Jonathan Pelto warns residents of Connecticut that their children will be forced to take the “new” SAT despite serious charges that the test is ill-designed and invalid.
The spark that set off this latest controversy about the SAT is a devastating critique by Manuel Alfaro, who until recently was Executive Director for Assessment at the College Board, which is responsible for the SAT. The SAT was redesigned at the direction of David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards. Alfaro became angered by what he saw and he became a whistle blower. Just last week, the FBI raided his home in search of evidence that he might have been the person who leaked 400 SAT questions.
Alfaro has been writing on Linked In, and he posted these statements on August 28.
The first is an Open Letter to David Coleman, letting him know that Alfaro is defiant and will see him in court. He accuses Coleman of perpetrating a “global fraud.”
Alfaro wrote to Coleman and said (in part):
You have done an excellent job discrediting me so far. You have stopped news organizations from investigating my statements and allegations of the global fraud you have committed against millions of students and their families, College Board members, state governments, and the federal government. You have convinced the heads of the Department of Education using the SAT for accountability that—to use the words of your Chief Administrative Officer and General Counsel—I’m “a disgruntled former employee who has expressed anger at the college Board in a very public way. Though his employment ended over a year ago, he has not “moved on.”” However, even with all your resources, I feel that you are still at a disadvantage. So, I’m going to show you one of my cards: in order to properly defend myself against any charges you level against me, criminal or otherwise, a court will have to grant my legal team access to College Board records.
I’ve tried to get help from parents, Senators, House Representatives, the White House, and the heads of the Department of Education of the states using the SAT for accountability without success. Thanks to you and the FBI, I will soon have a path to the College Board records I so desperately need to prove the global fraud you have committed.
The second denounces heads of state education departments for using the new SAT without telling the public that it is invalid.
It begins like this:
Residents of CO, CT, DE, IL, ME, MI, and NH, the heads of the Department of Education of your states have failed to protect the best interests of your students and your families, opting instead to protect their own interests and the interests of the College Board.
As these officials are elected (or appointed by an elected official), you can demand their immediate resignation or you can vote to replace them immediately to ensure that the department of Education in your state is headed by an individual willing to put the interests of your students and your family first.
In the paragraphs that follow, I will describe how the current heads of the Department of Education have failed you and why they lack the judgment (and common sense) to protect the best interests of your children.
On May 7, 2016, I wrote a letter to the heads of the Department of Education in CO, CT, DE, IL, ME, MI, and NH to let them know that the College Board has committed global fraud against their states and the federal government. In that letter, I offered to meet with their legal teams to expose the fraud. Instead of meeting with me (or asking me for additional information), they approached the College Board about my statements and allegations. According to a Reuter’s story, published on Friday August 26, 2016, here is what some of the states had to say about my statements and allegations:
A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education, Bill DiSessa, said the state “checked with the College Board” and decided not to look into Alfaro’s claims. Jeremy Meyer of the Colorado Department of Education said the state discussed Alfaro’s email with the College Board and was “satisfied with the response we received.”
Kelly Donnelly, spokesperson for the Connecticut State Department of Education, said the state considered Alfaro’s email to be “replete with hyperbole, but scant on actual facts. We did not take further action.” Donnelly said the state hadn’t reviewed Alfaro’s detailed posts on LinkedIn.
Although I have not seen any of the explanations the College Board may have provided, I can assure you that none included the following critical fact: The College Board, ETS, and the Content Advisory Committee did not have time to review all the items prior to pretesting, as the College Board has repeatedly claimed they do.
It is very hard to be a whistle blower. It is difficult to walk away from a lucrative job. Manuel Alfaro did it. I name him to the blog’s honor roll for his courage and integrity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Concur with your last sentence, Diane!
Everything you need to know about David Coleman is here in this 38-second video from a speech he gave to promote Common Core:
KEEP THIS MONSTER AWAY FROM CHILDREN!
KEEP THIS MONSTER FROM HAVING ANY AUTHORITY OVER THE CURRICULUM THAT TEACHERS USE TO EDUCATE CHILDREN!
SEND THIS UNQUALIFIED NON-EDUCATOR DOUCHE-NOZZLE BACK TO THAT ROCK THAT HE CRAWLED OUT FROM UNDER!
Viewing one of Coleman’s lectures on YouTube is, for a veteran teacher, a simultaneously horrifying and surreal experience.
It’s like watching someone who never went to medical school, coming in and giving a lecture to an audience full of trained surgeons, where — with total certainty of his expertise — he dictates and demonstrates to them how they should conduct an appendectomy, blathering away in nonsense jargon that Coleman himself invented: (what the f— is “close reading”, anyway?):
——————————–
DAVID COLEMAN (demonstrating his newly-invented techniques for on a live but anesthetized appendectomy patient, with Coleman’s efforts being projected on a giant screen the audience can see):
— (affecting an Edward-G.-Robinson-ish cadence)
“Well, first, you cut open the patient-guy’s guts HERE, see? Then you gotta retract the frag-i-stat tissue HERE, while ya got the nurse-babe next sucking out a bunch o’ blood with this cool mini-vacuum thing-y, see. Then when that yucky blood’s all cleared away, that’s when take this little knife —
— (looks up at the audience of surgeons)
“You guys call that a scalpel, right?
— (glances back down in the patient’s guts)
” … yeah.. .what-ever … and now ya gotta cut away ‘n remove this funny-lookin’ whatcha-muh-whooz-it over here — that’s that appendix-thiing, right? — and then after that, it’s a good idea to stop and rest for a sec while you take a good swig of some Diet Mountain Dew…”
— (quaffs deeply from a Diet Mountain Dew can, then resumes)
“Ahhh… that hit the spot .. and then your proceed to .. ”
—————————
The actual surgeons in the auditorium would react like the audience for “Springtime for Hitler.” Go here to get the idea:
( 2:20 – 2:26 )
( 2:20 – 2:26 )
I’m only slightly exaggerating here with that above surgeon comparison parody. It’s positively insane that this pompous, know-nothing douchebag was ever afforded even the slightest credibility when it comes to the pedagogy and curriculum teachers should use with children.
God save us all!!!
Seriously, my fifth graders spend the first half-hour of every day writing one of Coleman’s hated “personal narrative” assignments (while consuming LAUSD’s “Breakfast in the Classroom”.) Before class, I write the prompt on the board, so it’s waiting for them when they walk in. The all have a crack at it in their “Daily Journal”.
Yesterday’s prompt was written thusly:
—————-
Friday, August 26, 2016 —
TODAY’S PROMPT:
“If you could talk one-on-one to President Obama, what would you say?
“What do you think the problems are that he needs to address? In In Los Angeles? In your neighborhood? In the country as a whole?”
———————-
These kids are dirt poor residents of East L.A., and their writings are often quite brilliant. A couple of the girls are almost Republican when it comes to law-and-order get-tough-on-crime stuff, while a couple others wanted Barack to arrest Trump for “hate speech”… gotta love those kids! T
I later projected the best work on the whiteboard for the entire class to read, using a document reader-projector combo.
Oh yeah, and, perhaps in part just to spite David Coleman …
… I actually do “give a sh#% what they think.” 😉
It’s also a good way for the kids to simultaneously learn grammar, punctuation, spelling, basic writing strategies, etc. I correct every mistake in real time, and this leads to improvement in all these areas.
The PARCC consortium
https://www.google.com/search?q=brain+under+glass+images&biw=1280&bih=897&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjG9PvRuenOAhVkHGMKHWi8CVoQsAQIGw#tbm=isch&q=brain+under+glass+star+trek&imgdii=Vhdxlb3L1LdP_M%3A%3BVhdxlb3L1LdP_M%3A%3B5VP9X5aI1C5bqM%3A&imgrc=Vhdxlb3L1LdP_M%3A
There’s bravery, and above and beyond it is integrity. Manuel Alfaro has it. (Doesn’t seem like the FBI is going to find any wrongdoing, either.)
Manuel,
Noel Wilson has shown that all standardized tests and the standards upon which they are based are full of onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudges that any results/conclusions drawn from the process are COMPLETELY INVALID. To understand why I ask that you read his never refuted nor rebutted 1997 dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Tests are just masses of anecdotal evidence, of exactly of what is only the conscientious observer’s guess.
As for error, I defer to Wilson.
Something closer to valid assessment would be more of an interactive and open process and less of a pressurized snapshot.
Exactly as to a “valid assessment” being interactive. Wilson calls this type of assessment as being in the Responsive Frame wherein the teacher and learner work together to assess the students learning in a narrative style of interaction. It could be done if we chose to do so but grades and the “grading” of students is so culturally ingrained in most folks that they cannot/do not fathom anything different. And that inability to understand a better and more logical means of assessing student learning points to a failure of critical thinking and imagination. Perhaps our public schools have “failed us” indeed, in providing for students to learn critical thinking and imaginative thought.
Sounds like a hero, but what an ugly and explosive fight.
I feel like this is another horrific case in the file marked EduFrauds: Coleman, Gates, Broad, Duncan, King, White and on and on.
Great Work Johnathan as usual you are following the testing frauds. I cross posted the piece with a new introduction and a comment at the end linking back to another sharp work by Mr Pelto.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/NEW-SAT-a-fraud-on-Conne-in-General_News-Corporate-Fraud_Education-Testing_Fraud_Public-Education-160829-800.html#comment615551
SAT has ravaged higher ed, and high school, for too long.
Off with its head.
Long live ed.
Being a whistle blower does not seem to be a career enhancer. Somehow, organizations do not seem to look on such integrity as a valuable asset in their employees. I would love to have someone prove my cynicism to be wrong. Please! I would like to believe that Manuel Alfaro will/has landed on his feet.
No, 2o2t, your cynicism isn’t misplaced or wrong. It’s spot on! Those who challenge authority whether in the business or education sector are sure to be crushed and/or discarded, hopefully in handcuffs with a police escort to show who is really in power.
What Ambrose Bierce stated over 100 years ago still holds true:
“CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.”
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
Gordon,
Peg’s perspective?
>
FOLLOW the $$$$$. Coleman is well … (Fill in the blanks).
This is going to be the beginning of the “blame game” in the world of the fake and criminal education deformers.
While the Rio Olympic Games recently concluded, we are going to witness a new sport…the Coleman Decathlon…whereby governors and education superintendents that were supposed to be stewards and guardians of our nation’s public schools and children run from their record.
We will also see the “Christie Mental Marathon”, where false statements and “amnesiac episodes” are employed, and the “Cuomo Hide and Seek” sit in…where he sits in isolation in the governor’s mansion, and looks to make public appearances only in front of friendly media. Let’s see how long the governors and public education continue to run the privatization race, before turning to run from it. (The incentives of power and profit are amazing motivators!
They will then say…they did their best…under the… [circumstances]. Each one following their “political” consciences. All the while millions of children and public school teachers lives have been harmed to some extent, and possibly destroyed. The words “class action lawsuit” come to mind…
Mr Coleman is a man with an “F” branded onto his identity. Fraud, falsifier, fabricator, fony (the new common core method for the word)…who should be charged, tried, and convicted of treason and sabotage against the United States.
May the punishment fit the crime!
Anyone wishing to support Manuel can help out at his GoFundMe page.
https://www.gofundme.com/2me5wkms
The amateurs have taken over with the backing of the likes of Gates, Walton, Broad, etc.
Billions of dollars that affect media coverage and political decisions.
Billions of dollars that sway public opinion through the manipulation of the above mentioned areas.
When a professional with excellent qualifications raises his/her voice in protest (and even resigns a prestigious, well paid position), the amateurs are consulted and cited as credible sources of repudiation, backed by highly ranked political figures.
This would be comical if the stakes weren’t so high. We’re talking about the future of our children and our nation. It’s frightening.