‘U.S.’ trade positions no more represent your and my interests than do the business executives selling us products. The public’s role in elections is as consumers of political rhetoric. Hillary Clinton’s willingness to say anything to win election reflects that her ‘product’ is political rhetoric and that it will bear no relation to her actual policies once the ‘sale’ is made. More profoundly, were Bernie Sanders to be elected his ability to govern in the public interest would be bounded by institutions dedicated to supporting ‘private’ interests.” Rob Urie
All the games are rigged!