Jay Greene, chairman of the Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas, reaches a startling conclusion: Higher test do not necessarily translate into higher graduation rates or other life outcomes that matter.
This post pretty much blows away the rationale for corporate reform. How many times did we hear from Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and other “reform” leaders that charter schools get higher test scores than public schools? How many times have we heard from the Friedman Foundation and other cheerleaders for vouchers that vouchers are the key to higher test scores? But what if the higher test scores do not translate into better outcomes for students? What if Jay Greene is right? Perhaps the goal of schooling should be to teach a well-rounded education, character, and citizenship? Test scores don’t measure that.
This is one of the most important posts I have read in a very long time. I encourage you to read it.
Greene writes:
I’ve written several times recently about how short term gains in test scores are not associated with improved later life outcomes for students. Schools and programs that increase test score quite often do not yield higher high school graduation or college attendance rates. Conversely, schools and programs that fail to produce greater gains in test scores sometimes produce impressive improvements in high school graduation and college attendance rates, college completion rates, and even higher employment and earnings. I’ve described at least 8 studies that show a disconnect between raising test scores and stronger later life outcomes.
Well, now we have a 9th. Earlier this month MDRC quietly released a long-term randomized experiment of the effects of the SEED boarding charter school in Washington, DC. Because SEED is a boarding school, there was a lot of hope among reformers that it might be able to make a more profound difference for very disadvantaged students by having significantly more time to influence students and structure their lives. Of course, boarding schools also cost significantly more — in this case roughly twice as much as traditional non-residential schools.
While the initial test score results are very encouraging, the later life outcomes are disappointing. After two years students admitted to SEED by lottery outperformed those denied admission by lottery by 33% of a standard deviation in math and 23% in reading. If we judged the quality of schools entirely based on short term changes in test scores, as many reformers would like to do, we’d say this school was doing a great job.
In fact, SEED may be doing a great job in a variety of ways, but when we look at longer term outcomes for students on a variety of measures the evidence demonstrating SEED’s success disappears or even turns negative. Of the students accepted by lottery to SEED 69.3% graduate from high school after four years compared to 74.1% for the control group, a difference that is not statistically significant. And when asked about their likelihood of attending college, there was no significant difference between the two groups. SEED students also score significantly higher on a measure of engaging in risky behavior and lower on the grit scale….
If we think we can know which schools of choice are good and ought to be expanded and which are bad and ought to be closed based primarily on annual test score gains, we are sadly mistaken. Various portfolio management and “accountability” regimes depend almost entirely on this false belief that test scores reveal which are the good and bad schools. The evidence is growing quite strong that these strategies cannot properly distinguish good from bad schools and may be inflicting great harm on students. Given the disconnect between test scores and later life outcomes we need significantly greater humility about knowing which schools are succeeding.
The last time I checked (when reviewing “Waiting for ‘Superman'” in 2010, the cost of a SEED education was $35,000 per child; it is probably more now.
Be sure to open the link to read the full post, which is very informative.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My husband thinks the testing obsession comes out of the select group of people who are IN ed reform policy circles.
He thinks ed reform is composed of people who had high test scores and so they naturally believe that’s a really good measure of “merit” because it’s what got them to where THEY are.
If you spend any time with ambitious parents you tend to agree with him. It’s amazing how much of a focus there is on ACT and SAT scores. I just think it’s a flat-out lie when we tell kids we’re looking at the “whole person”. No, we’re not. Obviously.
I would prefer it if we just said- “we made a decision to rank you on these scores because it’s easier and everyone understands a score ranking and we love the certainty of one number”. That would be more honest. They’re not fooled anyway. They KNOW.
I think your husband is right.
The very identity of many of the “reformer” types seems to be inextricably linked with standardized tests.
Who puts his SAT score from half a century ago on his Wikipedia page?
Bill Gates, that’s who. (While it is possible that someone else put his score on that page, give the fellow’s anal personality, I’d bet that Gates keeps pretty close tabs on whatever goes up on his wiki page.
When this is the sort of mentality we are dealing with, is it any surprise that there is so much focus on test scores?
His SAT score on his Wikipedia page! Who would know what it was other than Bill himself?
Hmm, wonder how I find out what my SAT score was? Anyone know how?
All I remember about taking it was my mom coming in that Saturday morning in the spring of ’73-my senior year, waking me up, throwing me the keys to the station wagon and telling me I had to be at the site in like a half hour. I was still a tad drunk from the night before but I made it to the testing site, blurry-eyed, cotton mouthed, one huge headache and all.
DS
Wilson test-prep, circa ’73?
Rager,
For Billy? I’m sure he had Kaplan or some other test prep available to take advantage of. Whether he did or not or was just a good standardized test taker is unknown.
Now, if you’re referring to me, let’s just say that some of us were a tad wild (certainly not what the Brothers expected nor wanted). The stories (and the SAT one is mild) I could tell of my senior year would probably scorch most folk’s minds here. Wouldn’t want to do that now would I.
For me, it shows that hidden, unspoken curriculum and students learning many things (which for me in Catholic K-12 schools was how to be quite sneaky at getting around and avoiding the authorities and their rules) that weren’t intended is far more commonplace than most folks want to admit to!
Duane: I remember mine, circa 1966, perfectly well. And they were about the same as my kids got– strictly average. Back in my day that was good enough for Ivy League admission. Because I had straight A’s in the field I wanted to enter (ELA/ FL). My math grades & SAT # were barely middling– but I got an Ivy League BA w/o having to take a single math course! I remember cowering before the Dean of Arts&Sci at my interview, advising him I’d just learned I’d flunked the adv-chem Regents & would I have to take chem again? Puzzled, he took a 2nd look at my application & responded, but, you want to be a French major, no?
Meanwhile in NJ in the early 21stC for my sons, middling SAT scores would never have cut it for Ivy League entry! Fortunately they were targeting music-tech majors, which meant they were circumscribed to a handful of specialty schools whose admissions criteria were average on academics & heavy on performance/ tech ability.
It is a very important finding. Because it comes from one of the biggest Friedman-influenced, pro-school choicers out there. The entire reform movement and justifications for charter schools has been based on the “failing public schools” mantra. That mantra emerged from test scores driven by NCLB.
Peter Greene will have a field day with this.
Test scores are such a small part of what happens in a school. I don’t teach in an urban environment, but when asked what percentage of time I spend on subject matter and skill development, reformers might be surprised that the answer is less than 100%. As teachers, we are increasingly mentors and guides and less traditional educators. The complex nature of families (halfs, steps, dual income, single parent) has complicated things incredibly. I’ve invited people to job shadow me for a day. One (out fifteen) actually took me up on it. She followed me and three other colleagues that day so she could get multiple perspectives. Her response was that she was shocked at how important human relationships were in a school! Whoa, not drill and kill? Not endless content? The kids, from unstable households need a stable adult?
Yeah.
A few years ago I started inviting parents to come in and visit my class. Then I invited them again. And once again. In general, they really didn’t believe my sincere request. I’ve had a handful take me up on my offer, and they all remarked how different school is today compared to when they were in 9th grade.
Now, maybe it’s my class and the way that I teach that is different and not teaching in general, but if anything it reminded these parents about the human part of teaching, the gentle and sometimes firm interactions between me and my students, the humor and the sense of discovery.
They tend to remember the outliers…their favorite classes or their worst classes, and it truly colors their thinking about school and what goes on.
Consider inviting parents to visit, even if you teach in high school like I do. You would not believe the allies you gain for the teaching profession with that simple request.
Your post reminds me of a recent episode of ‘Classroom Closeup’ (NJ PBS). A mixed class of about age 9 (including reg, autistic, dev-delayed inner-city sch kids) was being taught thro song & game the simple niceties of saying hello & goodbye as they entered & left classrooms, as well as more intense focus on how to restrain oneself from blurting out negative feedback, how to temper communications so as to convey positive or at least neutral feedback. It was the sort of thing I see taught daily in PreK (I am an FL ‘special’ in lower-SES PreK’s).
Social communication — building-blocks of establishing social relationship– needs to be taught, & it needs to start early. If universal PreK becomes the law of the land, we need to ensure this emphasis. If PreK is allowed to become just a prep & adjunct to inappropriately-early emphasis on academics, we lose the window.
Test scores do not raise a child, does not provide a quiet place to study at home, does not lead to a love of reading, does not end hunger for those living in poverty, does not protect children from child abuse by parents/guardians, and does not replace the roll of professional, certificated, highly educated teachers in the public schools, teachers that also keep watch over the well being of students and have stepped into the line of fire to save the lives of children from crazed mass killers.
GREAT comment, Lloyd. THANK YOU! Right on.
Lloyd Lofthouse: eloquently stated.
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Nor does ignoring their struggles in literacy, numeracy, or any other subject. Nor does turning them loose as functional illiterates. Neither does placing blame on their demographics rather than rising to the responsibility and challenge to succeed in remediating them successfully… But it does perpetuate and feed the school to welfare & school to prison pipelines!
M
There is no school-to-prison pipeline, because children that live in poverty are born to poverty. The poverty and the damage it causes didn’t start when they turned 5 and enter kindergarten in a public school.
If there is a pipeline to prison, it is a poverty-to-prison pipeline and not a school-to-prison pipeline. The phrase “School to prison” pipeline was coined to blame prison populations in the U.S. on public schools, public school teachers and teachers’ unions.
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html
But what is the real cause of the U.S. being #1 in the world when compared to every other country on the planet for the size of its prison population?
It wasn’t the public schools. Up until President Nixon declared war on illegal drugs in 1971, the U.S. prison population averaged less than 200,000 Americans locked up in prisons.
But the first public school opened in Boston in 1820 and in 1851 the state of Massachusetts passed the first compulsory education laws with a goal to make sure that the children of poor immigrants get “civilized” and learn obedience and restraint, so they make good workers and don’t contribute to social upheaval. These laws continued to spread to other states until finally, in 1918, Mississippi was the last state to enact a compulsory school attendance law.
Now back to the chart for U.S. State and Federal Prison populations, 1925 – 2014.
Click to access Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf
The total U.S. Prison population did not pass 200,000 and continue to grow dramatically to where it is today until 1974, three years after Nixon declared war on drugs. For the 53 years before Nixon signed that punitive and faulty law, the U.S. prison populations were fairly constant for literally decades and below 200,000 with mandatory public schools in every state.
So, there is an argument to be made that the prison pipeline is caused by using or selling drugs and/or living in poverty but not from going to school.
All I can say is that our child is no different than the other children you describe coming from a demographic of poverty. What is different though is that child was provided with a meaningful remedial instructional program privately, outside of the public school system; not because we chose a private option- but ONLY BECAUSE WE WERE PUSHED OUT THERE TO OBTAIN IT. Therefore, I am confident that this experiment could be repeated with as much success if somebody bothered to test it out. But I’m not holding my breath for that to ever happen in the current public school system.
With the public schools being starved of funds to support programs that would enrich the education of children living in poverty and the fact that the public schools are being forced to test prep, I agree that we will not see this happen, but the most important people in a child’s life when it comes to literacy is the parent/guardian and not the 35 to 50 teachers a child has from K through 12.
The most important person is the parent and/or guardian that starts reading out loud to a child years before the child reaches kindergarten. It is also vital that the parent/guardian sets an example by reading magazines, newspapers and books on a regular daily basis where the child see it.
That usually means out with the TV, video games and mobile phones and in with library vists and family reading time.
That’s why my wife and I did for her daughter. No TV six days a week (and only two or three hours on the weekend that was spent as a famioly watching the TV that mother/father picked), no video games at all, and no mobile phone until she was in high school and then the time she spent on that mobile phone was monitored to make sure she was only using it for to call us when it was time to pick her up from school. As her parents we were the only ones that could make this happen. Not even one of her teachers had the authority to shut off the TV, ban video games from the house and say no to a mobile phone for a child.
A six year old can’t drive herself to the local library every week for ten years until she reaches high school.
Daughter is an avid reader, graduated from high school with a 4.65 GPA as an award winning scholor athlete and was accepted to Stanford where she graduated in June 2014. Last month she married her boyfriend that she met at Stanford where he graduated with a PhD in aeronautical enginnering with an emphasis on drone technology.
Plus, there are half a million children in foster care! Pray tell, what about all of those children? You as educators are their primary lifeline to success!!!! Many foster children bounce from home to home, especially the older ones and those with sibling groups! Teachers are the only option for many of these children to make sure that they actually learn how to become proficient in literacy & numeracy skill sets! Besides it your job and the mission of the public education systems to provide them with FAPE!
I think you are totally ignorant about teaching and have no idea what challenges and problems a teacher faces every day. If you are willing to learn, and I do not think you are, read “Crazy is Normal,” my memoir as a teacher based on a daily journal that I kept for one full school year back in 1994-95. Then you will discover the challenges that walk through the classroom door every day on two legs. The student population in the schools where I taught was 92% minority and 8% Caucasian and 70% or of the students lived in poverty in a community with violent and dangerous multi generational street gangs.
You have no clue and can preach and accuse all you want, but you don’t know what you are talking about. Like I said in a previous comment, you drank the corporate propaganda served as poisoned Kool-Aid a long time ago.
You all need to face reality. You have students from these demographics. You NEED TO EDUCATE ALL OF THE STUDENTS, not just those that are from upwardly mobile or intact families! The majority of children in the US live in poverty!!!! So YOU ALL NEED TO DEAL WITH THAT FACT!!! You all need to be successful at educating them! Education is the only hope for generational poverty to end. Besides the fact that the lowered bar is affecting not only those from poverty but also those that struggle from middle class families! It’s your job as public educators to SUCCESSFULLY EDUCATE ALL STUDENTS and to provide them with an education that provides more than a minimal benefit!!! We were able to do this as non-credentialed parents of a child from the demographics that you all describe at the problem with students today. It is possible and it is not rocket science! You just have to want to help them succeed and to benefit from a meaningful education!
This is the Dallas News with the near-weekly scolding on testing that parents are subjected to:
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20160609-editorial-parents-here-s-how-students-win-in-staar-wars.ece
If we’re measuring future success with test scores, and we are, why not just admit that?
Let the test-takers in on this wink, wink game we’re playing where we say it’s all very nuanced when actually we reduce it to one score ALL THE TIME. They’re a part of this. They’ve probably figured it out. Why would they trust us when we’re so clearly snowing them?
The editorial writers at the DallasMirning News should prove their sincerity by taking the 8th grade STAAR exam, and publishing the results.
YES.
“If we’re measuring future success with test scores. . . ”
See my comment below about that “measuring”.
Nuanced, trending and next-generation ….
The World Is Too Much With Us
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
This post made me think of this poem. So…better life outcomes are higher college attendance rates, college completion rates and higher earnings and grit. Perhaps we should really be teaching our children to reject the labels that will be placed on them by a society driven by materialism, consumerism, greed, and lack of common sense. Sorry, but no test score can predict anything about anything that happens in a person’s life 5, 10, 20 and more years down the line. We have lost all common sense if we think tests can predict success or failure in anything. It is up to the INDIVIDUAL to decide what success means in his or her life. Unfortunately, we teach kids that money is the sole indicator of success. Kids, the world is too much with you. And that goes for you adults, too.
Well conceived and so true, Mamie! Thanks for your excellent expression of your thoughts!
“Sorry, but no test score can predict anything about anything that happens in a person’s life 5, 10, 20 and more years down the line. We have lost all common sense if we think tests can predict success or failure in anything.”
So, so spot on!!
The idiocies of thinking that pass for supposed “knowledge” in current education discourse, both deform and status quo, is mind bogglingly bereft of logic and validity and leaves one to only conclude that we are indeed in very bad shape in regards to what the teaching and learning processes should entail. And it is the innocents, the children, the students who are being harmed by current inane educational malpractices espoused and implemented by 99.9% of the deformers and GAGA state departments of education, district officials, teachers, and administrators.
How the Chinese achieve high test scores. Wonder if the US is heading in this direction?
Photo Essay: China’s testing insanity
http://www.businessinsider.com/24-stunning-photos-of-chinas-college-entrance-exams-2015-6
A sampler:
A student takes a break from his 15 hour study session for the infamous “gaokao” college entrance exam.
Which is why they do so well on PISA aside from the Loveless critique of exclusion in Shanghai. I do believe they have become quite adept
in cheating as well.
But the Times true to their form does not question the appropriateness of testing or the education model in Asia.
No just the pros and cons of harsh sentences.
Check out the high tech cheating in the photo essay.
Campbell’s Law maximized!
China has had high stakes tests for about two thousand years. It stands to reason that the art of cheating on tests was elevated to a career industry there centuries ago, and I think the leaders of America’s autocratic, for-profit, opaque, flawed and often fraudulent corporate war on community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public education has probably learned a lot from that ancient industry. In fact, I suspect they may have all been students at Trump U.
Cheating on standardized tests is now a booming business in places like China and Korea.
Just last week, the makers of the ACT “discovered” that test questions had been released ahead of time and had to cancel the test in korea.
But how many other times has this occurred when they did not “discover” it?(or perhaps discovered it but id not reveal it)
Bear in mind that the people cheating on ACT and SAT (and undoubtedly also on GRE and MCAT) are going to college in the US.
These tests have so many problems that it is simply amazing that ANY college administrator would give them any credibility whatsoever.
It really does not say much for the admissions officers making college acceptance decisions.
For more particulars on the gaokao and related issues:
Yong Zhao, WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD DRAGON: WHY CHINA HAS THE BEST (AND WORST) EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE WORLD (2014).
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And that could NEVER happen in NYS!!!! http://eml.berkeley.edu/~jmccrary/Dee_Jacob_McCrary2011.pdf
NYS high school teachers have always tried to give students the benefit of the doubt when grading Regents exams, knowing full well that these graduation tests are not perfectly reliable. If a student scored a 63 or 64, it was common practice to try to “find” an extra point or two. This is not the same as hi-tech cheating on high stakes exam on the part of students.
RageAgainstTheTetocracy: It was statistically significant which goes beyond those instances of a few points. But it doesn’t surprise me to hear at least one subscriber here defend the (not so secret) practice of Regent scoring MANIPULATION (and another example of creative grading) this time extended to end of year HS student proficiency exams. It’s commendable to know someone would speak up to defend it.
I think the focus on test scores in ed reform came about because as far as PUBLIC schools, testing is the only thing that’s mentioned in ed reform.
If you’re a public school parent and all ed reform means to you is “testing”, there’s a very good reason for that- it’s the only issue they talk about re: PUBLIC schools.
This is an ed reform screed about how the “movement” is “waning”. Look at what a small percentage of it is ABOUT public schools- it’s 90% ABOUT charters.
https://www.edreform.com/2016/06/ed-reform-i-o-innovation-opportunity-results-a-manifesto/?utm_content=bufferb5d13&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
No wonder the “movement” is”waning”. They completely ignore 95% of the schools children actually attend. That’s the echo chamber effect- it’s a constant and glaring OMISSION. They don’t see public schools because they aren’t there.
Chiara: I think your first two paragraphs pinpoint an essential part of corporate education reform—
The focus on test scores is meant to displace, replace and eliminate discussion of anything of substance and importance regarding genuine teaching and learning.
And one of the many topics left unmentioned by the leading rheephormsters? The sorts of schools that THEIR OWN CHILDREN attend. Schools that from a rheephorm POV, inexplicably violate not only the spirit but often even the letter of the mandates they impose on OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
Thank you for your comments.
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Because it is the only objective measurement provided since a student’s grades are not based on proficiency of skill sets any longer! Grading has become creative and raised to an art form nowadays!
And Duane describes it below! Even better! And you wonder why there are accountability standards and standardized tests?!?! You just provided your own evidence! And why students are no longer learning to become proficient but instead are learning to just settle for being passed through year after year after year!!!
“Perhaps the goal of schooling should be to teach a well-rounded education, character, and citizenship? ”
When we do we will have better life outcomes . But of course the Ed reformers like Bill Gates or the Kochs and Waltons would seek to turn the University system away from the above goal as well . Turning them into certificate programs with narrow focus. I wonder why .I will do a slight twist on Krugman “Education, then, is no longer the answer to rising inequality, if it ever was (which I doubt).” Unless it is directed to the above mentioned goal . Which in my opinion is why we see the attack on education by the oligarchy .
We recognize the flaws in the corporate drive to declare success based on quarterly profits. Why is it harder to see that the same short term way of looking at student achievement and overall school success is also faulty?
I agree completely it’s part & parcel of the same mentality. However I think too few voters actually recognize the flaws. ‘Take the $ & run’ has been the national economic MO for 35 yrs now. Maybe too long for enough voters to recognize how basic a factor it is in broad consequences today.
I haven’t had a smile on my face this big in a long time 🙂 Diane, your idea is great, but this is one I have challenged a legislator to do before and I’m going to do it again. Every legislator in Texas should have to take to Exit Exams and have their scores made public.
Representatives/Senators scores could be published along side their major accomplishments in life (so far). For most of them, it might be ugly, but perhaps eye opening. Would they ask themselves how did I get this far in life with my low score(s)? Would they look at their peers with disdain if their score(s) were low? Perhaps their scores should determine their eligibility for committee assignments. I am putting the s in parenthesis ON PURPOSE. It would need to be decided if one score or an average of scores would determine success or failure. After all, the Body Politic themselves have dictated that campuses are to be judged by 1 score. What’s good for the goose…
For the public, well, they would have a choice to make. Do I keep voting for my rep if they have a LOW test score(s) or do I look at accomplishments, experience, and potential to make my decision.
A storm is coming in Texas and our parents need to be aware of the nuances of the reform movement. Test scores are the foundation of the reformers agenda. These test scores and the evidence refuting Reformers ideas remind me of the this Bible verse:
Matthew 7-24-26 26 “But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
In history, we have always been ambivalent about education. We have seen education as a moral imperative ( reference Jon Lovell’s Luther Disney article) and as an economic advantage (“O if I had the money, I’d do more than just feed them. I’d give them good learning, the best could be found. So that when they grew up they’d be checkers and weighers and not spend their life a’drillin in the dark underground” coal miner song). Which was more important?
Education, like all other parts of the American myth, is one part truth and many parts fantasy. Successful folks who are humble thank a high school teacher all the time when their success was either fortunate timing or hard work or both. It is part of the myth. But myths are so important to us. They define our value system.
So the insistence that we quantify our education to justify expenditure erodes the purpose of our value system. If we all believe that it is good to know things and have skills, it will produce a better society. We all know that. What we do not know is what will produce what. Kids who turned 18 to 23 in 1940 had come through school in the 1930s. That generation of Americans produced wildly creative solutions to the massive problems of defeating Hitler in the war. No one knows if it was the education, the leadership, or the accidents of effort (if you try hard, sometimes you win) that caused them to prevail. The education of that generation did not impede their effort.
We really do not know what we ought to be teaching. We do know that students either push against their teachers or desire to emulate them or both. We also know that only those who spend their lives learning actually get an education. The more important question is how the learner views learning after the fact. If a person recalls schooling as positive, whether that individual gets a chance to learn more as time goes on or whether life takes away that chance in their work, they will support learning as a political individual, and all will benefit.
Well stated Roy!
“But myths are so important to us. They define our value system.”
Exactly and when those myths are harmful and destructive of the citizenry we shouldn’t tolerate those myths. See my comment below for a short expose of one of those myths that has unfortunately held forth for many decades now.
“Test scores don’t measure that.”
Almost missed that one, Diane! You know what’s coming, eh?!
Tests, whether standardized or teacher made, don’t “measure” anything, nothing, nil, zilch.
They are not “measuring” devices as there is no agreed upon standard unit of measurement, no measuring device calibrated against that standard and there is no standard error of measurement determined (certainly not even with the psychometrician’s insistence that there is.)
The misuse and abuse of the meanings of standard and measure are nothing more than a linguistic sleight of hand to attempt to give these testing malpractices an aura of objectivity or “scientificity”.
But every now and then the supporters of the testing malpractices actually tell the truth, albeit unwittingly. Richard Phelps in his new book “Correcting the Fallacies about Educational and Psychological Testing” states: “Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course, but in this volume we focus on the measurement [sic] of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits. Both surveys and tests measure [sic] mental traits.” [my addition]
Notice the argument technique of equating two thing by proximity-engineering tests and psychometric testing, implying that psychometric testing has the same validity as standardized engineering tests.
Read that quote again. What stands out? To me what stands out is that Phelps claims that psychometric testing “measures the ‘nonobservable'”. Oops, Mr. Phelps, if something is “nonobservable” how in the hell can it be “measured”.
Really, Mr. Phelps, do you think we’re that gullible?
Evidently “we” are that gullible because the vast majority of people believe in the pronouncements of the oracles of psychometry, oops I mean psychometrics and in the educational malpractices they produce. Ignorant sheep 99% of educators or those educators willingly close their eyes, ears and minds to the inherent logical contradictions (“measuring” the unobservable) and invalidities of psychometrics.
Until we recognize and reject that psychometric claptrap and drivel the holocaust of children’s minds and being will continue.
Which side are you on???
Dwayne: how often have I thought words very close to what you have just said. It actually makes me insecure I the grades I give in my own classes. This feeling of insecurity makes me seek all the harder to make it plain to the students those things that are important.
I used to tell the students at the beginning of the year “grading” policy discussion that grades were bull shit. Now, I didn’t use that term but used things like bovine excrement (they understood quite well what I meant), lies, falsehoods, utter nonsense. I let them know how we were going to play the grading game and that if they did all the required work, first they would learn Spanish, and second they would get either a high B or an A because I set up the grade point system to be heavily weighted to just doing the work and the tests and quizzes counted for maybe 25% so that even if they only got 50% on tests and quizzes then they’d still get a high B. I also told them that I’d never seen a student who did all the work as asked get anything less than an A.
By high school the students usually understand that grades are bullshit and the ones that truly want to learn will and those that want to play the grade game with the points will do so without really learning much.
As I used to say “If you learn it (Spanish) it (the desired A) will come”
One other thing. One year they made nice new “teacher name and schedule” sign to put above our room number next to the door. Now I had been at the school for about 8 years and every year I got more than one communication with my name misspelled. I always politely let them know they had it wrong. Well they misspelled my name again on this sign. Instead of getting pissed I wrote the following with a black sharpie on the sign so that my misspelled name fit into the writing
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
(Where my first name was on the sign) Dwayne!
Dwayne who?
Dwayne the bathtub I’m dwowning!
Needless to say the student’s loved it. And the parent’s loved it.
So did the other teachers.
Fortunately never heard a word from the adminimals about defacing school property!
Physicists long ago had — and resolved — the debate about what is and is not measurable.
They rightly concluded that that which can not be observed can not be measured.
They actually called the measurable things “observables” to make the point perfectly clear.
That’s not to say that you can’t find things out about things that are not directly observable. You can, by observing the effects on other things. But you can’t perform measurements on non-observable things. That does not even make sense.
A “Quark” is an example of something that can never be observed directly — and hence not measured.
Thanks for that explication SDP!
I’m in the process of reading Phelp’s book and boy is it a doozy of nonsense, attempting to make standardized testing as already having been proven to be “scientific”. When I have finished reading it a couple of times, I’ll be writing about it. And you guessed it, in a book about correcting the “fallacies” that are out there about standardized testing not a word about Wilson’s critique. Perhaps that is a tacit acceptance that what he says about standards and testing is true, accurate, valid, etc. . . .
I’m also concurrently reading the last three testing bibles “Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing” to see how it has evolved in the successive volumes, how some concepts have changed, how in the newest not a single reference to or rebuttal of Wilson’s critique. Not sure what will become of this reading but we’ll see.
Standardized testing is a perfectly balanced house of cards.
As long as you don’t disturb any part of it, the whole thing remains standing, but the slightest breeze collapses the entire structure.
It’s certainly not the kind of thing people should be basing high stakes decisions on.
Duane Swacker and SomeDAM Poet:
Speaking strictly for myself, I find your above back-and-forth to be one of the most informative I have ever read on this blog—and I have visited this website since Day 1.
So very much said in so very few words. Or as Dorothy Parker put it:
“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”
😳 Oops! Non Sequitur.
But to get back on topic…
Folks should keep in mind that rheephorm’s house of psychometric cards aka high-stakes standardized testing, rigged to produce seemingly objective numerical information in order to test and punish—
Even by their own self-serving definitions and standards, it is no secret among psychometricians that those standardized test scores are inherently imprecise proxies for the things we are most interested in and want to know about.
So keep using logic, facts, good sense and critical thinking skills to skewer their arrogant pretensions.
Topped off with a dash or two of humor because, as an American wit once observed:
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” [Mark Twain]
A most hearty thanks for your comments.
😎
The most ridiculous thing about standardized testing is that it flips the usual idea of measurement on its head.
With normal science, one defines the thing to be measured — speed of a car, for example — and then uses some particular method to do the measurement. Critically, the answer one gets for the speed does not depend on the method used for measuring. Whether I use radar, sonar, or a stopwatch to time the car going a certain distance, I get the same answer.
In the case of standardized testing, the so-called “psychometricians” actually define what it is they are supposedly measuring in terms of the “measurement” instrument (test) itself and call that “learning”, “education”, “growth” or whatever. Because the “learning” is actually defined by the test, different tests can — and do — indicate different “learning”.
This sort of situation — where what is supposedly being measured not only depends on, but is actually DEFINED BY the “measurement” instrument — is pervasive in everything from IQ tests to SAT’s to VAMs.
It’s just weird.
Exactly SDP! Excellent comment.
Not only weird but certainly not a “scientific” way to go about things even though in what I am currently reading the supporters consistently claim scientific validity, that their process belongs in the “science” camp of discourse.
To me it is one huge scam that has been perpetrated on the unknowing public for years. There’s a lot of dollars to be made in the psychometric business. And those who excel at taking standardized tests (many deformers and privateers and GAGA teachers and administrators, state ed department bureaucrats, etc. . . ) are the ones who promote their usage for any and everything.
Psychometrics really does equal Psychometry* and should be rightly rejected as the latter has been.
*For those not familiar with psychometry here is a definition: “Psychometry (from Greek: ψυχή, psukhē, “spirit, soul” and μέτρον, metron, “measure”), also known as token-object reading, or psychoscopy, is a form of extrasensory perception characterized by the claimed ability to make relevant associations from an object of unknown history by making physical contact with that object.” from wiki.
If we were to dream of an educational utopia, we all might arrive at some replacement for grades and credits. Some of this took place in comments about the Queen article elsewhere. I would like to do away with grades altogether and replace them with short declarations of competency as demonstrated to a teacher. These “credits” for the lack of a better word, would simply suggest that a student had seemed to the teacher to have a grasp of some general body of relavent material.
Why even go that “credit” route? The term “credit” would just be a substitute for “grade”. It’s not the public schools function/purpose to sort and separate students for anyone, colleges & universities, for business or for the military. Let those entities doetheir own assessment however they want. Let’s not spend precious teaching and learning time doing their job.
An example report from a teacher and student may look something like:
-Days attended (perhaps with some comments by student as to missed days if they seem excessive)
-Learning of subject: Teacher and student agree upon some brief description of student learning. (this would be built into the process as no time spent on grades/grading can free up time more valuably spent on the teaching and learning process so that at the end of the quarter/semester/year it should already be done as part of the process). It could include portfolios, student work or just an agreed upon summary-whatever the student (in the case of elementary and perhaps middle school this would also require a parent component-I’ve seen it done and it works wonderfully) and teacher agree upon.
By definition the dynamics of a class would change from one of teacher dominance to a more collaborative teaching and learning environment.
You’re right, Duane
Psychometrics is not science.
The basis of science is making a (null) hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis to see if it is false (You can never prove it true, only false).
The test can only be done after you have properly defined what it is you are testing. Properly defined means defined in such a way that it can be falsified, at least in principle.
The psychometricians seem to actually believe that you can reverse this normal scientific method and still be doing science.
But you can’t.
It’s actually absurd to think that you can come up with a test first and then define what it is you are testing. But that is precisely what these psychos do all the time.
I think that many of them actually know full well that what they are doing is not legitimate, which is why they go hunting for “correlations” after the fact (eg, between test scores and college grades) to lend an air of legitimacy to their actions.
Unfortunately (for them), correlation is not causation and their correlations are typically so low as to be essentially meaningless, but none of this seems to bother these folks.
They simply assume that correlation equals causation and redefine the standard interpretation of correlations (eg, a VAM that explains only 1-14% of the variance in student standardized test score “growth” “magically” becomes indicative of a significant correlation, when in fact, just the opposite is true: in real science, that means the correlation is very weak to nonexistent and says nothing at all about causation)
Again, very well stated, SDP!!
I’ve found in education “research” that correlation coefficients of .4-.6 are considered “strong”. If someone considers a 1 out of 6 to a 1 out of 3 a “strong” chance, I have some great games of chance that they can bet on at those odds. The resulting causation for me is more money in my pocket!
I don’t know if it’s ALWAYS measurable when it’s observable, but I can tell you that my foster son’s areas of academic weakness and struggles was so obvious a blind teacher would have seen areas where he needed remedial instruction provided. But instead it was an illustration of ignoring the obvious issues at hand (similar to the story of the emperor’s wardrobe malfunction being ignored by everyone…) And hence why there are Decoding Dyslexia groups throughout the country speaking up about the current literacy instruction crisis and failures throughout this state and the country demanding legislation to require teachers to be informed and knowledgeable AND TRAINED IN ORTON GILLINGHAM methodologies and ensuring programs are implemented with fidelity in the classrooms across this country!
Have not heard about the Gillingham methodologies. Will have to look it up. Thanks!
Duane,
Orion-Gillingham is a method of teaching reading phonetically. Its devotees love it.
Well Diane, as you say “Its devotees love it.”
They love it because it has been proven to work for those students that struggle with Dyslexia and similar reading struggles!
If your child has fallen through the cracks of the public (and private in many cases) educational systems, and your neuro-psychologist recommends an Orton-Gillingham (OG)methodology be used, when the typical Whole Word/WholeLanguage/LLI/Fontas & Pinnell methods have failed to produce results, I’m confident you would most likely be a “devotee” & “love it” too!
Orton-Gillingham has been proven to work for most students (Special Education struggling Dyslexics as well as those in General Education) and I am confident that if schools were trained to implement it WITH FIDELITY they would see the amazing results that could finally close the gaps and start an end to the significant illiteracy struggles this country faces in the public school classrooms and start to turn the existing tide regarding functional illiteracy.
And for those that need even greater help with learning the foundational blocks of language, which is the basis for learning to read and then to write successfully, some have to use methodologies such as LindaMoodBell’s programs, before they can benefit from OG methods. (If you haven’t studied it or used the OG methods, please do not knock it and mock those that have had success when they’ve implemented it with fidelity and succeeded to close the gaps students have struggled with for years when the traditional methods such Whole Language/LLI/Fontas & PInnell failed to close!)
Are you one of the educators that does not believe in Dyslexia?
http://dyslexia.yale.edu/whatisdyslexia.html
Are you aware of The Dyslexia Center at Yale
http://dyslexia.yale.edu/aboutcenter.html
Do you disagree with The Shaywitzes research on Dyslexia and the Orton-Gillingham methods?
http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Research.html
Do you disagree with the members of Decoding Dyslexia across this country?
http://www.saydyslexia.org
Do you dare #SayDyslexia?
Thanks for the info, Diane. I did look it up and the method appears solid in my scant knowledge of it. But then again, I taught a very phonetic language, Spanish. How it’s written, if you know “the code”, i.e., the sounds of the letters, is how it is spoken. Spanish really does attempt to have the written word (which came after the spoken word) correspond to the spoken word, i.e., phonetically.
By the way, your response just showed up in my response box today, wasn’t there last night. I’ve not been notified by wordpress on a number of responses to my posts. I’ve figured out that it is just kind of “glitchy”, oh well.
“The nation’s main charter school advocacy group said people should be “outraged” at how little learning occurs at some online schools and called on states to take several steps to restrict and improve them.”
One would think this would give ed reformers pause when pushing online learning into every public school, but they’re all promoting it, from the Obama Administration on down.
I resent when marketing is presented as fact. That isn’t the role of public employees- they shouldn’t be pushing product.
Is anyone going to call Jeb Bush’s outfit on this? Mr. Bush and his team are aggressively selling ed tech product. They need to stop before public schools invest a ton in this. Stop. It’s irresponsible.
If ed reform is serious about regulating the online for-profits, maybe they could find the courage to insist these companies take their ads down.
When this was sold to people in Ohio no one told us taxpayers would be footing the bill to benefit for-profit companies who would then buy our legislature with our own money.
They bought two Ohio lawmakers with 100,000 of our money. Thanks, ed reform! Good job! It’s freaking robbery.
“SomeDAM Poet
June 16, 2016 at 1:55 pm
I think your husband is right.
The very identity of many of the “reformer” types seems to be inextricably linked with standardized tests.
Who puts his SAT score from half a century ago on his Wikipedia page?
Bill Gates, that’s who. (While it is possible that someone else put his score on that page, give the fellow’s anal personality, I’d bet that Gates keeps pretty close tabs on whatever goes up on his wiki page.
When this is the sort of mentality we are dealing with, is it any surprise that there is so much focus on test scores?”
Right? Because it would be impolite and bizarre if he posted his IQ, so he just uses this socially acceptable proxy 🙂
It’s a fact that these people think test scores are hugely important. Denying that is silly.
Prestigious colleges are ALSO hugely important to them. I know that because of the constant invocations of Best and Brightest and how all other colleges are treated as lesser.
Let’s just all be honest about what we value. It isn’t going nights to community college while working at McDonalds.
Research years ago showed NO correlation between IQ. test scores and several of the things often associated with “success in life”.
Books were written.
The only thing that seemed to correlate with success was your AQ. your adversity quotient, how well you handle adversity.
For a while it was THOUGHT that your EQ, emotional quotient had a correlation but it proved not to be that correlative either.
BUT, as I remember, the AQ did correlate better than ANY of the other ASSUMED entities.
BUT
who cares about truth or research anymore.
MONEY talks, NO Money screams.
What about GQ?
I thought that was what really mattered (at least to men)
If the hedge fund managers and bankers score well on tests, that tells us that the tests are flawed beyond redemption, b/c the financial sector drags down GDP. If the hedge fund managers and bankers have grit, their grit contributes less than nothing to the economy.
Outside of “human capital pipeline” influence peddlers, what is the total value of Gates’ Microsoft-created jobs, in the past 15 years? If the value has not grown proportionately greater than Bill’s wealth, his SAT scores are reflective of a lack of sustained value to society.
I wonder if Lin Manuel Miranda scored “Proficent” on his fourth grade LAL test!!
Galton:
TARGO!
😎
“At five, Miranda tested into Hunter College Elementary School–the only child he knew from his neighborhood to do so.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons
Hunter is one of the nation’s preeminent public schools for the academically gifted. Admission to the elementary school is limited to 25 girls and 25 boys who live in Manhattan. Applicants–who are four years old–first take a formal Stanford Binet V IQ test; the cut-off to qualify for the second round is usually around 149-150. After that, applicants go through a 90-minute long observation/classroom simulation with 8 other applicants.
Hunter students do not take the state tests so we’ll never know for sure, but I believe the odds are very good that Miranda would have scored “proficient” as a fourth grader.
It’s interesting to note that two-thirds of the lottery losers in the SEED random study attended either DC charter schools or magnets.
Greene is a staunch supporter of vouchers, charters, and parent choice. He believes that regulators rely too much on test scores to evaluate charter schools or voucher programs; for the most part he wants parental demand to be the deciding factor.
It is nice to see people at opposite ends of the debate champion a full well-rounded curriculum, though, including the arts.
It’s the end of deform as we know it
It’s the end of deform as we know it
It’s the end of deform as we know it
And I feel fried
“Be sure to open the link to read the full post, which is very informative.”
Perhaps even go one step further and read research Greene cites. I just looked at the West and Angrist studies and they don’t seem to very well support Greene’s speculation.
Greene states: “Research by Marty West and colleagues of no excuses charter schools in Boston found large gains in test scores but also significantly lowered student performance on noncognitive measures,” and Greene proceeds to assert “a reduction in noncognitive skills”.
However West et al don’t actually seem to believe that they found reduced skills, but instead relatively modest self-evaluations: “Despite making larger testscore gains than students attending open-enrollment district schools, charter school students rate themselves lower, on average, on measures of conscientiousness, self-control, and grit.”
Diane, are you, like Mr. Greene, persuaded that “Rate themselves lower” equates to a “reduction in noncognitive skills”?
Marty West and colleagues clearly are not so persuaded: “More specifically, students attending academically and behaviorally demanding charter schools may redefine upward their notion of what it means to demonstrate conscientiousness, self-control, and grit—and thus rate themselves more critically. In theory, such reference bias could be severe enough to distort the magnitude of any changes in the underlying traits and even to invert their sign.”
And while Greene is correct that Angrist’s study showed lower 4-year graduation for charter school students relative to other charter lottery participants who did not attend charter schools, Greene neglects to mention either the gritty 5-year graduation rates, or other material in the Angrist study such as:
“Our findings suggest that the gains from Boston’s high-performing charter high schools extend well beyond high-stakes tests. Charter attendance doubles the likelihood that a student sits for an Advanced Placement (AP) exam, with especially large gains in the share of students taking science exams. Attending a charter school quadruples the likelihood of taking an AP Calculus exam and increases the fraction of students earning an AP Calculus score high enough to qualify for college credit from 2%, for noncharter attendees, to 13%, for charter attendees. Charters also boost SAT scores sharply, especially in math…. Although overall college enrollment effects are not statistically significant, charter attendance induces a clear shift from 2-year to 4-year colleges, with gains most pronounced at 4-year public institutions in Massachusetts.”
“Our analysis also links gains on accountability assessments to gains in later outcomes, finding that effects on the two sets of outcomes are highly positively correlated. In other words, whether or not state assessments are of intrinsic interest, gains on state tests predict gains elsewhere. Finally, because Boston’s charter applicants are positively selected relative to the traditional Boston Public School (BPS) population, we explore the possibility that peer composition mediates charter effects. The results of this exploration are inconsistent with the notion that changes in peer composition account for our main findings.
[…]
“Taken together, the estimates reported here show that charter high school attendance generates gains through college preparation and institutional choice as well as in short-run achievement.”
[…]
“Charter schools are sometimes said to generate gains by the selective retention of higher-performing students — see, e.g., Skinner 2009. In this view, charter effectiveness is at least partly attributed to a tendency to eject trouble-makers and stragglers, leaving a student population that is easier to teach.”
[…]
“These results suggest that positive charter effects cannot be attributed to low-quality peers leaving charter schools. If anything, selective exit of low achievers is more pronounced at Boston’s traditional public schools.”
I thought Greene was looking for outcomes beyond test scores. This post only looks at charter successes at AP exams and the like. What about the things Greene was talking about.
Stephen Ronan,
The evidence you cite is not a very impressive demonstration of the superiority of charter schools. Jay Greene is a choice advocate. If he can’t find gains, no one can. Credit his honesty.
“I thought Greene was looking for outcomes beyond test scores.”
Ironically, one of Greene’s principal points seems to be that the charter school students have lower test scores… on measures like grit where his interpretation of the scores is highly suspect. While he alludes to “later life outcomes” neither he nor the research he specifies provides persuasive evidence in that regard. The SEED study he cites states: “The study followed those students through the 2013-2014 academic year, which means that only a small number of them could have graduated from high school or enrolled in college during the study period. Thus, while improving students’ performance in college is a key goal of SEED’s, it is too soon to assess whether SEED improves students’ postsecondary outcomes.”
Diane, you write: “Jay Greene is a choice advocate. If he can’t find gains, no one can. ”
Matt Di Carlo blogging April 16, 2016 at the Albert Shanker Institute:
“It seems that attending Florida charter high schools is associated with better attainment and higher earnings after graduation, but not higher test scores before graduation.”
http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/charter-schools-and-longer-term-student-outcomes
Stephen,
Any review of the long-term impact of charter schools must take into account the high attrition from such schools. If 50% of the students don’t make it to 12th grade, the winnowing leaves only the most successful students. What about the other 50%?
Is there really social value in destroying public education and handing the best students off to for-profit corporations?
Diane Ravitch: “Any review of the long-term impact of charter schools must take into account the high attrition from such schools. If 50% of the students don’t make it to 12th grade, the winnowing leaves only the most successful students. What about the other 50%?”
Anti-charter school advocates here in Massachusetts and elsewhere have for many years disseminated seriously defective statements concerning relative attrition of charter and traditional public schools. I hope you recognize the faultiness of such data and wish you would advise ’em to stop.
For Boston, you’d find relatively recent and reliable data here, see page 36:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/research/reports/2016/02CharterReport.pdf:
You celebrate Greene’s speculation citing an isolated, non-representative, element of Angrist’s research. But apparently don’t accept Angrist’s own analysis that: “Charter schools are sometimes said to generate gains by the selective retention of higher-performing students — see, e.g., Skinner 2009. In this view, charter effectiveness is at least partly attributed to a tendency to eject trouble-makers and stragglers, leaving a student population that is easier to teach.
[…]
“These results suggest that positive charter effects cannot be attributed to low-quality peers leaving charter schools. If anything, selective exit of low achievers is more pronounced at Boston’s traditional public schools.”
Ravitch: “Is there really social value in destroying public education and handing the best students off to for-profit corporations?”
Aside from the fact that none of the charter schools in Angrist’s study or anywhere in Massachusetts are owned or operated by for-profit corporations, the Boston public schools claim convincingly to have improved substantially alongside a growing charter sector. Perhaps the competition has had a beneficial causative effect, perhaps it’s an accidental correlation. I realize that results may differ in other regions and appreciate the efforts of folks like Matt Di Carlo to assess the relevant variables.
Stephen,
Charter schools are free to accept the students they want and to exclude those that they don’t want. One Boston charter study found that charters have few ELLs; one of the top performers had zero ELLs. Across the country, urban districts face fiscal collapse as charters drain resources and students.
To destroy public schools for the sake of competition is shameful.
Diane Ravitch: “Charter schools are free to accept the students they want and to exclude those that they don’t want. One Boston charter study found that charters have few ELLs; one of the top performers had zero ELLs.”
In striving to understand to what degree, if at all, any scarcity of ELLs in Boston charter schools may relate to their reported successes, I find Elizabeth’s Setren’s research helpful. It doesn’t focus much on the variability between individual schools, but does provide a helpful overview in respect to students with special needs: http://economics.mit.edu/files/11208
“This paper uses admissions lotteries to estimate the effects of Boston’s charter school enrollment on student achievement and classification for special needs students.”
[…]
“Charters generate academic gains even for the most disadvantaged charter applicants. Special needs students who scored in the bottom third on their state exams in the year of the lottery experience large positive effects of over 0.22 standard deviations in math. English Language Learners with the lowest baseline English exam scores have the largest gains. Students with the most severe needs–special education students who spent the majority of their time in substantially separate classrooms and ELLs with beginning English proficiency at the time of the lottery–perform significantly better in charters than in traditional public schools.”
“I also document striking differences in special needs classification practices in Boston charter and traditional public schools. Charter enrollment nearly doubles the likelihood that a student in special education at the time of the lottery loses this classification by the beginning of the following school year. Moreover, charters are three times as likely to remove an ELL classification. Charters are also three times more likely than traditional public schools to move special education students into general education classrooms. Classification practices are weakly correlated to charter gains, suggesting that special needs classification is not essential for special needs students to make progress.”
[…]
This paper “documents that special needs students are now proportionally represented in charter lotteries. Even those with the highest need are close to proportional representation in charter lotteries. Furthermore, charters remove special needs classifications at a higher rate than traditional public schools and move special education students to more inclusive classrooms. These differences in classification practices make the proportion of special needs students in charters appear smaller.”
Diane Ravitch: “Across the country, urban districts face fiscal collapse as charters drain resources and students. To destroy public schools for the sake of competition is shameful.”
I would find those with that view more persuasive if they distinguished effectively between places where that may plausibly be the case and those regions where the evidence suggests that public schools are actually improving in the context of a more competitive landscape. Here are just a few of the many measures that Boston Public Schools uses to tout its improvements while the sector of independent charter schools grows…
“* On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Mathematics – also known as the “Nation’s Report Card” – Boston 4th and 8th grade students’ gains exceeded the national average for all public schools, including suburban schools. This is the first time since measurements began that any urban school district has met this mark.
* Since 2007, the BPS four year graduation rate has steadily increased, reaching its highest rate ever in 2015 despite more demanding standards required by the state for graduation; and the percentage of ninth graders who dropped out before graduation decreased to its lowest point ever for the Class of 2014.
* Since 2009, BPS has increased the number of schools with extended learning time from four to 24. Today, one in five students attends a school with a longer school day; and one in five students attends one of our award winning summer learning initiatives named the best in the nation in 2013.
* Nine out of 10 elementary and middle school students are receiving weekly arts education, up from 67% in 2009; and the number of high school students accessing arts education has doubled in three years.”
What underlies any sense you have, Diane, that BPS schools are actually in the process of being destroyed by increased presence of independent charter schools?
Ok all of you so called educational professionals…. It’s not so much the actual test scores, as much as what the proficiency level of this normed populations of students demonstrates.
I can tell you first hand that the areas of weakness that students exit traditional public school with match up pretty well to the standardized college entrance testing results you are dismissive of because it illuminates a weakness in what you are employed for- that educate all students with more than minimal benefit academically, etc….
Also most people single out public schools because that is the school system we are forced to support with our taxes, although much of the same types of issues can be found in the private schools as well (again using personal experience as the reference point.)
Homeschooling is going to be the next target as more and more families realize they have that option and they will utilize it more and more as they realize that high school today is pretty much a waste of time, which I think must be why they’ve started to implement the college classes into more and more high schools starting in middle school.
Our son who was placed with us in 8th grade at 13 who came from the demographics and with LDs and was left behind every year even with his foster parents advocating for proper services for the prior 3.5 school years, was denied the needed services offered to others in the school and documented by his medical providers as needing, pushing yet another student and family to the private and NFP sectors to obtain the proper remedial instruction and assistive technology to make the unheard of gains that were made by the same types of students you say are the problem. And rarely were we met with support from the professional school staff and admins who preferred to ignore the students remedial needs for literacy and numeracy skills.
But if non-credentialed people with no prior formal training in education can do what the massive number of supposedly professional teachers and school admins could of not do, then so be it.
I’m anxiously awaiting this next educational movement as parents continue turning more and more to homeschooling as a viable alternative to the failed traditonal public school model!
(Pass the popcorn please!)
M,
As more parents work at two jobs to make ends meet, I seriously doubt that homeschooling will become the next Big Thing. No one is home. As for children with special needs, once they leave the public sector, they have no educational rights. Witness the charter schools, which push them out with no consequences
OMG…. Lloyd you are so ignoring the role and the responsibility that the teacher plays in such children’s life and how these kids may not have the family support that you keep throwing out there as was provided to your own daughter! But, just so you know, I can tell you that we did do what you noted that you did for your daughter.
But guess what, it was still the public schools responsibility to provide my son with FAPE and to close the gaps he had, which they ignored repeatedly! It was obvious what those challenges were. We were doing what a parent should do, but that does not lessen the educational responsibility that the schools and the teachers have for these kids!
Our son’s homeroom teacher was the AIS teacher and his English teacher! We pleaded for remedial instruction and for AIS. They refused to provide it. His struggles were ignored! It was the teacher and the school’s fault that he was not given the remedial instruction to close gaps he had. They repeatedly denied providing remedial reading, writing & math instruction that was effective & meaningful, for 3 school years!!! We were forced to get private OG Wilson & Alphabetic Phonics tutoring outside of the school, even while the school offered it to others, but repeatedly denied my son the program, even after the neuro-psychologist and the medical providers reiterated that it was what he needed. He/we spent 6 hours a week outside of school obtaining what should have been provided during the school day! Practically another full school day was spent on our own time & dime when the school should have provided it in his school day schedule for those 2.5 years that we spent obtaining it privately!
But back to the bigger issue which you are ignoring. Yes, actually it is the school’s and the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that each and every child in their classroom is learning and becomes as proficient as they possibly can! Especially for those from broken homes, or latchkey kids, or those in foster care, or those that are homeless! It takes a village and you get PAID to teach these kids to read, write and do math proficiently! As well as to help them to learn about science & geography, etc! It indeed is your job as the professional educator!!! Your success in your job & role of a professional educator is to change the future for these children! You can change their trajectory from another generation of poverty, welfare or prison.
I did not drink the KoolAid, but I am raising one of these children of poverty, though. The same type of child that you all blame for their demographics and ignore their struggles and pass them thru each year, because it is easier for you and cheaper for the school district, and these kids don’t tend to have people advocating for them. And then even if they do, even though the foster care caseworkers are not their educational parent if they are classified as Special Ed students, and the schools are supposed to appoint an educational parent, but that rarely happens. It took us 3 years to get that official and we were into the adoption process when it was finally granted. (Even though the law states it’s supposed to happen within a specified time span after their initial placement in the school, it rarely does.)
All I can tell you is that this young adult is the same as those other children of poverty in your classroom that you probably wrote off based upon their demographics. I can tell you that this kid is soaring academically now and is ahead of his general ed cohorts, not because of his public school education, but despite it!
He graduated as a Jr from HS with his Freshman year of college completed and an Advanced Regent diploma in hand and will have an AS degree from the local community college by the end of the following summer (or sooner if they accept his transfer credits for the classes he took at the other community college.) And then in the Fall, he’s transferring to a 4-year college as a Junior at 17 yrs old. This child is not gifted, but is a hard worker and shatters all of your theories about poverty being a huge roadblock for learning. I’m sorry, but that is totally bull excrement! What it takes is a teacher or another adult interested enough in ensuring academic and social and emotional success for the children in your classroom and the schools making sure they get the PROPER INSTRUCTION and services!!! It’s not even a monetary expense as much as an investment in time and an investment in the student! So if that is drinking the KoolAid, then I’ll continue to drink it. My child is just like these other children growing up in poverty and sometimes living in bad situations. It doesn’t make them any less worthy of being provided with what they need to succeed in school and to become proficient readers and writers. Poverty and learning disabilities do not need to equate to being cognitively challenged or neglected by their schools nor does it mean you can pull the academic plug on these children and youth! In fact, it means you need to do the opposite and provide them with more experiences, more instruction, and more support so they can close the gaps in their academic foundations! And if we as foster/adoptive-parents without being professional educators and without education credentials, if we were able to provide a child with the right supports, using the recommendations of the neuro-psychologist and medical providers, who attended 2 CSE meetings back to back to re-iterate this to the CSE members, only to be denied to provide it to him, then you all should be able to do the same for each and every child in your schools and your classrooms! My son has shattered all of the excuses I’ve heard about why public schools are failing to help students from these backgrounds meet with academic success, and blaming poverty as the reason. It just does not hold up. And all it took was OG instruction for 2.5 years, although if it had been offered in the school with fidelity it would have been provided daily for an hour of reading instruction and an hour of writing instruction. If my kiddo could have had that instruction each day I truly feel that he could have closed the gap entirely, but we had to compromise and therefore, although he narrowed the gaps significantly, I still think there is room for continued improvement if he was in a program that would provide the daily reinforcement and practice, but since he’s in college now, he will have to depend more on his alternative formatted texts and audiobooks as well as AT, because his reading is still not accurate enough to get through the scientific texts with the level of accuracy and comprehension and speed that is needed for success in Veterinary & Science classes. So, the next time you dismiss a student because of their demographics, I hope you will think twice, and know that the future for these kids is in your hands and the importance of the role you play in their life for that school year and beyond for their future!
You are still wrong. It is not the responsibility of the school to close any gaps your child has. It is the responsibly of the school to offer an opportunity for the child to learn and then it is up to the child to do the learning.
Teachers can’t create miracles.
Condemning about 3.5 million public school teachers in fifty states (with a different ed code in each state) with about 15,000 different public school districts teaching more than 50 million students because your child is having problems learning in one school in one school district in one state is wrong on so many counts.
If your child is having a problem learning, then that issue is with one school and not every public school teacher in the country.
OMG…. No Lloyd, you are the one that is mistaken!
My child’s adopted from foster care!
My child came to us with learning differences that a BLIND PERSON COULD HAVE SEEN!!!
My child was in 3 other schools before coming to live with us and then we tried 3 other schools AND THEY WERE ALL THE SAME!
They ALL CHOSE TO IGNORE HIS AREAS OF WEAKNESS!!!
THEY ALL CHOSE TO PUSH HIM THRU WITHOUT PROVIDING THE PROPER REMEDIAL INSTRUCTION AND SERVICES THAT HE WAS ENTITLED TO RECIEVE TO MAKE MORE THAN MINIMAL BENEFIT FROM HIS EDUCATION!
IT WAS NOT only ONE SINGLE SCHOOL THAT FAILED HIM!!!! IT WAS A TOTAL OF 6 SCHOOLS —- THAT FAILED TO PROVIDE THE PROPER SERVICES TO CLOSE THE GAPS HE HAD DEVELOPED and which were REINFORCED by INEFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION ON THE PART of his TEACHERS! “TEACHERS” such as yourself that blame the CHILDREN rather that yourself for not doing more to help them and to ensure that your school is helping them and that they are not being left behind and falling thru the educational cracks!!!!
My child is like the other half a million children in this country in foster care and the millions more in poverty and from the working middle class that are being educationally NEGLECTED by supposedly trained and licensed “professionals” who don’t have a clue or interest in doing their job nor are being held accountable for pushing thru kids who are functionally illiterate in reading, writing and numeracy!!!!
This is why parents and families leave public schools!!! Teachers and andministrators such as yourself that are not being accountable for the role that they are getting paid for, to provide a beneficial education for ALL students that are cognitively able to benefit from their education to actually benefit!!!!
All I can tell you is that one child was saved from the REPEATED EDUCATIONAL NEGLECT OF THE PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM where they were REPEATEDLY LEFT BEHIND THROUGHOUT THE 12.5 YEARS SPENT IN SPECIAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS because of his demographics & low expectations where he was supposed to be LEARNING BUT INSTEAD FELL FURTHER & FURTHER BEHIND AT THE HANDS OF SUPPOSED PROFESSIONALS!
But when TAKEN OUTSIDE OF THE TRADITIONAL FAILING PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND FINALLY PROVIDED THE RECOMMENDED INSTRUCTION (by non certified VOLUNTEERS I might add) THE CHILD AMAZINGLY MADE MUCH MORE THAN MINIMAL PROGRESS & SOARED BEYOND ANYONES WILDEST EXPECTATIONS & WAS ABLE TO JUMP YEARS AHEAD IN HIS EDUCATION BY ATTENDING COLLEGE CLASSES!!!
WHICH PROVED THAT IT WAS INDEED A FAILURE OF THE CURRENT PUBLIC EDUCATON SYSTEM & MULTIPLE SCHOOLS AT THE HANDS OF THE MANY (suppsed) PROFESSIONAL (CREDENTIALED & LICENSED) TEACHERS IN EACH & EVERY CLASSROOM HE SAT IN DURING THE 12.5 YEARS HE ATTENDED & UNDER the UMBRELLA of TIER 3 SPECIAL EDUCATION, AND WHICH REPEATEDLY LEFT HIM BEHIND YEAR AFTER YEAR AFTER YEAR!!!
So if you CHOOSE to ignore those details, it’s just another illustration of why the students continue to fall thru the cracks of this broken educational model. My family and many others pushed out to the private sector can affirm that the proper instructional methods implemented with a level of fidelity by caring, “non-credentialed” volunteers were successful in instructing a student and closing the gaps when the supposedly credentialed & licensed professionals couldnot or did not do so!!!!
Wrong again. A total of 6 schools in one localized area of the country does not represent more than 100,000 public schools in 15,000+ community based, democratic, transparent, non profit public school districts that are managed and guided by the ed codes of fifty different states.
And, I think you are a liar, because yesterday in one of my comments I asked you a series of questions to determine if you were a supportive parent. You replied that you did all of the things I asked about and that meant you claimed you introduced the child to books early in his life (that means be age 2 at the latest).
Then today, you claim your alleged son was a foster child who had been in three schools before he came to you. That means the child had to be at least 6 or older. By then it is too late for most children. The damage has been done. They start out behind and often stay behind.
So, how is it that you took that child you didn’t have or know existed when he was a toddler and sat him on your lap and read to him out loud to instill in him a love of books and reading?
And how did you take that child to the library when he was old enough to go to the library and check out books from the children’s section?
Because the best age to introduce children to books is years before the child is old enough to go to kindergarten.
And how did you shut of the TV when that child was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and possibly even older when you weren’t there to do it — TV is an easy babysitter and TV is addictive?
And how did you cook that pre-school child healthy meals so his brain and body would be nurtured and develop healthy? The first six years of a child life is incredibly important when it comes to nutrition. If the child doesn’t have a nutritious diet, the entire body suffers and doesn’t develop to its full potential.
And how did you insure that child was sleeping properly? Children need to sleep about 12 Horus a day during their early years because most of their physical and mental growth takes place while they sleep and lack of sleep stunts that growth Caucasian permanat damage.
And from your own description, it sounds like this child was abused in the foster care system. How do you overcame child abuse and the permant damage PTSD can cause from that abuse? There is no magic wand to wave away the trauma caused by PTSD and the schools are not equip-ed to deal with that damage. Even the VA is still learning how to treat the troops that fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. PTSD is not exclusive to our troops. Children and rape victims are also victims of PTSD. If the child has PTSD, that would make the challenge of teaching him extremely difficult and most schools if not all of them even in the corproae sector are not prepared to deal with that challenge, because children, rape victims and troops that suffer from PTSD can’t be helped unless they want to be helped. The anger, fear, rage, etc. controls the PTSD sufferer unless he/she is willing to learn how to manage it with help and the only help in the U.S. today is mostly from the VA.
How dare you blame the public schools for not having a magic wand to erase all the damage this child faced before reaching school age. When I was teaching, I ran into parents like you but I couldn’t tell them what I thought about them back then because I could be fired for speaking the truth. But I’m retired now. I taught more than 6,000 Nichiren over thirty years and I’m in my 11th year of retirement from the classroom and abusive, blame everything on the teacher parents like you. The public schools can’t fix or teach every child. They can only do what they can afford to do and in the age of slash-and=burn budget cuts and high-stakes rank-and-punish tests that profit huge corporations like Pearson, the burden is to do more with less while being demoralized because the corporate public education reform lying propaganda machine churns out crap to fool people like you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year..
There is not one country on the planet that has achieved 100% success with all of their children in the history of civilization, and yet you demand that we are all failures in U.S. public education unless we do the impossible and end poverty while magically doing what no one has ever done before with every traumatized and damaged child that walks into our classrooms just because a fool like you thinks we should.
Some of the words in my previous comment to M are the wrong words because the auto spell checker corrected my hastily typed misspelled words replacing them with a totally wrong word. I’d much rather the auto spell left my misspelled words alone. Because I can’t go back and edit my comment and correct the even worse errors caused by the auto-spell function, I suggest readers use contextual clues to identify the correct word I meant to type. I won’t say I’m sorry for the errors in my comments. I’m human. I make mistakes and I refuse to spend an hour or more on a comment to proof it a half dozen times in an attempt to catch every mistake made and still end up missing one.
Diane,
You make it sound as if schools are tax-funded daycare/recreational centers.
I wonder why that might be?
Hmmm…. let’s see… is it because the US child poverty rate is so high?
And these are the children that public educators are tasked to educate?
And if so then, if everyone sees this dilemma, instead of just BLAMING those children for their demographics, how about you all as professional, credentialed, educators actually put actions behind all of the chattering ya’all seem to enjoy so much and ENSURE THEY BECOME PROFICIENT in regards to LITERACY & NUMERACY?!?!?!
You have the information, but as has been the experience for most families that I know at least, you all choose to ignore the struggles and blame those that you’re paid to educate! You are blaming the children & youth rather than taking on the responsibility to help them overcome their struggles.
So, for those families that do not have to use school as a tax funded day care center, they will continue to choose to leave public schools, and more and more will continue to choose homeschooling, especially for thier older children and especially if they’ve already been pushed out of the public school setting to obtain educational services on their own time & dimes!
Have a splendid weekend & enjoy your long summer that’s arrived now for some of you and is so close at hand for the others.
I’ll continue to work a full year without all those nice perks such as school vacations mixed in plus the summers off (just as the majority of the tax paying population experiences for the majority of thier work life out in the real world- unlike those in the pseudo-world of public P/K-12 education, so that I can pay my taxes to fund this failing model of education for the masses.)
Save your insults, M. I don’t have the summer off. Many teachers work Summer’s to compensate for low wages. Take your rancor and bitterness and go.
Most parents and families are in the same boat Diane. If you see it as bitternes & rancor, that is your interpretation. I am just stating reality for the majority of working class families, many of them as you noted, are dual income families, and many of them also working multiple jobs to make ends meet. How many of them have it written into their contract that they only have a 180+ day work calendar? And the school holidays off also?
M,
This is not blame game.
There are many who think they have the solutions, but the recent solutions, the deforms, have been deeply deleterious. The argument that teachers have the knowledge and power to solve everything themselves within this deform climate that remains though it is constantly debunked, yet choose not to, makes little sense. And going on and on about the perks without an understanding of the true efforts and stresses involved for those dedicated is just misdirected. True, some take advantage here, especially those who don’t intend to stay in the profession or are in the process of making a lateral or vertical move.
But let’s discuss real solutions, or why certain movements are not solutions at all. Or, fine, if you really want to blame something or someone or some group, go ahead. Then state the fix; exactly how do we turn it around?
M,
I think you are totally clueless and you drank the corporate Kool-Aid a long time ago. Teachers cannot learn for children and teachers can’t be there 24 hours a day 7 days a week, because teachers have families and have to rest too.
There are far too many parents in the U.S. that think teachers are responsible for it all. Teach 100% of the children even those who are absent or ill or hungry or etc. These ignorant parents also think teachers are responsible for what children learn. If a child does not pay attention in class and does not do the work for any reason, that is not the teacher’s fault. The child must come to school ready to pay attention and learn.
What kind of parent were you?
Did you turn off the TV when your children were 2 years old and sit them on your lap or beside you and open a book and read to them?
If you didn’t turn off the TV when your child got home from school, how many hours did that child watch TV every day on average?
Did you buy them video games and let them play at night and on the weekends for endless hours without checking if they had school work to do?
Did you read books, magazines and newspapers on a regular basis everyday where your child or children could see you reading?
Did you feed your children a nutritious breakfast and pack them a nutritious lunch everyday?
Did you make sure your children slept at least 8 to 10 hours daily?
Did you say no to a mobile phone when your child ask for one?
The parent is the most important person in a child’s life and parents who blame teachers when their children are not learning what all students are taught is the person that has failed the child — not the 35 to 50 teachers the average child has K – 12.
When our daughter was in third grade, and the teacher called because she hadn’t turned in an assignment, I sat her down and told her it was her responsibility to learn and that meant doing all the work the teacher assigned, paying attention to the teacher and asking question when you weren’t sure about the work. I said, “If you are not learning what’s taught, it is not the teachers fault. It is your fault.”
From that day forward all the way to high school graduation, she earned straight A’s and we never received a phone call from one of her teachers again.
Are you one of those parents that tells his or her children that if they aren’t learning, it’s the teachers fault? If the answer is yes to that question, then you gave that child a license not to cooperate or learn what’s taught in school, because, after all, nothing is ever the child’s fault when the teacher is blamed for everything. The teacher has become the whipping boy punished for what others do or don’t do.
On Fri, Jun 17, 2016 at 5:50 PM, Diane Ravitchs blog wrote:
> Akademos commented: “M, This is not blame game. There are many who think > they have the solutions, but the recent solutions, the deforms, have been > deeply deleterious. The argument that teachers have the knowledge and power > to solve everything themselves within this def” >
Are you one of those parents that tells his or her children that if they aren’t learning, it’s the teachers fault? ANSWER: NO, I TELL HIM LEARNING IS NOT PASSIVE & HE’s AN ACTIVE PARTICIPANT IN HIS EDUCATION
If the answer is yes to that question, then you gave that child a license not to cooperate or learn what’s taught in school, because, after all, nothing is ever the child’s fault when the teacher is blamed for everything. The teacher has become the whipping boy punished for what others do or don’t do.
QUESTION: IF A PARENT DOES EVERYTHING YOU STATED ABOVE (WHICH WE DID BY THE WAY), THEN DOES NOT THE TEACHER & THE SCHOOL HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO WORK TOGETHER TO CLOSE THE GAPS THIS CHILD HAD ARRIVED WITH???? WHEN THEY ARE GETTING PAID (SPECIAL ED RATE) TUITION JUST UNDER $27,000 a year from the child’s home school district?!?!?!
Well Lloyd, very interesting that you again blame helpless children and their demographics, children who are required by law to sit in the public neighborhood school classrooms in expectation of gaining an education that will lift them up and prepare them for success in the future and which was supposed to prepare them for a future to become productive citizens, which includes finding a job after high school to support themselves and their families!
Children from tough backgrounds attend public schools! There are estimated to be half a million of them in foster care! You don’t get to pick and choose which students you feel like choosing to educate!
It is the public schools that are tasked to educate all children, those arriving and living in poverty all the way to the other extreme of the top 1/2 of 1% of the economic ladder!
Regarding our experience with the public schools, it was far more than one school, it was far more than one district, it was far more than a local region of the state!
So please, open your eyes and admit that this is a widespread national issue that needs to be resolved ASAP!
Also, I am not a liar. I was not parenting said child as an infant or elementary school age. I’ve been parenting a child that arrived in our family in 8th grade and now is on the verge of becoming an adult!
From the time this foster child arrived: child’s bedtime has always been at a reasonable time to allow for 8 hrs of sleep or more; we read together as a family, in the home, in the car, on vacations, etc, etc,; we rarely watch TV in our home; child has access to library of books at home, in school and in the community; we provide what would be considered by current nutritional guidelines, to be a proper nutritional diet for the child.
I have repeatedly noted to the child that his education is not passive and that he is an active participant in his education. I have told him there is no excuse for not finding out the answers to his questions with his assignments. He has access to information at his fingertips thru modern technology that was beyond this parents imagintation when they were the same age. I had to get to a library to look up information that is now available anywhere there is a device with internet access!
But that said, he is attending school and they should be instructing him and ensuring he is reaching proficiency in foundational skills, which never happened! They should be reinforcing hard deadlines and time management skills. They should be ensuring that this child is closing gaps! They never did though! Even the best teacher I knew of was not able to provide him with the instruction to close the gaps! They were not utilizing AT either. None of the schools were providing him an appropriate education! They were not interested in remediating nor in utilizing the technology in a manner that was effective!
So when this child arrived in our home and started in this initial school district, it meant AT BEST, THERE WAS LESS THAN 5 SCHOOL YEARs TO CLOSE THE ACADEMIC GAPS THIS CHILD ARRIVED WITH!
We did not have time to play the typical wait them out game that seems to be the mode of operation for the public school system when parents try to obtain services from schools that do not want to provide them to students (even when they advertise such as available!) We were stalled for an additional 2 years, begging for services they advertised on their webapge but they repeatedly denied him!
Also, children in foster care have experienced many losses and trauma. Loss of their bio family, loss of friends, loss of trust…. and a loss of an appropriate education too many times!
You cannot change the educational reality that we have personally experienced! And we are not alone as I know of many, many, upwardly mobile and upper & lower middle-class families, as well as families living in poverty that are experiencing the same problems with finding appropriate instruction and services for their children in the public school setting!
The reason that children stay behind in school is exactly the problem which has been identified but which is blamed repeatedly on the student while not taking into account the school environment that they spend their time in!
It does not take into account how they are not provided with the proper instruction, even when the school the child attends offers it and advertises it on their school website!
Our foster child arrived academically behind and we begged for proper instruction and services be provided by the school, which they had to know of as it was quite obvious if they were looking at the work being turned in to access! It is exactly my point! It is why public schools need to provide the proper instructional services in order to close the gaps they arrive with!
We as responsible parents were requesting that he obtain such instruction from the public school we are REQUIRED to attend by our zipcode! The schools repeatedly refused to provide it, though! So you cannot blame the family for failing to do their part, as the family was providing educational supports at home & eventually beyond, which were not being provided as part of the child’s instructional program at the public schools the child was required to be attending!
I am sorry you find parents that advocate for their children’s learning needs as “abusive”. But you know what, families are also being abused and traumatized. When families who are begging teachers and schools for help for their children in order to help them to become proficient in reading, writing and math skills, with evidence from both the schools own teting results, as well as independent testing results, are being denied the recommeded and scientificall proven instruction, that dear sir is educational malpractice & educational neglect!
So yes, I will definitely blame the public schools when it is warranted and evident, and when it has been proven they’ve failed to do their part in providing an appropriate and beneficial education for this child, and for the half a million other children in foster care that are being left behind, as well as the other children from intact homes, blended homes, broken homes, etc that the schools are not remediating!!!
The public schools have created the failed learning environment and perpetuated it! It did not try to remediate the child, even after a neuro-psychologist provided an even greater paper trail of the academic areas of weakness and what could be done to effectively remediate these educational gaps!
It was not that the school was ignorant of the students weaknesses (as noted previously, it was impossible to miss it, as a blind person could have seen it, it was that obvious); and it’s also not an acceptable excuse for a school to say they didn’t know the child was struggling in an area, because they are required to assess and evaluate all students for all academic areas of weakness and to provide the proper remedial services and instruction to close the gaps!
And the public schools failed this child repeatedly (as it does to countless other students daily!) It failed this child even after having an educational advocate speak up about the needs and the failures in addressing them! It failed to provide the proper diagnosis for the child’s learning struggles! It failed to provide the proper instruction and services to remediate the child! It pushed the student and family out to the private sector to obtain what the child was entitled to receive during the child’s school day at school!!!! It failed to do it’s job and it failed to be held accountable!
So forgive me for holding the public education system accountable for the multitude of failures experienced beyond just this one child that our family became responsible for ensuring obtained a meaningful education, helping to navigate & traverse this broken system that REPEATEDLY FAILED TO PROVIDE THE RECOMMENDED AND EFFECTIVE EDUCATION THE CHILD WAS ENTITLED TO! No family should ever be forced to be put thru a legal battle to obtain the proper educational instruction and services that it is their mission to provide to the students that are legally required to attend there! It should never be an adversarial climate for anyone, parent, student or schools!
What you are totally ignoring is that it is the mission of the public school (and therefore each teacher employed and heading up the classrooms) to educate EACH child to a level of proficiency that they are cognitively able to achieve! No matter if the student comes from poverty or arriving at school behind in skills! And it is of utmost importance to provide the services early on, rather than to ignore the weaknesses each and every passing year! You all know the statistics! You know how many students are living in poverty in your schools! POVERTY IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT PROVIDING THEM WITH THE PROPER INSTRUCTION AND SERVICES! No matter if they come from the most traditional and best-prepared home setting or the most impoverished and lacking home setting!
Our child’s experience is not unlike millions of other struggling learners! The only difference is that we did not accept what the public school was denying him, an appropriate education, thereby they pushed us outside to the public sector to obtain the proper and effective instructional services and also the proper and effective assertive technology and programs to support his learning outside of the public school! They created the atmosphere that repeatedly failed this child in their public school setting.
All I can attest to is that another adoptive mom of a foster child with Dyslexia volunteered to tutor my child using the Wilson program, and she helped him to close gaps he had previously struggled with up until then. (Note; she became familiar with Wilson because she found herself in the same boat as we were in! PS-In yet another different school district in yet another county!) And we were also lucky enough to finally get a seat off of the 2-year waiting list a few months shortly after that at a NFP Reading Center that uses Alphabetic Phonics (and is supported by donations and not local taxes as the public schools are funded) which also provided him with tutoring in writing & grammar, as well as reinforced the topics he was learning in Wilson. And after the 2.5 years of instruction on our own time & dimes outside of the public school, he is soaring to heights nobody w/could have imagined when the child started in this tutoring! So, after wasting 2 more entire school years where no gaps were closed, we eventually obtained proper & effective remedial instruction privately and guess what? Many of the gaps narrowed or closed entirely!
[Go figure; who’d have imagined it?
Obviously not the public schools the child attended!] 😦
Therefore, if we as non-credentialed, non-formally trained teachers, just plain old foster-adoptive parents were able to find a way to close the academic gaps independent of the public schools, other families can as well. And once they realize this, there will be more that will follow that alternative path!
No parent relishes the multitude of CSE meetings they are forced to attend and never see any meaningful progress come from them. No parent relishes seeing their child needlessly struggle when the help is available, but repeatedly denied to be provided to them.
Public schools recognize that the monopoly they historically held in the traditional educational realm is tentative. Parents have more options today, and with technology, it becomes even easier to see that the traditional failing educational model is outdated, ineffective and therefore at risk of survival.
So you can continue to blame poverty & the needs of the current student population, while continuing to ignore the role that teachers and schools are also to be accountable for, but you will be cutting off the branch you sit so high upon.
You ignored everything I said and returned to your delusional claims.
You are still wrong. Your kind of thinking will always be wrong.
Teachers are not miracle workers that deliver what tyrannical helicopter parents demand. It is obvious that you think that only what you want for your child counts and teachers should drop everyone else and jump to do what you want.
When I was still teaching, my average class load was 34 students for 170 or more students in five periods. I often worked 60 to 100 hours a week, 25 in classroom instruction/teaching, and the rest in meetings, planning, phone calls to parents, correcting student work, doing grades, etc.
As a teacher, my responsibly was to every one of those 170 students and to offer them the opportunity to learn and be available if they asked for help, and that is what I did.
Once again, you have the freedom to think what you want, but that doesn’t make you right and I think you are totally off base and wrong headed.
It is also a waste of time to debate with you. I have made my case against your wrong headed thinking and will only repeat what I’ve already said so go and spin your hoop some more. I’m done with you. My comments were for other readers anyway, so they would be able to hear your side and someone else that disagrees with you.
Schedule the place to meet, and I will be sure to have thousands of families that can provide first-hand experiences to share regarding their struggles with the public school sthey are forced to support and send their children to!
M,
Parents of students with special needs have no legally enforceable rights when they leave the public system.
Diane, Nor can parents with special needs children afford to exercise those legally enforceable rights while they are there in the majority of cases! So what good is it to have the option when you can’t afford to exercise it? Besides, they are getting left behind, so they will not be any worse off and in many cases will have better self-esteem if they weren’t stuck in a failing educational model.
QUESTION: IF A PARENT DOES EVERYTHING YOU STATED ABOVE (WHICH WE DID BY THE WAY), THEN DOES NOT THE TEACHER & THE SCHOOL HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO WORK TOGETHER TO CLOSE THE GAPS THIS CHILD HAD ARRIVED WITH???? WHEN THEY ARE GETTING PAID (SPECIAL ED RATE) TUITION JUST UNDER $27,000 a year from the child’s home school district?!?!?!
The $27K you speak of is not directly earmarked for a student’s personal education. The phrase “cost-per-pupil: is a misnomer that you obviously don’t understand.
=However, the money is irrelevant to closing learning gaps.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that not all children can learn. This is the result of physiological and/or psycho-emotional damage. Crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome, cognitive impairment, genetic limitations, poor pre and post natal nutrition, parental neglect and/or abuse all contribute to learning disabilities and limitations that teachers cannot necessarily overcome. Your denial has morphed into misplaced anger. Suggest seeking therapy.
RageAgainstTheTetsocracy : The unfortunatee truth is that with such educated & credentialed professionals such as yourself, who predetermines that those children CANNOT LEARN, of course they never will!!!
I think you are the ones that need therapy. You are all refusing to see the problem is also with the lack of effective instruction being offered to students!
You are determining which students are worth the effort to effectively instruct, rather than instructing all of them in a manner that provides them with the tools they need after they leave this pseudo-world of reality called the public school system!
I see the liar is back.
Lloyd,
Wow!
Such a professional.
Awesome to know you were teaching children.
Calling people liars when they responded truthfully to the the things the you defined as the responsibility of the parent when those parents were responsible for the child is not lying, but obviously hit a nerve with you. We did all the things you noted ( read with child, ensured proper nutrition and rest, limit TV, rarely any electronic games, etc….)
If anyone needs therapy I think it could be you.
Plus I am confident enough to say that most families that have children in Special Ed are routinely traumatized by the broken public school system and years of fruitless CSE meetings that do nothing but waste everyone’s precious time….
When children cannot read and write or do math at a level that is not equivalent to functionally illiteracy and numeracy, when they have the cognitive ability to do so, and families are doing their part, it is then a school’s failure to work to narrow the gaps. When they choose not to provide the students with the remedial instruction and close achievement gaps that can be remediate when most students can do so, even though too many educators apparently seem to feel otherwise!
M, in a previous comment, I asked several questions about what kind of parent you were.
You claimed that you did it all with the male child you were talking about and sounded like the perfect parent. Then in another comment the next day you inadvertently revealed the child was a foster child and had been in several schools before he came to you.
How could you read to a child at 2 that you didn’t know existed until years later after so much damage had been done to him from the foster care system and bouncing around from school to school with little or no stability in his life?
In addition, I stopped being a professional teacher when I retired and left the classroom. As a teacher, I couldn’t speak out the way I’m free to do now. What I say now has nothing to do with the kind of teacher I was. But how you judged my teaching from a few words in a comment from me more than a decade after I left the classroom says a lot about you.
I challenged you to read my memoir but knew you wouldn’t, because you have already condemned millions of teachers in the public schools across the country based on a few experiences that did not meet your demanding, unrealistic expectations.
So here’s a piece about what kind of teacher I was. It was published in the Rowland Heights Highlander in 1998.
http://www.mysplendidconcubine.com/teachingyears.htm
Now that I’m not constrained by the professional expectations of a working teacher, I’m totally free to say what I think. And I think you are a liar, a biased fool and are wrong headed. But we live in a country that says you have the right to think what you want just like what I think about you.
Freedom of expression is a two way street. Get use to it.
In response to M and the following
” OMG…. Lloyd you are so ignoring the role and the responsibility that the teacher plays in such children’s life and how these kids may not have the family support that you keep throwing out there as was provided to your own daughter! But, just so you know, I can tell you that we did do what you noted that you did for your daughter.
But guess what, it was still the public schools responsibility to provide my son with FAPE and to close the gaps he had, which they ignored repeatedly!”
M,
I was in Public Education for 37yrs, as a teacher, principal and Superintendent. I am also Dyslexic. I speak from a perspective few have. You are clearly a very proactive parent who unceasingly advocated for your child. Your argument for what should be in place in public schools, although commendable, is absolutely beyond what schools can provide. Monetarily, school districts have been repeatedly stripped of funds over and over by politicians with little to no conscience.
What you propose is NOT a basic service, it is an expensive special service provided to children who clearly aren’t successful in regular classrooms. The instruction provided in regular classrooms is as varied as it can possibly be and yes teachers are, on average, under trained to provide effective literacy instruction. My personal view is that it has been caused over the years by textbook companies who claim to provide what they do not and by over testing which has robbed teachers of valuable instructional time (my opinion)
How do I say this? I was responsible for implementing an exceptional program for Dyslexic children in Hutto ISD (Texas). It was subsequently severely disabled due to a 5 Billion dollar cut to education by the legislature that to this day has not been fully refunded. We employed highly trained Language Therapists to teach the children. Their methods were primarily Orton-Gillingham based. This instruction, which by the way I received in 1963 from therapists at Scottish Rite Hospital, was not and IS NOT geared for children in regular classrooms. It is quite frankly a waste of their time. The methods are slow and methodical and would slow down non-dyslexic children’s progress unnecessarily.
FAPE is not a guaranty for the best instruction possible. That’s not what the law says. It would be wonderful if all districts had both the insight and means to provide this type of instruction. Sadly, as you said, there are deniers of the disability as well as districts who refuse to address this issue for who knows what reason, However, there are many Public School Districts that would provide this type of quality program, or one as effective, if only the MONEY was available.
That is where you can help, be a part of the effort to save Public Schools, not one who wishes their demise. I guaranty you that it is through Public Schools that the type of programs you advocate for will ever be available, especially for the half million children in the foster care system. Please think about the following statements in the whole. You will lose my point if you selectively pick them apart individually.
-dyslexia is a way of life, it is never “cured”, you compensate
-DO NOT ever speak as if you know what it is like to be dyslexic, you do not know. DO speak FOR them
-The instructional quality you say is needed comes from highly trained teachers. It WILL NOT come from home school parents, for-profit charter schools, most all non-profit charter schools (there are some highly expensive private schools who can address your child’s needs)
-I have found the best therapists seem to be parents of a dyslexic child
-funds must be available to public schools for these types of special programs, it cannot be diverted to the profiteers
-the first children who will be left out of a selective school system WILL be the hard to teach (ie dyslexic). Make no mistake, the demise of Public Schools will result in a selective private system. Then the more money you have, the “better” an education your child will receive
-work with your child’s public school, don’t be combative, be a persistent advocate who doesn’t go away, it’s the squeaky wheel theory
-be a part of a group of knowledgeable parents who advocate
-don’t expect the school to make your child’s needs THE priority, they have a lot of priorities. Help them to get additional funding so more priorities can be addressed
-quit demeaning teachers as a whole (whether you mean to or not). You have no idea how much and what they have sacrificed for all children
– DEMAND your legislators support public schools. They are currently being influenced by groups who could care less about your children. They are being lied to, being threatened with primary opponents, “bribed”, and other unsavory tactics
Ben Carson
Retired Educator