In New Jersey, David M. Aderhold, the superintendent of schools of West Windsor-Plainsboro, called out Governor Christie’s “reforms” for the frauds they are. He says it is time to fight back. I add him to the honor roll for his independence and support for children and public education.
He writes:
“The unspoken message is that the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey State Board of Education believe they can change educational outcomes by implementing a system of standardized tests, data points, and accountability measures. They believe that if you create “valid” and “reliable” assessment instruments, that all students will magically succeed. Through a blind allegiance to standardized assessments, the NJDOE and NJSBOE have failed to provide the support, programs, and professional development that would work to ensure that all students succeed….
“As a community of parents and educators, we must come together to rebuff the politicization of public education and insist that these changes are met with opposition and disapproval. We cannot remain on the sidelines as upheaval from the politics of education clouds what is best for our children. We must remain vigilant and centered on the essence of our work, which is to ensure the highest-quality educational experience for all students.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
New Jersey is playing right into the corporations’ hands. States do not need Pearson’s blessings to do their job. The state should have options for students to graduate from high school. A one size fits all test works to the disadvantage of at risk students. Too many students will be denied a high school diploma as a result failing PARCC. This is a short sighted decision with lasting consequences. The state of New Jersey does not need Pearson to tell them who can student teach in the state. The state will pay over $108 million to Pearson in the next four years. Pearson spent over a million dollars lobbying for these contracts, which are an egregious example of “pay to play.” http://www.nj.com/education/2015/03/parcc_exams_how_pearson_landed_the_deal_to_produce.html
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He is so right! We need many, many more education and political leaders to mobilize and fight the atrocious things that are going on in education. How much longer?
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Agree 100%. The policy and belief system of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in concert with others, especially the Lumina Foundation, is that “they can change educational outcomes by implementing a system of standardized tests, data points, and accountability measures.”
The Gates and Lumina Foundations are trying to foist this view on Congress and put insert this flawed idea into public postsecondary education, complete with administrators and faculty generating SLOs or SMART goals for programs and posting these all over the website of the institution. I kid you not. Farewell to academic freedom and farewell to faculty engagement with the governance of their programs. Farewell to studies in the arts and the humanities. Postsecondary education is about jobs or it is a waste of time and money.
Billionaires want to tell you whether your degree or your certificate programs are “worth anything.”
The language in this recently announced agenda for postsecondary program evaluation is another case of micromanagement promoted under the banner of “transparency and accountability.” Her is one example of one of the evaluation criteria:
Public display of student learning goals, assessments, and outcomes using the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment’s (NILOA) transparency Framework. (Table ES1. p.iv). http://www.ihep.org/sites/default/files/uploads/postsecdata/docs/resources/ihep_toward_convergence_low_2b.pdf
That criterion for a postsecondary “performance” indicator is among 20 others on the Gates wish list. Add 10 more measures of postsecondary”efficiency,” and 10 more measures of “equity.”
The worst part: This Technical Guide for the Metric Framework is being pushed as if there is a “convergence of professional opinion” on using these criteria and essentially tossing out (expanding, modifying) at least two major federal data sources for postsecondary education: One is called the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the other the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS). Both include student SS numbers.
This proposal, underwritten by the Gates Foundation also seeks modification in the work of the National Student Clearinghouse in verifying academic records as well as the integration of US Census data in tracking the performances of postsecondary students over time.
This data mongering agenda, started in 2004 with the Gates-funded “Data Quality Campaign” for infancy to grade 12, has one major hurdle.
Congress must allow the use of student level data in a format known as a ” student unit record system.” This system is currently prohibited by the Higher Education Act. Throwing out the already fragile data privacy laws bearing on higher education is one of several aims of this initiative.
The lobbying to get that change is well underway. So, here we go again with the billionaires shaping educational policy, and in this case with data, data, data, data, rationalized as essential for ” outcome improvement.”
For the full report and the “case” made for upending public postsecondary eduction, including stack ratings of institutions, programs, majors, and outcomes (e.g., salaries earned by graduates at one, five, and ten years after “exit from the institution”) see the Technical guide for the (proposed) metrics framework noted above as well as this version of the “advocacy priorities” of the Gates Foundation.
http://postsecondary.gatesfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/PostsecondarySuccessAdvocacyPriorities2016.pdfand the
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It is amazing to me that Gates inserts himself into education policy, and everyone accepts whatever he presents due to his $$. He offers nothing more than testing, ratings and rankings. This is not policy. This is his demolition toolkit. All higher ed. has to do is look at the mess he created in K-12.
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I would feel bad for the faculty of postsecondary institutions, but I really don’t. Why? They have sat on their hands while we in K-12 have been decimated and micromanaged to death. With a very few exceptions, they NEVER spoke out against what has been happening to us. They sealed their own fate by refusing to stand up for us.
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TOW–I have to agree. There area few university professors speaking out including Diane but where are the rest? They have allowed K-12 to be slammed with billionaire policies of test and punishment for years. They have allowed the false “public schools are failing” dialogue to continue with their silence. While I applaud this superintendent who along with a few others have had the courage to speak out where are the rest of them??? If every superintendent in every public school system spoke out–Congress would have no choice but to listen. Instead, they choose to bring failed policies to the local level initiating common assessments in all grade levels and across all content areas. When is this failed policy of standardization going to end.
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Threatened Out West
Well you just nailed it, perhaps you do not realize why.
Jay Gould infamous robber Barron once said:
” I could go out and pay half the working class to go out and kill the other half”
So no, I am not a College Professor nor even a Teacher as should be obvious by my need for the edit button.
In 1970 three quarters of college professors were full time tenured or tenured track employees. Today that number has been completely reversed. Almost 3/4s are now near starving adjuncts, working at Starbucks next to their students to supplement their income.
Make no mistake k-12 is the secondary target of the economic elites. The primary target of the oligarchy was higher education .
The efforts to mold primary education has among other goals to align
it with a Higher education system focused on jobs and careers one that never challenges the real seats of economic power.
Gates has called for certificate programs rather than degrees . Taught no doubt in M.O.Cs, no doubt using computers empowered by the once infamous Blue Screen of Death.
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Still waiting for public officeholders to lose their positions over education policy. Great article.
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Well, divide and conquer explains a lot.
My nauseating day started with a Long Island Newsday headline. It stated that 67% of long Islanders saw terrorism as the number one issue.
Really now , I suppose the paper owned by a union busting oligarch is getting ready for a Trump endorsement.
Education was not even one of the six or seven headline issues.
Sorry Ohio this is the big city (LOL). Where 200,000 children opted out and the issue is not mentioned.
Number of Long Islanders killed by terrorism post 9/11 ZEROOOOOO.
The number of White Working class Long Islanders KILLED from economic causes, be it poor access to healthcare or life choices associated with economic decline in the past 15 years, is probably in the thousands. perhaps tens of thousands.
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Read some of the comments written by readers of the article. I especially like one by rich teneyck.
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Good idea. Took the time to do that. Very true.
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Good choice for the honor roll, Diane. This guy deserves a lot of credit.
I could not and would not want to ever be a school principal or superintendent. For many reasons. It is a very, very tough job -to do right.
I remember the more than 1,550 administrators who back in 2012-13 signed the New York Principals letter opposing our state’s wacky APPR system -a system now fully exposed for the disgraceful attack on our schools and children that it is. (It’s still somehow floating around in limbo up there in Albany…) http://www.newyorkprincipals.org/appr-paper
If I was sitting on a school board, interviewing potential administrators, my first questions would be 1. Where were you when this crap was going down….in New York, in New Jersey, in Florida…..in our country. And, 2. What, if anything, did you do to oppose these destructive “reform” ideas and protect our kids?
I’d probably hire David M. Aderhold as quickly as you can say, “Carol Burris.”
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“With these new graduation requirements, there are so many elements still undefined. For instance, if PARCC is a graduation requirement for the Class of 2021, what happens if a student passes Algebra I in 8th grade but does not pass the PARCC examination? How is the New Jersey Department of Education going to work with students that transfer into a school district from out of state? What will PARCC remediation look like? Who will score these assessments? How will PARCC be administered for Option ii courses? Further, what is the value for students of the Class of 2021 to take the PARCC assessment for geometry, Algebra II, ELA 9 and ELA 11 if only the Algebra 1 and ELA 10 assessments count for graduation? How will the burdensome appeals process be addressed?”
When they were selling PARCC in NJ did they tell parents the plan was to make it a graduation requirement?
Ed reformers have problems with honestly (and thoroughly) presenting their plans to the public. Telling people the tests “aren’t high stakes for students” and will be used only as a way to “see where students are” and then reneging on that is a problem.
I resent how they roll these plans out in a “need to know” basis, because it’s political. They’re avoiding controversy by not telling people about plans that are controversial.
If you read on the ed reform side you see how national this “movement” is and how ambitious they are- the goal is to completely remake every aspect of every public school. They dodge that by dribbling information out with this patronizing, manipulative and secretive process where they’re constantly assuring people that is NOT the goal because they’re afraid the public will oppose it if it’s perceived as radical.
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Why, is it fraud or is it performance art?
Trump’s murky poses on education:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/25/494740056/donald-trumps-plan-for-americas-schools
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NPR spouts the revisionist version of how the Common Core was developed. They could give Trump lessons.
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This is a typical ed reform op ed in my state.
“New yardstick carries a sting”
The students and teachers are being rapped on the knuckles by the yardstick.
This attitude is baked in among ed reformers. It’s all about holding OTHER PEOPLE “accountable”.
All the soft-sell and blather about “nuance” and “well rounded” simply does not apply to public schools. They start with a mindset that we’re all coddled slackers avoiding punishment and we need to be hit with a stick.
It’s freaking insufferable and it’s such an echo chamber they don’t even realize how they talk to us. We’re not even worthy of a pot-sweetener in any of these “negotiations”. It’s their way or the highway. It’s ALL negative.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2016/09/23/editorial-new-yardstick-carries-a-sting.html
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We’re not radical sorts. But it’s time to worry others for a change.
We don’t tip over cars. clog streets, torch flags, or play catch with tear gas. We’re folks with kids … who we adore. We’re good guys. And maybe that’s our problem.
We all know in our hearts the single tactic that calls us all … and that is to empty our schools for a day.
ONE uncomfortable day. On October 17th. Make plans … NOW.
This election season is one of national discontent. The nation is jittered as never before … and the current political scene is a testimony to the uneasiness that’s clouded the country. Education is part of that uneasiness. And it should be part of the jitter.
We need a display of unity … and we need to make a loud statement.
Childhood is a one-and-done moment. There’s no second at-bat. No do-over. And as parents, do you really want another “coulda, shoulda, woulda” memory? Those aren’t fun at all.
Successful tacticians are not reactive … they’re proactive and ahead of the opposition. They create for themselves positions of advantage. They supply unanticipated surprises. THAT should be us. We should do the unexpected.
This reform can continue with new, inexperienced, script-reading teachers, acquiescing principals and superintendents, head-nodding boards of education, and conspiring profiteers and politicians.
BUT this reform cannot continue without our children. No children, no school. No school, no reform madness.
No kids, no control. No kids, no tests. No kids, no data. No kids, no experiments. No kids, no profits. No kids, no indoctrination. No kids … no nuthin’. It all stops.
Were we to unite all of the forces from Georgia to New York, from California to Ohio, from Massachusetts to New Mexico, and from Michigan to Florida … well … public education would once again honor the concerns and expectations of those who fund the local schools. And the profiteers and politicians would slither off.
We have no choice but to glue ourselves together.
Thomas Jefferson still reminds us that “a little revolution … now and then … is a good thing.”
Do a good thing. Empty the schools.
STOP being afraid. … and STOP with the excuses.
Denis Ian
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Did you email this suggestion to Randi and Lily? HA!
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I am fuming about this! Thanks for the heads up Diane. I was on vacation & not paying attention to NJ ed news.
My NJ kids thankfully went thro public school before ed reform took hold of our schools via Christie & henchmen Cerf & Hespe.
Save Our Schools New Jersey (FB page) seems the best place to follow developments. They claim [optimistically?] “The new regulations will not survive the legal and political challenges between now and spring 2020, when they would first be relevant. The Education Law Center and ACLU NJ have already put the Christie Administration on notice that the new regulations violate NJ laws and our state constitution.”
BTW, a couple of commenters at that lead post (8/4) who are in Supt Aderhold’s district are not nearly so sanguine about him. They claim that he made refusing PARCC a ‘nightmare’ for parents, that he ends all instruction 3 wks prior to PARCC for test prep, and that he maintained a ‘sit-&-stare’ policy until forced into ‘sit-&-read’ by angry parents.
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Let’s hope he has had a true “Come to Jesus moment” and is not just playing the odds.
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